March 2005 Archives

Msgraph at Search Engine Watch Forums does it again, he posted a thread named Google's look into document scoring by historical data. In that thread, he points to a patent issued by Google on December 31, 2003 on the topic of "Information retrieval based on historical data". The abstract reads; "A system identifies a document and obtains one or more types of history data associated with the document. The system may generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the one or more types of history data."

Msgraph pulls out a quote:

[0039] Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by search engine 125 than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter. While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.

I still need to go through the whole document...

Updated: You guys should check out both the SEW Thread as well as the discussion going on at ThreadWatch named Google's War on SEO - Documented. Pretty shocking stuff, Nick.

Last week, Yahoo! launched Creative Commons Search.

This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. Learn more...

What is interesting is that Yahoo CC Search is #3 on DayPop 40 as Nancy Evars blogs but yet, forum chatter (on my meter) is very low. WebmasterWorld has a thread started by Brett on the 24th, no replies.

Phil Craven sets the record straight on images not having PageRank at this Search Engine Watch thread. Basically, if you link directly to an image source, such as yahoo-unicode-arrows.gif, PageRank should not pass to it. However, if that image is a Web page, like linking to a page like this because it has a cool image of a dog, even cooler in 4 colors, it will pass PageRank.

So I just ripped off that image from that site, actually I really downgraded the quality of the image, because I felt bad. But people rip off images from sites all the time. Mikkel, in that thread recommends using a "rewrite rule (if you are on Apache) that check if the image is requested from within our outside your domain (external request)." Then serve up a different image, of something ugly as a game.

An other whacky thread at DigitalPoint forums named Why does google own this domain? Some member must of randomly typed in http://www.466453.com/ and ended up at a Google page.

Its very interesting, don't you think?

The answer: Take a look at your telephone keypad, and match up the numbers to the letters.

4 GHI
6 MNO
6 MNO
4 GHI
5 JKL
3 DEF

Those Google people are such geeks. I bet others have done this as well, and if not, they are going to do it now. :)

Google released their SEC Filings for 2004, in it, many are discussing the topic of AdSense. Two forum threads are out and about; one at WebmasterWorld and the other at Search Engine Watch Forums.

The WebmasterWorld thread estimates that 77% of the ad spend driven by AdSense are going to the publisher. The Search Engine Watch thread estimates 60% of the ad spend is going to the publisher. Jenstar, in the SEW thread, has not yet reviewed the numbers in detail, but she was banking on the 60% figure for a long time now.

A thread at DigitalPoint forums named MSN SiteSearch TOS, discusses some of the language they use in their Microsoft Search Service Referral Terms of Use. One line reads, "You will not use the Service or the MSN Code in connection with any Website that disparages Microsoft or its products or services." That line is translated by the DigitalPoint member as "You have to be nice to us on your site." An other line the DigitalPoint member quotes is "A court may hold that a part of this contract cannot be enforced as it is written. If this happens, then that part will be replaced by terms that most closely match the intent of the part that cannot be enforced," which he translates to "If our contract is vague and unenforceable, use the next closest law."

In reality, MSN is just trying to protect themselves. Look at Google, they provide all these tools and SEOs sometimes abuse them and then complain to Google about it.

WordPress, a popular open source blogging software, was caught spamming search engines by using its link popularity and $3 per article company. I found this by way of Oilman's blog, where he gives sage advice, "What have we learned from this? Negative divs are pretty freakin stupid - cloak your links if you're serious."

So what happened? As Waxy reports, they used their high PR, link popularity and cheap content writers to design articles "specifically to game the Google Adwords program." The 120,000 plus articles were already pulled from Google but hopefully Yahoo! will leave some of them around for show and tell.

How did they get caught? Virtuelvis explains that they were including a "-9000px text indent: This makes the link invisible to human visitors with CSS, and visible to every search engine on the planet." Technically, this is not IP Delivery and many professional cloakers would not consider this cloaking. As oilman said, "Negative divs are pretty freakin stupid - cloak your links if you're serious."

Update: Just noticed Tim Mayer from Yahoo! blogged it at 360, so Yahoo! might pull the results soon. In addition, I am still trying to make out who the individual is that Tim circled in red. If you can't view the blog, you might need a Yahoo! 360 Invite, you can get them from me here, if that doesn't work, you need to be added to his friends list.

A thread over at DigitalPoint notes that Yahoo! has dropped arrows (►) from its search results page. The arrow is used by some search engine wary SEOs to draw more attention to their listing over the other search engine real estate listings. Yahoo! said no more to this and removed it. Google has removed the unicode characters over a year ago, Yahoo! follows suit., when will MSN?

Update: I am informed that this is not always the case at Yahoo!. "Looks like Yahoo may only be dropping the arrow if the first character of the title is the arrow." For example see; Yahoo! Search results for longest car, it should look like:

Quietly Google slipped in stock charts into the top portion of the SERPs. Try a search on appl or any of your other favorite stock symbols and presto, a stock chart and graph for you at the top of the results.

Nice find Aaron, no forum threads as of yet.

I haven't found any forum threads on this as of yet, so I started my own at Search Engine Watch Forums. Basically, DaveN points out that Google added a new option to its site look up. The option is, "Find web pages from the site www.domain.com." Try searching on www.ibm.com at Google and you will notice it.

A thread at WebmasterWorld discusses what you can do if your pages were removed from Google due to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) removal. One member accounts that some of his pages were removed from the Google index due to a "false copyright claim" and he "sent a DMCA reinclusion request (email, fax, USPS) to Google." He said, two to three weeks later he was back in the index.

Later on in the thread, they get into the DMCA procedure at Google. One member is troubled that the DMCA Google page "appears to show that pages will be removed without any question." But others believe that "is exactly how Google should be doing things"

Today, Google is sporting Vincent Van Gogh Logo throughout its search pages, looks like:

I know very little about art :(.

A Google search on Vincent Van Gogh brings up book results and image results. But Ask Jeeves gives me the answer I want right away, and then links to pictures, products (books), and Wikipedia.

A 19th-century painter, Van Gogh is almost as famous for his mental instability as for his vivid paintings. His career as an artist lasted only 10 years and coincided with frequent bouts of depression and anguish; in a famous 1888 incident he slashed off his left earlobe...

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

This morning I revieved a press release from Ask Jeeves named "Bloglines is First to Go Beyond the Blog With Unique-to-Me Info Updates" with a subtitle "New FedEx, UPS and U.S. Postal Service Package Tracking Lands in the Bloglines Universal Inbox." Keeps reminding me that this is the future, at least for the next 2 years or so. RSS will power us, power the way we use the Web. Yahoo! knows it, Ask Jeeves knows it, MSN knows it, they all know it.

In the release it says; "Starting today, people can track the shipping progress of package deliveries from some of the world's largest parcel shipping companies-FedEx, UPS, and the United States Postal Service-within their Bloglines MyFeeds page."

It also reads, "In addition to blog text updates and RSS news feeds, the Bloglines Universal Inbox can track and aggregate many types of web and email based data that helps people stay well informed."

Continue reading "FedEx, UPS and USPS Package Tracking Added to Bloglines"

There is a thread over at Search Engine Watch Forums where a new member asks the question, "Does Yahoo Directory use DMOZ listings as the supplementary listings?" My thoughts, as many who read the thread, was to dismiss it as a possibility. However, Danny Sullivan dug deeper into the topic and revealed a passage over at Overture Web Search Product Overview page. On that page, right below that 'spacy' image, it reads:

Yahoo! leverages the Open Directory Project (ODP) to further improve the user experience on distribution partner sites. ODP title, description and category meta data is used to enhance Yahoo!'s relevant search results.

ODP is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web with a global community of volunteer editors. For more details on the Open Directory Project, please visit dmoz.org.

Danny goes on to say; "My jaw pretty much dropped when I read that. I mean, you'd think they'd at least mention that they also use their own Yahoo Directory and give it a little credibility. Instead, Yahoo is saying on that page that the ODP is bigger and more comprehensive than its own directory." Danny then points to a WebmasterWorld thread from over a year ago, where Tim Mayer from Yahoo! said, in message # 6, "We are using the title and description data in case we cannot generate any from the page or have a title and description available in the Yahoo directory."

You would think that Yahoo! would drop ODP completely after moving off Inktomi technology.

Found an interesting and very active thread today on HighRankings detailing some tests by several members about the importance placed on bold and H1 attributes in the code. I haven't seen these certain SEO tests discussed in a while so its been interesting following the discussion that is taking place. There are invariably some disagreements about the importance of these attributes and the While many of the tests conducted are not conclusive in any way, some members raise some good points about how search engines programming algorithms assign relevance to rankings of a website. One of the members who started the thread conducted a simple test under the phrase "kkhiazna" using "h1, b, big + b, big, h2, font size +1, and font size 2 + b.

Another member paisley, posts some interesting comments about how these attributes get scored:

"it's based on content relevance. Does the h1 describe the text that follows after the . Italics is a 2 score and bold is a 3 score.. fyi. H1s should be a 5 score unless the words used in the H1 are not repeated in the following text, then it is a 3 score (same as bold)."

Then as I was reading the post some disputes started to erupt, Jill did not agree with the assessment placed by the member paisley. He did not like her response. Posts got deleted by members and admin. She then responds about b and h1 tags.

And I'm not saying that H tags do or do not help. I've just not seen any recent evidence to conclude anything either way. Therefore, I would suggest that you use those tags where they make sense to do so, as per WC3 specifications, and not really worry about it as far as SEO is concerned.

As to the weight any given tag is given, one cannot place a number on it, because each tag doesn't work in isolation, but in a synergistic way with the other tags, copy, links, etc. on any given page.

Other members have some opinions and conclusions about the importance of these attributes. Murugan says that "Both are important and should be applied whenever necessary. I have seen some sites without H1 are ranking well.
Most of the times we test only 1 r 2 factors, but SE's rank the sites with 100+ factors.". Good point.

From my own experience I use h1, h2, and h3 in my seo as more of a way to hierarchal arrangement of a page, the rule is that what’s in the headers must also be in the content, as keywords are of prime importance for the benefit of the h1, h2, and h3 tags. Bolds and Italics are just as important but to be used sparingly as needed for the benefit of the user and the search engine. Tie that in with other work being done on the page, and it works well for ranking.

Read the heated discussion at Highrankings

Tim Mayer just hooked me up with a Yahoo! 360°. I got about a 100 to give out. But I will only give 25 out here. So if you want a Yahoo! 360° Invite act fast by commenting below and leave your email.

I have yet to play with it, so no comments from me on it.

They keep refilling my invites, so keep requesting, I'll hook you up until they clean me out. :)

Today is pretty much a Tracking Conversion Measurements type of day, so I thought I share a thread currently being discussed at Search Engine Watch Forums. The thread is named Protecting Cookies from Deletion, where member cline discusses that the problem of tracking not only is an issue of users deleting cookie's manually but the anti-spyware programs that delete them automatically.

In the thread, a discussion has begun about alternative methods of tracking. seomike says "I think browsers should just be given a unique ID that is sent in their headers." It is an interesting topic, many users do not want to be tracked. Advertisers want to track users. It is going to be interesting to see how tracking users will change in today's Web.

Yesterday I got this big envelop from Google, wondering what it was, I opened it up. It was an AdSense check, I thought maybe it was for the AdSense referral program because I never got a check from Google's AdSense program in that format. But I was wrong, Google simply changed their check format. Jensense reports that there is a New look for AdSense checks. In addition, there is forum chatter at WebmasterWorld.

And here is a picture for you:

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It is not as "cool" as Google buying Urchin, but its still pretty big. WebTrends, one of the biggest names in Web analytics, announced that they will be acquired by Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity funds.

Press release at Webtrends and forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Urchin is really one of my best friends, I use it daily, laugh with it, cry with it, but more importantly, I depend on it. Ever since Urchin first came out with its first product, I have had a relationship with them (I believe in 97 or 98). They have always built the most user friendly Web analytics packages out there. My clients don't have to be trained to use it and it gives them the power to say move large advertising budgets from one keyword to the next. As my father would say, it allows you to make "informed decisions." After all that is what the Web is all about.

I have been talking about Urchin at this site for a really long time. Give it a try, and do a search on Urchin at this blog. I have written an extremely comprehensive review of Urchin 5.5 in early 2004. Since then they have made numerous advancements and improvements to an already outstanding package. I even convinced some of my more tech savvy (also known as "geeky") colleagues to switch to Urchin.

Last night I was going though Bloglines and saw that John Battelle posted and entry named Google Acquires Urchin. I couldn't believe it, my first instinct was to email one of the founders and ask him if its true. He said it is and said he would love to tell me more but he was not allowed. But he is so delighted and so excited for the future. Battellemedia heard the price on the purchase was in the ballpark of $30 million. After emailing back and forth a few times with my Urchin contact, I quickly went to post a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums. I see that WebmasterWorld has a thread as well. SEO Chat has a thread also.

The folks at SEW forums seem to be as happy for Urchin as I am. Forum Editor, Elisabeth says "way to go Urchin crew!" Nacho, SEW Moderator, says " I'm so happy for the folks at Urchin." But there are some that are skeptical. If Google owns Urchin and Urchin is a vital tool in tracking your success on both the organic and paid search fronts, then Google has access to data - a conflict of interest. It will be interesting how this turns out. But I personally was never a fan of an ASP web analytics solution, that is why I am waiting for Urchin 6 to come out with a server install solution.

To summarize: I am so happy for you guys at Urchin! I wish you all the best and I hope this acquisition lets you build out even better tools.

I know MSN has been leveraging their properties, including MSN's Encarta Encyclopedia but never really noticed it within the context of MSN Search. Last week a wrote an entry on Question & Answer Search Engines, and I referenced Ask Jeeves, BrainBoost, left out Answers.com, but I did not mention MSN. Yosef Hass commented that MSN is using a form of Ask Jeeves's Smart Search to embed answer's directly into the search results.

The example I have given in the previous entry works well at MSN as well:
When was ben franklin born?
and
Who was the 27th president of the United States?

I have updated the Cre8asite Forum thread with this information.

Google has always tried to take the side that they do not manually alter the results of their ranking. Even when it comes to hate sites, Google tries to stay out of the debate with that phrase. We reported a while back on a topic of a hate site ranking #1 for Jew. In the case with the anti-Semitic site ranking #1 in Google, Google took out an AdWords ad saying they do not condone such a site but can not manually remove it due to their policies.

Since then, Google News has become very popular. According to an InternetNews article named Google Axes Hate News. This has encouraged a thread to have been started at SEW forums named Google Censorship where there is a poll that asks "Should Google "Axe" National Vanguard and National Zietung?" The poll is weighing currently on the side of "Yes", with 46% of the vote but if you read the thread, many are of the belief that Google can censor what is likes. Everyman, from Google Watch, says, "The problem is Google's persistent, geeky, stupid assumption that by using machines, the humans at Google are no longer responsible for the behavior exhibited by their machines."

As you can imagine, the thread gets some insightful replies. Nothing like those controversial topics to get a thread flowing. :)

There is a WebmasterWorld thread where a dozen members are reporting that Google has taken the liberty to withhold taxes from the AdSense checks they have sent to publishers. The thread starter said " I have a U.S. corporation with an EIN number registered with Google AdSense. The most recently reported payment (not yet received) was reduced by an approximate 25% "Tax Withheld". " Other members have verified this information. But why hasn't Google notified anyone of the change? Or did they when they released the updated AdSense TOS? I have not looked that carefully.

One member thinks it has something to do with Wired Article where it reads;

Do you have to report the money you make from hawking stuff on eBay? It appears to depend on whether you're running a business or just cleaning out the attic, but the IRS says all income can be taxed.

Update: RCJordan and ThreadWatch thinks it might have to do with IRS Backup Withholding FAQs.

I have read and avoided threads of individuals who have reported that adding new content to an existing domain has triggered the domain to be "sandboxed." This time, let me point you to an example of a new thread that sprung up on the topic at WebmasterWorld named Adding Large Amount of Content. The thread creator asks if his site will be sandboxed if he adds more "useful" content to it, like 15,000 pages in one day.

As you read the thread, you here some reporting that this has shot them into the sandbox. In contrast, you have some reporting that this technique has shot them out of the sandbox. And then you have those that say, they simply rank well for the new pages they add within a few weeks. Some place a distinction between adding a small number of pages at a time (about 10) and some say it doesn't make a difference either way.

These types of threads make for interesting reading but rarely have any bottoming out.

Last night I was notified by Jim from We Build Pages that they have developed a useful, and I find, interesting, tool named C Class Backlink Analyzer Tool. You basically need to plug in a domain name and wait about 3 minutes for it to run.

It breaks down the count of links you have by C class and gives you the specific domain names that link to you. Then at the end of the report, it summarizes its findings. For this specific site, here is the summary.

Results Summary
The first 1000 backlinks found come from
223 unique domain names (2 of which are invalid),
177 unique IP addresses, and
170 unique C classes.

The ratio of unique domain names to number of backlinks is 223 to 1000, or 22.30%.
The ratio of unique IP addresses to number of backlinks is 177 to 1000, or 17.70%.
The ratio of unique C classes to number of backlinks is 170 to 1000, or 17.00%.

It has become a tradition at Cre8asite Forums to honor a members achievement and growth at the forums. This year a member at Cre8asite named send2paul documented his success in the thread named Cre8asite SEO Techniques - Another Success. In that thread, he discusses how he used techniques he learned at this forum to help him rank his Lasik Lasix Eye Surgery page at the top of the engines. In the spirit of community, moderator Rudd, has interviewed send2paul in a thread named send2paul - Cre8asite Example Of The Year 2004. In addition, Kim Krause at her Cre8PC Blog writes an entry named Cre8asite Forums Honors One Who Walks The Talk.

An other search engine that went out of its way for Easter is Ask Jeeves.

The Butler has his basket:

But even more so, when you search on Easter Eggs you get those smart answers. Want "Easter Crafts and Activities", you got it. Want some great Easter Egg Pictures, you got it.

Google seems to be in the Easter spirit, they have made this little Easter game. In the game, you control a bunny that is suppose to catch easter eggs with the letters G,O,O,G,L,E and in that sequence and in the color order. As you win each round, the eggs go faster, change color and you get this happy looking bunny to smile.

Check it out for yourself at Google Easter Bunny and for more information on the applet visit the Bunny Credits page.

Found by way of Cre8asite Forums.

Update: The thread did not say this was a new game, as the folks have commented below on this entry, it has been out there since April 2000, at least. See the Google Friends April 2000 Newsletter.

Last week, we covered a forum thread on the topic of Yahoo! to Limit Access to PPC API. It is important to note that an update has been made to that thread that denies this. An "OvertureRep" says as follows:

It seems there have been some miscommunications here. Just to set the record straight, Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing) continues to grow the number of advertisers, SEMs and agencies participating in our API program. In fact, over the last few weeks we have added a significant number of each to the program. Please know our third party partners and programs are and will continue to be an essential strategic part of our business.

It is important to note that the OvertureRep said "over the last few weeks we have added a significant number of each to the program." It does not say that they have accepted every single individual SEM into the program that applied. It does say they have accepted a "significant number" over the past few weeks.

The question is; what qualifications are required to be accepted into the program? To be honest, I am just fine if they do not release a qualification list. But I can see how many would be upset to be rejected, without clear steps as to what they must do to meet the criteria.

It is nice to see that participation at the forums, on behalf of the search engines as well as the individuals that use the search engines make a difference. A thread at WebmasterWorld named Apple wants to take the MAC out of MAC Address... tells a story of a member who had his ads "pulled because they included the term Mac." This individual advertiser is in the business of "client authentication based on several things including the MAC Address of the machine." So the term "MAC Address" is pretty well used in that area, it stands for "Media Access Control address." It often confuses people, the term that is, when someone asks a newbie what their "MAC Address" is, they said, "I don't have a Mac."

A couple weeks later the issue was resolved with AdWords by allowing him to use the term "as long as we make sure to use "MAC Address" and not "MAC"."

It is very interesting to watch these specific cases, it is still early on on what is legal and not legal to bid on. In fact, we have a whole section on Legal Issues in Search most of it in terms of PPC engines. And we have covered 3+ sessions at SES on legal topics, including; Leggo My Trademark: A Search Engine Legal Update - SES NYC 04, Moot Court: Trademark Protection on Trial - SES San Jose 04 and Brand Summit: Life After Geico - Google - SES NYC 05.

A new thread is just getting started over at Cre8asite Forums named How to get answers to questions. In that thread, moderator, Barry Weldford, asks what search engines are out there to give you answers to specific questions? He brings up the name of one such engine, named BrainBoost, which works well.

I then brought in Ask Jeeves, which is known for its question and answer's ability. The famous example is searching on When was Michael Jordan drafted?, which gives you one of those "Smart Search" features that Ask is so well known for.

So I decided to compare the two. Whereas, Ask Jeeves served up that answer in a nice little box, BrainBoost gave the correct answer as well, but not in a nice little box. I went on to try out other questions:

Q: When was Michael Jordan drafted?
A: Ask Jeeves got it right, no box this time. But look at those nice "Related Topics" on the right.
BrainBoost got it right as well.

Q: Who was the 27th president of the united states?
A: Jeeves again with class.
BrainBoost right again.

Overall, Jeeves has a nicer interface and seems a lot quicker in returning results. Other engines will give you the results, but not boxed in like Jeeves. Does it matter, I believe so.

Eric Scheske from Crux Magazine, a normal Internet searcher, wrote up an entry complaining about a particular search experience. Basically he searched on the question (Ask answers questions) What's the name of the famous black transvestite? and arrived at the "Your search is likely to return adult content" page. It looks something like:

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Eric selected the last option "No - Please show me filtered results that limit my exposure to explicit adult content." and then when the results came up, he clicked on the first link. This is his word by word description of what happened next:

Criminy! I was pounded with homosexual porn. I quickly clicked the "Back Button," and my screen was filled with more porn. I tried to close the whole internet application, and another screen of porn popped up---with about a half dozen pop up ads for porn. As my mouse flew around the screen clicking those upper-righthand X boxes, more would pop up. As it intensified, I felt like I was playing a video game—all the while afraid that one of the secretaries would walk in my office, see my screen filled with that stuff, screech in fright, and throw up her hands, thus launching a bundle of files against the wall. After thirty flurried seconds, I finally had all the porn boxes and sub-boxes closed.

At first, I felt the user was upset that such a site can get be displayed at Ask Jeeves when he selected the "No - Please show me filtered results that limit my exposure to explicit adult content." One would expect the word "limit" would not allow for the first result to be so offensive to the user. And Jeeves received some bad press about serving porn to school kids. But the searcher was more upset with the actual pop ups and how it over took his computer. Maybe more of a reason for this user to download and use firefox. It goes to show you, that maybe, just maybe, users are blaming themselves for the bad results that show up in a search engine and not blaming the search engines.

Ixquick metasearch engine released today an updated and more powerful search engine for its users. It has gone to great lengths to integrate a new international phone number search, a very useful and unbiased lowest price search, and support for more languages than before. I got an email from Ixquick a couple days ago giving the oppourtunity to beta test its new search, and decided to take a quick peek at what they had changed. I was quite impressed with the extensive amount of information that a single search could bring me. I was dully impressed with their Star System which helps bring more relevant results based on the "consensus" of the other search engines. It looks to compare your rankings across 10 search engines, and if yours matches highest among the majority its likely you will earn a top spot. I mentioned to Ixquick how this could serve as a useful too to SEO's, as instead of guessing your coverage and ability to target a specific phrase you can do a search for it in Ixquick and it will tell you the result most favored by all the engines. I see this effectively useful in terms of a link standpoint. Like for example, want to know who dominates the search engines for "internet marketing", take a look. Our good friends at WeBuildpages do amazing well at it.

Some of the other unique features of the search engine include the new International Price Comparison tools. That according to their press release:

"Comparison-shop over 5,000 merchants with
Ixquick's Lowest Price search, an unbiased tool for finding the lowest prices worldwide." Very handy I found when searching for digital cameras or mp3 players.

Also, new is if you don't happen to like something in the search results you can click on the "X" next to it and it will get rid of it. Or if you like it, click on the check symbol to get similar pages.

For those interested in more information you can check out the press release. Or check out Ixquick here: http://www.ixquick.com

I didn't find any forum threads on the search engine today.

There are tons of niche and general directories these days for everything on the sun, a recent thread on SEOchat examines how they will survive and some of the problems owners are facing when you happen to have too many links in your directory. Try managing over 500,000 and not link to a bad neighborhood?! One of the member who owns a very large directory is concerned linking to these bad neighborhoods and ways to find links that could do the site harm in the serps. Lots of good feedback in this post.

One of the first suggestions naturally was to use the "nofollow" tag in the link of the site. This would prevent the search engines from spidering these links, but then again it would be major PR hoarding which is notoriously unwise. Another member posts that instead of block the search engines from spidering these links you should allow them too, as your position in the serps will dramatically increase. I threw in the suggestion that you could get rid of categories that are "at risk" so to say for bad neighborhoods, or just scan those categories for those links. Another member who runs a large directory as well says to "If you really want to do something about it. Get yourself a free Google API key, then write a PHP script that will look for each domain or page in Googles SEPR via the 'site:' command. Just remember to have it run each day at night and not to pass your API query limit."

Continued Discussion at SEOchat

Well, you can't buy a person, so the next best thing was to buy Mike Grehan's company Smart Interactive. Andy Beal, from Keyword Ranking, released this information at his blog, Search Engine Lowdown. Andy says:

WebSourced today announced our continued growth and expansion will take us further and deeper into Europe. We're extremely delighted to bring Smart Interactive on board and assist them in their growth in the UK. Oh and you may be familiar with Smart's Managing Director, a charming chap by the name of Mike Grehan. ;-)

We're extremely excited to have Mike join us and are 100% committed to establishing a true presence (that means offices, staff etc) in the UK and Europe.

Mike is one of the most recognized individuals in the SEM industry, so this is not a bad move on Keyword Ranking's part. They have "assimilated" many well known names to the company in the past, but this one is by far the biggest.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite, where Kim posted a new thread named Mike Grehan has been assimiliated by WebSourced. Hence the reason I used the word "assimilated" above.

Danny Sullivan created a new thread named Can Tagging Help Search? based on his recent blog entry at SEW blog named Tagging Not Likely The Killer Solution For Search. Google, Yahoo! and others have created this nofollow attribute which is not really part of the issue that Danny has. But in the Indexing Summit at SES NYC Tim Mayer from Yahoo! has brought up a possibility of allowing Webmasters to tag up their pages, to let the search engines know what are the various layout elements that construct the page.

This is all fine and good if people respect tagging. Maybe respect isn't the proper word, more like, if people do not abuse the tag. Most people are not of the opinion that tagging can make it back to determining relevancy, some feel it will have a limited affect. Either way, Danny is no supporter of this initiative. If it comes back, it won't last long, in my opinion.

There is a thread over at Search Engine Watch forums named SE Relevancy vs. SE Optimization - Round 1 where a member named "relevancy" (yea i know), wanted to pin "Optimization" versus "Relevancy."

As you can imagine, many other members had an issue as to "why these need to be mutually exclusive?" Grumpus, well known from Cre8asite, offers this advice:

Rather than building a relevant site, how about trying this: Make sure your SEO Efforts are Relevant to Your Site and It's Mission. From there, everything will just sort of fall into place (and you won't create any gramatical paradoxes that threaten the very fabric of our existence).

The thread then moves into a direction of defining terms such as SEO, SEM, SEF, Usability, Internet Makreting and so on.

In the past we discussed Ranking Unwanted Pages Lower but those pages were usally of competitors or of bad press. A member at Cre8asite Forums wants to downgrade his rankings from the 10th position to the 11th position. His thoughts are that since the 11th position is at the top of the page, it will get more visibility then the result at the 10th spot. More information on that topic at the Search Behavior SES coverage.

Why doesn't the member just increase the rankings of that page, instead of decreasing the rankings of the page?

It ranked 10th 'naturally' for a keyword that I wasn't even aware of. Though the keyword isn't important in the overall scope of the site, the extra traffic might help (to increase brand recognition). Under these circumstances, if I try to rank high for this minor keyword, the relevancy of the the 2 important keywords for the page could get affected.

One rarely sees this type of logic used, so I thought I point it out.

Based on a post over at Smart Keywords Blog, AussieWebmaster reports that Yahoo! is going to lock down the API for the PPC Program. He says, "Right now no new SEM/Analytics companies are being allowed in, or the "not no, not now" response."He adds, that Yahoo! wants to take these types of services and products to a "higher level or more involved" in the space." Of course, this might start an uproar in the forums. AussieWebmaster has already begun a thread on this topic over at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Huge news for those who love API based keyword tracking tools, DigitalPoint has added support for Yahoo! and MSN results. I believe the MSN tracking component is through the RSS feed supported at MSN and Yahoo! is through the new API (but you might need to host something on your side because of the IP based limitation). I know Shawn has been working on this for a week or so, and now its here. I was notified this morning of it, while it was being tested and now its public.

Thread with more details over at DigitalPoint Forums.

Shawn told me some more information regarding the Yahoo! component:

I give users a PHP script they can plop on any server that supports PHP. The requests are then seen as coming from the user's server.


Nice also because International users always want to see results as a German user sees them for example... so this solves that problem too... if the user uses the script, MSN and Yahoo are enabled... but also Google queries go through their script

Again, sorry for the quick post, crazy day.

Yahoo! has increased the storage size of the Yahoo! Mail service to 1GB. Here is the Yahoo! News article and forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Sorry for short post, busy day. Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal wrote a nice recap, and they always link to us, so here is a link back to you.

The other day we reported on a thread at SEW that discussed how BL Ochman was selling her SES notes. BL Ochman responds in the forum with the following messsage:

There is discussion online today about whether or not my sale of my report on Search Engine Strategies is in good taste. Conversations have taken place here and here. I am deeply sorry if my actions have offended anyone. That certainly was not my intent. In the spirit of openness and transparency, I am responding to what’s been said.

The report includes:
_ a range of tactics I use for my clients;
_ my interpretation of information I heard at the Search Engine Strategies conference;
_ and a host of resources about search engine optimization that I gathered from a variety of sources.

I have not quoted anyone who spoke at the conference, shown slides or included information taken directly from any conference speaker. Other sites also sell reports on Search Engine Strategies conferences, but I don’t want to cause trouble for them so I am not naming them.

What qualifies me as a search engine optimization expert is the SEO work I have done for clients for the past 10 years, optimizing sites for natural and paid search.

My clients' sites consistently rank in the top of their categories and I have written extensively on SEO topics in my newsletter and blog and in articles published in MarketingProfs, ExpertPR and several others.

I have decided to change the title of the report to Essential Search Engine Strategy Tips, Tactics and Resources 2005 and remove references to the SES NY 2005 Show. That reference seems not to have been in made with the best judgment.

The new title more accurately reflects the contents and the change is in the process of being made.

Of course, now there is more discussion going on about the response.

Maybe some of you guys can help me? Anyone ever hear of PCNbot from the IP 38.113.223.130? I have found two threads on the name, but no answer as to who they are. One thread is at WebmasterWorld and the other at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday WebmasterWorld featured a thread in the supporters forum named Google Update?. Later last night, Phil Craven started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Significant Changes In Google Results: March 2005 which Danny Sullivan featured and then included in his What's Going On With Google? sticky.

Basically what is being reported is that Google has 64 data centers, of those data centers, Phil noted a grouping of the same results in three. So Group A had ~22 data centers that all had the same results, Group B had ~22 data centers that all had the same results but different then A or C, and Group C had ~22 data centers that all had the same results but different then A or B.

What Phil reported was that two of those groups consolidated, so Group C not has the same results at Group A. And now we have two groups instead of three.

The terms that were affected are being discussed in those two forum threads above. Other forums are discussing major SERP changes as well at Google, such as SEO Chat.

Interesting auction taking place over at eBay. The item name is Google Bomb For Sale. Too funny. Thought I share it with you folks. Jim from We Build Pages, they build pages and other things, tipped me off on this.

Shared hosting is huge, many, if not, most, Web sites share an IP address with an other site. The search engines are aware of this. So why do many experts believe that having a unique IP address will make a difference for search engine ranking? that is the topic of a thread at SEO Chat. In my opinion, when linking between sites on the same IP address, or even IP block, it might raise a red flag. Some experts do not want to take this chance and prefer to secure unique IP addresses and even IP block ranges for each domain name they have. It makes sense, if they do extensive linking between the sites within their networks. Otherwise, in my opinion, it will not affect ones rankings in a positive or negative manner.

There has been discussion in the moderator forum for over a year now on holding a conference tailored to the SEO Chat members. No one knows for sure if it will happen, but right now there is a thread named SEOChat Event - Please Vote, asking members to vote on its location. If you do vote, please vote NYC. :)

Last Thursday we reported on one of the first Google X Clones. I asked the "cloner" in the thread to let us know who contacts him first, Google or Apple. It looks like Google was the first to send an email to the cloner. Last night jmfrance posted the following email from Google translated from french.

It has come to our attention that you use functionalities related to the Google brand (commercial logos, Web pages, screenshots or other Google functionalities) on your site without the preliminary authorization of Google.

You must imperatively obtain the authorization from Google to use on your site one of the functionalities related to the company trademark. This restriction is mentioned in our terms of use that you can get for the address http://www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html.

If you continue to use these functionalities related to the Google brand on your site, a Google representative will contact you.

We thank you for your comprehension.

Sincerly,
The Google Team

Just interesting to see how these things pan out.

Interesting logo Google put up to commemorate World Water Day. In fact, there is a post on this topic at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I swear this didn't happen because of the nice things he wrote about Stock (Grumpus).

Pinky Swear.

I hijack this normally seriously news oriented, professional blog to announce that it's owner, Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) has been named "Moderator" and while you've been sleeping, we've been initiating him as our new "Pledge" at Cre8asiteForums.

We thank Danny Sullivan and Elizabeth for sharing one of their SEW Moderators with us, as well as all the other places he donates his time, and we promise to deliver him home tomorrow safely.

A tad hungover perhaps...I do apologize for that.

See RustyBrick Joins Cre8asiteForums for more.

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums touches on an interesting topic, for me at least, on the ethics and legalities of selling ones notes of a conference. Most of the readers here know that this site has been a source of extremly detailed Search Engine Marketing Conferences, we have covered several conference comprehensively.

There is an individual (http://whatsnextonline.com/search_strategies/) that is publishing and selling their coverage of Search Engine Strategies New York 2005 conference. In the thread Ian, who happens to have some legal background, discusses this topic (which I bet will turn into an interesting thread). He asks the following questions:

Any thoughts? While you are thinking about this, what (if any) difference would there be between this and (for example) news reporting like Rusty, news reporting for a paid subscription site (like a newspaper) or other types of reporting or condensed news such as forums like SEW or High Rankings, blog sites like threadwatch, and so forth? Is there a difference? Is this a wrong thing to do? Is there any harm done? Does it even matter? I'm also interested in what other speakers think of this, as well as the opinions of SES attendees who paid their money, and people who did not go. Useful report or copyright infringment? At what point does one become the other?

My main thought is "I would not feel comfortable charging a fee for my reports simply because they are unedited and probably are very hard to read. So they are unprofessional and thus "priceless."" But the thread has some nice responses so far, its a must read for conference report attendees, readers, and fans.

Become.com, a relatively new player to the shopping search engine game has been getting a lot of press over the past few months. One such topic is on their vertical search technology named AIR. Today, Jason Dowdell interviewed Become's CTO Yeogirl Yum asking some targeted questions on the AIR (Affinity Index Ranking) technology. One thing that stood out in the interview was:

AIR is significantly more advanced than that hilltop algorithm. The hilltop algorithm (as described at www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/) considers only links from a limited number of "expert" sources when identifying target web pages. According to the hilltop paper, "the targets are then ranked according to the number and relevance of non-affiliated experts that point to them. When such a pool of experts is not available, Hilltop provides no results. Thus, Hilltop is tuned for result accuracy and not query coverage."

AIR, on the other hand, evaluates connectivity between all pages in a given topic. Rather than focusing on "top of the hill" sites, AIR understands the overall network of sites within a topical area. Both inlinks and outlinks are evaluated to understand the level of interconnection among the sites. Advanced mathematics and concepts from Applied Physics and Engineering Dynamics are used to calculate specific scores.

Well, I am no scientist, but I do understand that it is very difficult to, in real-time, evaluate "connectivity between all pages in a given topic." Limiting it to structured data makes it easier, in addition, if we can limit it to a specific vertical, even easier.

Of all the SEM forums, in my opinion, Cre8asite Forums is one of the best, I consider it a treasure. The reason Cre8asite is so great is because of the volunteers Kim and her crew are able to bring together. There are many big names in that forum, but its not about the "big names", it is more about how each moderator and administrator treats the members. Cre8asite always goes the extra mile to answer the question, be it small or large, complex or easy, it is always given a detailed and clear explanation. But even more so, one normally gets a response from a moderator or an administrator.

Grumpus was one of the main individuals involved not only in answering these questions but also in making it possible for other moderators, admins, and members to ask and answer questions. Grumpus role was the "Tech Admin". As Kim notes in her Grumpus Takes a Bow thread, "Stock was the one who was the brains and major force behind the Cre8asite Resource Library Cre8asite.net). It was his wish to use it to generate revenue for these forums, to allow them to remain free for everyone. He also was behind the launch of the Cre8tive Flow Blog."

I just wanted to let Grumpus and Cre8asite know that the SEM community is grateful for his contributions and wishes him well in his future ventures.

I am not a picture guy, I rarely take them, I don't store them, I don't email them or print them. But I bet many of you do. There are two forums, I know of, discussing the news that Yahoo Bought Flickr.

Yahoo has purchased online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

It is all coming back to the Keynote with Jerry Yang and Yahoo! Life Engine.

C|Net article and Reuters article.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch.

A thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Expired HTML Pages beating me out discusses one member, being upset that documents that are represented as being expired as ranking above his site. There is an expires meta tag that looks somewhat like <META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:21:57 GMT">

So should Google and other engines use this data to determine if a page should not be in the top results? As Phil Craven points out in the thread, "I've never heard of Google dropping pages because of a meta "expires" tag. They do use "last modified" information to speed up crawling, but not when it's in the page itself."

This morning, I was notified that I had new gmail. The message contained the subject "Google Messenger For WINDOWS" and showed me how to download and installed "Google Messenger For WINDOWS." In the past we discussed Instant Messaging by Google - gIM, twice but nothing announed by Google on this topic as of yet. The email message contained an overview of the program:

Google Messenger is an instant messaging program that lets you send instant messages with cool emoticons, send pictures and other files to your friends, see when someone is typing a message to you, page a contact's mobile phone, and much more.

This wasn't the first time we reported on viruses found in Google, the last one, was the first Gmail Phishing email known. This one, the first Gmail Messenger virus that I have seen. I have reported it to Google, as they asked last time (comments for that past entry were deleted due to a crash).

This can be the break Ask Jeeves needs to really compete on a level playing field against Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The New York Times reports Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2 Billion and the Wall Street Journal reports Diller Nears Purchase of Ask Jeeves.

IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc., the nation's fourth-largest search engine company, for about $1.9 billion, according to an executive involved in the negotiations. An announcement could be made as early as today.

Forum coverage currently at Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld.

Update: SEO Chat Forums also.

I will be skipping the Germany and Japan SES SES shows, but I will be attending the Toronto, London and San Jose (etc.) SES shows. I have been contemplating the idea of driving from New York to Toronto for the past past month now. When I first plotted the trip, I used Yahoo! Maps, but now Google has a sleek Maps tool, so I plotted it today using Google Maps. One can visualize the trip much more clearly this way, in fact, I save about 30 minutes using Google Maps over Yahoo! Maps, both go a round about way. I have yet to plug in the route into my GPS to see which route it chooses.

Anyway, Google Maps, is much more clear, not that I use it. If I decide to drive, I will be using my GPS device to tell me which way to go. And I am hoping that it tells me to go the route I manually drew on paper, the green route. Google wants me to go the purple route, I want to fly the red route, or drive the green route if possible, well, Yahoo, wants me to go a different way totally. Just wasting some time with mapping technologies, no real point to this entry.

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Many of you know the name Marcia from the forums, but I bet many of you did not know Marcia had a blog named MarciaHoo. Early this morning, Marcia posted a case of what is called a domain hijacking, but this time through the use of a meta-refresh. Yes, old school, but still an issue, as Marcia points out.

It seemed as if Marcia had doubts about pointing out such a case, but I think even the "spammers" in the industry, are fed up with this hi-jacking stuff. As she said in her own words, "I’ve deliberated about whether to post this publicly, but it has to be done." Marcia recounts how she found the hijacked domain name, I am sure it will make an interesting read for many of you.

I'm calling it an Internet Operating System because it sounds 10x better than what a recent article called Google's future plans, quoted saying it is a "Web-based thin client-type hosted environment-slash-operating system replacement." A what? There has been some buzz in the last several months relating to Google's plans for an operating system that could take on the likes of Microsoft. I reported back last year about Google hiring some of Microsoft's employee's and setting up an office right next door to Microsoft's Redmond Headquarters in Washington. It seems Microsoft is not the only one that likes temperate weather while coding operating systems.

Thin Clients

So what is a thin client? It is roughly put software. Or as defined "a client designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server." Imagine being able to buy a bare bones client whose main processing occurs on a local Google dataserver near you. Think of the applications, many years ago several companies envision this as well, while it never got off the ground it the idea was formed. According to what people are saying about Microsoft's new Longhorn, the OS will have a similar function in part to do many of the things a thin client can do. Distributed computing is not just for pet project like Google did in 2003 anymore. From the way I see the CPU according to Google or many others is not as important as the data that is contained on a computer. Or the storage that is takes to catalog the entire web. Who really needs to bother with speed and so on if all you need to do is check email, run business applications, and various other functions. We all don't need a Alienware machine even though some might be inclined to tell you so.

Storage and Data Processing

So whats so smart about using Google data processing and storage capabilities? Thin clients will help with NO viruses, NO hard drives, could last for 5-10 years no problem, and if you want something you could easily just subscribe for it. If not, then you don't have to pay for it. Now the smart thing about what Google is doing is that they are planning to sell data processing to the mass market. Why not? It makes sense from Google's standpoint. With more than 100,000 servers, you could do more than index the web. You could also come up with a solution to overcome the challenge of storage.

In the article I mentioned at the top, the editor Molly talks about the sticky situation of consumer storage as a rapidly growing problem. I am sorry but I disagree, I don't see how someone could justify establishing an expensive RAID array in their homes in order to compensate for a lack of storage. I know people with terabytes of data that can get by just fine with a quite a few hard drives. She does make a good point though, if people are going to the extent of establishing an expensive RAID arrays in their homes to compensate for a lack of storage. It’s only logical for a company who perfected the use of storage to come along and offer its resources for sale (eg. The Google Filesystem). Meaning simply, back up your DATA at GOOGLE. Who is backing up their data these days? Some are, others are not. I know my friends aren’t cause they call me complaining when the latest variant of a virus has obliterated their hard drive. While I believe technology is supposed to make our lives similar, I have never seen a larger group of people so confused these days about where to put their data. Especially the lower tech group of people, those that have only found out about what a blog is recently from reading the Wallstreet Journal. Which surprisingly makes up the majority. Apparently someone didn't tell them that the floppy was dead either. Google seems to be helping in bridging that gap with a potential offering of backup storage for all your important files, images, programs, etc. It sounds nice, and it would be a lot similar to hooking into the internet, backup all your files, instead of burning them to a CD or external drive. Yet, I do admit nothing beats a local copy, and I personally am not going to backup my mp3 collection at Google.

How Do They Plan To Do This?

So Molly left out quite few details in terms of how Google will possibly do this. It prompted me to write this long article as I felt it deserved an alternative take on these future potentials. So how do you set up a system that will allow the bulk of internet users to store all their data at Google, back up their hard drives, and run an OS and data processing at Google? You will need HUGE amount of bandwidth to do so, and maybe not A LOT for the average user, but with anything Google does you got to make it scalable. It seems we have caught Google in the act of already planning for this. In January I reported on Google's plan to develop a global fiber optic network. They had planned to hire someone that could facilitate this. For those that didn't catch the blurb in January, 'dark fiber' is known in the industry as fiber optic cable that's already been laid, but is not yet in use. The dark fiber they are looking to purchase is planned to connect metropolitan areas and long distances. All of which would be something you might want to do if you had planned to offer what is written above, and you need the bandwidth to go with it. This seems like very distant plans to me, but it could be sooner than we think. The puzzle pieces fit though.

Tapping Formally Distant Markets: Mexico

When I was traveling to Chicago for SES last year in December, I ended sitting next to a guy on the plane that did hispanic marketing in Texas. It wasn't Nacho from SEW although I would have enjoyed very much a discussion with him about this. He and I talked about the future of Mexico and the computing age down there, how Latin America is basically a cash economy that we really can't accurately predict. Latin American users are more sophisticated than we imagine, but price and convenience are a big factor driving adoption down there. He mentioned a guy in Mexico that wants to bring computers to the mass down there, by offering a $100 dollar computer based on Linux that anyone can buy. Imagine what a $100 Google thin client in Mexico would do? Something affordable enough for those on a limited income, but also powerful enough to change the way they use a computer and much less store information. The basis is that someone else will do it for you. Today if I brought an eMachine ($200-$300) down to a Mexican (or any) university for example that anyone could use any way they want, can you guess how long that thing would last before it was zapped by viruses, spyware, scumware, trojans, malfunctioning programs, so on and so on. It would be toast in 2 weeks. Imagine if this happened consistently every time you used a computer. Google's potential solution could change that. Every computer is your computer, you have the ability to access you data from wherever. Not have to worry about CPU or processing speed. Your experience would change the way you live.

Now I did find some forum discussion on this topic today at WMW. People seem really concerned about the issue of privacy, and merging of web and desktop. The lines between what we know as the internet and the realm of our desktop will continue to be further blurred should we relay more heavily on an internet backbone to power our computers.

Normally I would not post "PR pitches", but I actually think a few of you would be interested in this one.

ALISO VIEJO, CALIF., March 18, 2005 - NetApplications, an industry leader in Web-based applications that measure, monitor and market Web sites for the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME), today announced through its monthly Web site traffic analysis that the Firefox Web browser continues to gain in popularity at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

In February, Firefox users continued to flock to the browser with market share rising to 6.17% from 5.59% in January. Firefox's gain is Microsoft's loss, which finished with 89.04% market share - down from 90.31% in December 2004. Most other browsers maintained a steady and loyal user base.

"Firefox is currently the only browser that is increasing market share on a monthly basis and it is growing at the direct expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer," observed Dan Shapero, Chief Operating Officer. "Firefox appears to be the only challenger to Microsoft's market domination."

Microsoft Internet Explorer - 89.04%
Firefox - 6.17%
Netscape - 1.89%
Safari - 1.69%
Mozilla - .66%
Opera - .48%
Other - .07%

HitsLink(tm) is Net Applications' flagship product providing advanced website statistics and analysis for webmasters and eMarketers alike. The data has been collected from over 40,000 Hitslink.com-monitored global Web sites.

The HitsLink Enterprise Service starts at $14.95 per monthly subscription. A free trial is available at www.HitsLink.com/trial.

Continue reading "Firefox Continues to Steal Market Share from IE"

Forget if PageRank is used or any of that. Let's pretend PageRank is still a value that is meaningful. Google uses the nofollow attribute within links to combat link spam and enable webmasters to tell Google (Yahoo and MSN) that this link is not a trusted source of some kind. In the NYC SES Indexing Summit Google said that they do not follow any link with that attribute, it is like it is not there, Yahoo woulnd't give an answer on that.

So if Google won't follow it at all, it won't pass PageRank, or that is the assumption.

So now, instead of robot excluding internal folders or pages you do not want the PageRank to flow to. And instead of using messy JavaScript links, you can easily add a nofollow, to preserve your PageRank. Or that is the assumption.

Forum discussion at HighRankings.

One of the items I have neglected to mention in the entry I wrote about the revised AdSense Terms of Service was that you can now openly discuss how much money you are making. Before this was against the TOS, and if you were caught releasing this information, you could have been kicked out of the program.

Talking about income is a touchy topic for many in the United States. I would never ask someone, "hey, how much you make working at that place?" If someone asked me that, I would be shocked and possibly a bit disturbed. But I did spend some time outside of the US and in some places, there is nothing wrong or even upsetting about asking someone a question like that. My brother told me, he was once on a bus in a country outside of the US, and someone simply asked him, how much does he make. He was shocked, but the guy explained that this is something that is discussed openly in that culture.

Anyway, back to my point, if you want to discuss your earnings with AdSense, you now can and many are at WebmasterWorld.

There is this featured thread over at WebmasterWorld named How to Remove Hijacker Page Using Google Removal Tool. The thread creator proposes one method to help remove a URL (hijacked) from the index. He proposes that you added the "noindex" meta tag to the page being hijacked, then go to the remove url page at Google and enter in the hijacker's URL, you should get a message saying it will be pulled in 24 hours, and finally remove the "noindex" meta tag from my page.

Claus replied to the thread on the second page, Claus was the person who wrote the detailed explanation of the page hijack, saying:

Just dropped by to say that you can also serve a 404 or 410 code, that works just as fine. (no need to serve it to all, just do a little .htaccess magic and serve it to Google for a few minutes, then take it down again)

Claus then adds that this whole concept does not solve the issue, Google must solve the issue.

There is one more reply I would like to quote, which seems to work as well, and that is by nuclei. He says:

Simply use mod_rewrite to redirect anything coming from the site that has 302'd you to a page that basically says that site is stealing other peoples rankings using a known google exploit, and submit the page to googles addurl. I am quite sure if that was done by enough people google would fix the issue quickly. Also doing so would stop that page from ranking using your ibl's and keywords.

Phil Craven was in one of those moods today, and posted a thread named If a tree falls in the forest.... He got all philosophical and it kind of made me teary eyed (just kidding). The reason I point this thread out, is not to talk about irrelevant philosophical debates but to talk about Robert Charlton's clever reply. He replied to Phil saying;

Phil - I thought you were going to ask whether, if a phrase ranks on Google, but no one searches for it, does it really rank?

I never heard it phrased like that. Of course, the point Robert is making was the same point I was making in my Big Blue Pineapple Chair entry. I can rank #1 for Big Blue Pineapple Chair, which I don't rank number 1 for in Google, but I do in Yahoo! now.

So if a phrase ranks on Google, but no one searches for it, does it really rank?

In case you missed Google X because of the rumored Google & Apple fight to be cool, someone cloned it and posted it at http://ablaze.fr/GoogleX.htm. The big question is will Google be the first or will Apple be the first to contact this individual?

Found by way of a post at Search Engine Watch Forums. I asked the cloner in that thread, to let us know about the question above.

The 302 redirect issue, also known as Page Hijacking, has been an issue for a long time now. A thread at WebmasterWorld is 46 pages long, almost 700 posts, plus many other threads on this topic can be found at WebmasterWorld as well as all the other SEM forums. A well respected forum participant named Claus, has created a resource on this topic named Page Hijack: The 302 Exploit, Redirects and Google, here is the absract:

An explanation of the page hijack exploit using 302 server redirects. This exploit allows any webmaster to have his own "virtual pages" rank for terms that pages belonging to another webmaster used to rank for. Successfully employed, this technique will allow the offending webmaster ("the hijacker") to displace the pages of the "target" in the Search Engine Results Pages ("SERPS"), and hence (a) cause search engine traffic to the target website to vanish, and/or (b) further redirect traffic to any other page of choice.

Deservingly, it was slashdotted, and bakedjake started a thread at the WebmasterWorld Community Forum to commend Claus on his efforts.

MSN calls in various individuals that know a thing or two about search to help them build a better search engine. They did it before, and even had self admitted spammers in the group. They are now doing it again, with search champs 2. They should be done shortly sending out the invites, I wonder who they will choose for V2.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, Google released Google X, which copied the sporty, genie like affect of the OS X Dock (which all my clients love). Many people noticed that last night, Google X was taken offline. C|Net reports that Apple has sought patent protection for this genie affect.

So rumors are that Apple told Google to pull it. Why?

Well, Apple and Google are huge brands. They are synonymous with cool, they are perceived as cool companies. Those who are deeply involved with Google or Apple have issues with them, but the masses see both companies as "cool." So the two are fighting to be the coolest company. Childish or pure marketing suaveness?

I am surprised Ask Jeeves doesn't have their St. Patrick's Day logo up yet, must be a slow start. Last year, the engines came up with nice logos for the day, even Jeeves. I expect to see one shortly for Jeeves.

Google and Yahoo have, not MSN or Jeeves (at this point).

Update::: Max informs us that Ask has posted their St. Patrick's logo:

Nice touch, but the smart answers are even better.

Yesterday we reported on MSN's PPC Program that was buzzing all over the Web frontier. Well, it is official, they are building out their own "Paid Listings Program" to compete with Yahoo!'s Overture and Google AdWords. All those that had a sneak peak at the PPC interface and features were impressed, so that is a major plus. Danny Sullivan wrote a nice article on MSN To Launch Its Own Paid Listings Program, but if your not an SEW Member, then for the detailed version of this article, it is worth the $99, simply for this article alone.

I'll give you a little nuggets from the article, but I strongly recommend you become a member, plus they have a satisfaction guarantee of "refund your membership fee within 30 days of signing up, for any reason." Ok it is getting to sales man like, sorry about that. On to the quotes:

They see the platform as a one stop shopping-style solution for advertisers who wish to purchase all types of MSN advertising in one place

Wider Rollout Date Not Set

The setup I was shown for this was seriously impressive in terms of the amount of targeting control you can exercise. Want to pay more for ads to show up for a certain period of the day? No problem. Want some creative to be shown to women; other creative shown to men? It's there.

Targeting will tap into MSN's registered user database, which lets it know the profile of those who've enrolled with the service. Even if they aren't signed in, the presence of an MSN cookie will let MSN know who is performing a particular search.

The last quote is interesting, based on an slashdot article. Serving up user based targeted ads based on Microsoft tracking your Web usage. This was a lot like how DoubleClick got beat up with the whole persistent cookie tracking issues with their ads in 2000 or so. Anyway, I posted a thread on that subtopic at SEW Forums under the title Microsoft Search Advertisers Gets TOO Personal.

Again, the article has lots of good information, so its worth a full read - here is a link to Danny's blog entry as well.

An interesting thread sprung up at Search Engine Watch forums named Does google attempt to put terms in context? In this thread a member asks "How intelligent is google when putting terms in the correct context?" The example the member uses is "Wristwatches". He has a page on Wristwatches and all the areas of the page are focused on that term, Wristwatches. If he had other verbiage, that relates to wristwatches, such as "Citizen", a brand of wristwatches, would Google recognize the difference. Would citizen be understood by Google as a brand of wristwatches or would it be understood by Google as a legal resident of a specific country?

Wow, that makes for a great question. And it led me back to the February update, where the topic of LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing was the latest craze. In an other entry related to this, Daron Babin (aka SEGuru) was quote explains it well in layman terms: "He recommends writing a page of content and pulling out the keywords, then give it to someone and ask them to figure out what they keyword is. He said its about the other words on the page, its that important. If the keyword is "apple" is the page about computers or fruit?"

In the thread, I posted a reply referencing Google Suggest. As a way of example, I said "Type in "citizen", as you start typing it in, it will suggest popular searches. You will notice that the 3rd suggestion is, in fact, citizen watches." It makes you wonder, if they can use this on a large scale, in real time, and return results within milliseconds...

Let me introduce to you, one of the developers at RustyBrick, Jaimie Sirovich. I took him to the SES show two weeks ago, and he has been a huge fan of SEO topics. Like me, he believes in the whole build it from ground up approach. Jaimie wrote an article he named Graphical, SEO Friendly Buttons. The article is a spin off of Stewart Rosenberger's Dynamic Text Replacement article.

Here is a quote:

Frankly, I got bored of creating buttons like this every day at work; I'm a programmer not a designer after all, and the product of my frustration is a basic PHP class that generates simple buttons based on a template. The template consists of a left-image, a right-image, and a tile image for everything in between.

This is more of a "how-to" article, pretty technical, hope it helps some of you guys. Any comments, feel free to post them here.

There is a good thread at Cre8asite forums named How do I get a press release listed in Google News. In the thread, members provide useful tips on how and when to get your news syndicated by Google News. A while back I wrote an entry named Press Releases & Search Engine Optimization which tocuhes on this topic.

There are many services that can get you into Google News, one such service is PR Web. The thread linked to above has some nice suggestions as well. Here is one quote about timing your press release:

The timing of when you send out a press release can be very important, too. If at all possible, try to send yours out so that it gets submitted into Google news in the morning, rather than the evening, in the area where your largest targeted audience might reside.

Chances are very good that it will get many more views that way. Google news can cycle through stories pretty quickly and a lot of people "sort by date".

This is the first time I found this, and all the credit goes to Cre8asite Forum's Barry Welford. Check out Google X at http://labs.google.com/googlex/. The little line at the bottom reads, "Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you." Also, make sure to mouse over those icons, nice OS X dock genie (magnification) affect.

Update, just noticed the Google Blog wrote on this last night.

If you login to your AdSense account you will have to pass through an "Accept Contract" page which has updates to the AdSense TOS; "revisions to this agreement in the following sections: 1-7, 9, 15-17."

One of the largest features added for the publisher, are two new payment methods. (1) Secured Express Delivery: Secured Express Delivery ensures that your check arrives quickly and safely by using a courier service to send your check to you. (2) Electronic Funds Transfer (BETA): With Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), your payment is deposited directly into your bank account in your local currency.

The second largest addition added to AdSense yesterday was a new ad format named Ad Links. They look similar to those text links one would buy to increase one's link popularity and rankings on a site (but these won't do that). For more information on Ad Links click here. A note, you can now have 3 normal ads plus one ad link ad, making a total of 4 google adsense ads on a page.

It is also important to read Jensense's thoughts on the changes, she is the authority on Google AdSense, so of course you would expect GoogleGuy to stop by.

Now let's move to the forums:

DigitalPoint's forum has three threads on this update; one about Ad Links, an other about having 4 ads on a page, and the final thread is on the topic of the new payment options.

SEO Chat forums has two threads on the topic, the first on new payment options and the second on overall adsense changes.

Cre8asite Forums has a thread discussing the new ad link format.

WebmasterWorld has two threads on the topic (1) Google Ad Links and (2) New Payment Options.

Discussion also at V7 forums, IHelpYou and SEO Guy forums.

Ask Jeeves's love for firefox, they created the Ask Jeeves Toolbar that only works with firefox. More information at the Ask Jeeves Blog, there are currently no forum threads on this topic.

John Battelle reports that Google Local Adds Self Serve Business Listings. So I thought I give it a shot. They make you login, which is understandable and then they take you through a clear and easy step by step process to update your listing. Personally, I hate how my local listing looks, so I updated it. I included all the information, correct captilization for the company name (RustyBrick, Inc.), suite number, phone numbers (local, toll free and fax), email address, web address, a short business description, payment types, and office hours.

After your done, you preview the changes and click submit. Then it gets interesting, you need to authenticate who you are. It is nothing like Verisign's Sweet Automated Verification Process, instead they say they will:

Within two weeks, we'll send a letter (containing your unique personal identification number and activation instructions) to each of the addresses below. Please follow the instructions in the letters to validate your information and prevent unauthorized edits to your listing.

For a screen shot of the page with the information on the confirmation process, click here.

Reported over at WebmasterWorld, Ask Jeeves had dropped many pages from well established sites, including Amazon, About.com and WebmasterWorld around the date of March 14th. Members reported that "Amazon.com has only got 700 odd pages listed, About.com only 13." Other members confirm these glitch saying "Agreed - down from 17k pages in Teoma to all of 37, with nothing having changed at this end!" And one member checks WebmasterWorld and reports "inurl: on Webmasterworld shows 6 pages!"

At this point, it seems that Jeeves is almost back to normal. It is actually funny reading the thread. If this happened with Google or Yahoo, forget about it.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped reports that some are seeing Gmail Ads on the Google.com homepage.

Google has started advertising their Gmail service on the Google front-page. You can’t always see it (I can’t); there might be the usual geo-location targeting the US only, or some other randomization.

I am in NY, USA and I do not see it. But someone has:

View Large Image

update: Aaron Swartz has more on this....

A thread at WebmasterWorld named Yahoo Sponsored Listings NOT Showing in FF? reports an issue where certain extensions conflict with the sponsored results at Yahoo! Search. Tim Mayer from Yahoo! said, "This could be caused by certain firefox extensions you may have installed." Several people have reported this issue, one of the victims have the following extensions added to FireFox 1.0.1; Googlebar 0.9.0.30, Google Preview 0.8, Google PR Status 0.9.3, DOM Inspector 1.0.

An article by MediaWeek named Search-Specific Agencies Fight for Survival has sparked a heated and passionate debate over at Search Engine Watch forums, under the thread title Will SEM exist 3 years from now?.

The article has some strong statements; such as “As technology improves, the need for optimization will go away,” MacDonald said. “Their business won’t exist in three years.” Now a statement like that, discussed in an SEM forum, will of course get some feedback. The beauty of the thread is that it was started by an non-SEM, an outsider to the industry. As for me, I don't really have the "SEM view point" because I run a pure technology company. So let me pull out some interesting rebuttals and you can check out the thread for more.

I certainly agree that many SEOs will eventually get weeded out. It happened a few years ago and it will undoubtedly happen again. Only the strong survive in anything.

There is going to be a need for SEOs as long as people use some sort of "information search".

There are going to be fewer mid-sized SEO/SEM companies around in 2-3 years.

SEMAs margins come down, consolidation is inevitable in any business.

Now those are just the first few posts, many more goodies in the thread. Also check out Danny Sullivan's SEMs: Your Days Are Over (Not) blog entry.

The rumors have been floating around the topic of MSN starting up their own PPC engine for a while now. It seems like last night the news was leaked by Bloomberg.com that Microsoft Plans Service to Sell Internet Search Ads. In addition the news sites and blogs are buzzing about this news, including the Financial Times, MSNBC (Microsoft's News Site, and Andy's Blog where he says ""Similar", I'd say "better", but that is all I can say without being shot. ;-)" referring to MSN PPC's engine being better then the others. An other important topic of discussion, being discussed in the forums, is that MSN has a relationship with Overture through 2006, something to keep in mind during this process, so when will MSN launch this new PPC engine?

So what are the forums saying?
Well, Danny Sullivan and AussieWebmaster both agree, "I think toward the end of the year is more likely for a rollout, and I'd suspect we'd see Yahoo as a backfill until the advertisers have filled in the new program." So by year end.

Discussion over at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld MSN Search Forum and WMW Supporters, SEO Chat, SEF,
DigitalPoint and so on.

A thread at WebmasterWorld named Gmail spam detection is utter garbage. Some complain that the spam filtering is no good, some say it works wonders. False positives and false negatives.

Think of it this way. More people that Google signs up, more real email that goes through the system, the better they will get at spam detection.

Personally, I would not switch my corporate email to filter through gmail. I use three levels of spam protection at this point. (1) Barracuda Networks at the top level. (2) Anything that gets passed that, and there are some go through Spam Assassin. (3) Now if that let's things through, that shouldn't go through, it might get caught by the built in Entourage Spam Filter.

And I check all the false negatives daily or so, its rare to find any, but some come up.

A thread at WebmasterWorld named Google's Indented Results questions the usefulness of providing two listings for one site. You've seen it all the time, search on a phrase and the you see one result followed by a result indented underneath that result. In the thread, members discuss if that is really helpful to the searcher and if it should really be there. This is not just Google, its all the major search engines.

Last week, Yahoo! announced My Yahoo! Mobile, and as ThreadWatch noticed Google announced Google Mobile. Also, this morning, threadwatch notes AOL is getting into Mobile.

Sorry for short posts, kind of under the weather.

Nacho over at the Search Engine Watch forums named What is the Value in Links - OLD vs. NEW? In this thread lots of members discuss the topic. This is a popular subject over at SEW, there were a few threads on the topic of the value of links in the past, including a Temporal Link Analysis thread. The thread is worth looking at.

In my opinion, links should be treated differently. That is the major challenge facing many of the engines today. Many proposals are being developed to come up with a universal form of methods to mark a page for link popularity purposes. In my opinion, and very quickly, links should be looked at based on the several factors. Time value of the link based on what page is linking to you. A hub link should be treated highly and more highly if its older. An authority link should be treated differently based on the age of the link (buzz news links versus solid authoritative links).

I reported the other day about Danny Sullivan Called Out by Doug (IHelpYou). The thread with the information was pulled, but it was not pretty. I have learned that three "Super Moderators" from Doug's IHelpYou forums have resigned due to the incident. Of the three are Alan Perkins (respected SES speaker and white hat), Dan Thies (keyword research expert and SES speaker), and Kalena Jordan (Search Engine College founder). I am also told, other non-super moderators have stepped down.

This is a major shake up in SEM forum politics. :)

WebmasterWorld just created the Yahoo! World category. I expect a lot of forums to do some re-organizing as we see how Yahoo! renames and brands the Overture products. As most of you know, and announced at the Keynore with Jerry Yang, Yahoo! is rolling in the Overture brand. So products will be renamed, and brands will be recycled. I will have to reorganize the categories on this site once again, not a major deal, but I will wait until the names are pretty much finalized. I am sure other forums will begin the process as well. For the press release, which include the new product names, read Overture Services To Become Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions.

A thread started yesterday at Search Engine Watch forums discusses how Google's AdSense is Looking Into Negative Ad Blocking By Keywords. The thread was started by msgraph and he states:

It seems that Google is researching into allowing Adsense publishers to block ads by keywords, categories, and/or concepts. Currently you can only block ads by specific URL. If they go through with this it could be a great improvement on narrowing down the specifics for targeting. Also you would not have to research your competition as much. Only problem I can see is that some companies who do not compete with you yet have those keywords listed in their inventory could be mistakenly dropped.

In the thread he pulls out a few interesting quotes from a patent filed by Brian Axe and Narayanan Shivakumar, Google employees, named Identifying and/or blocking ads such as document-specific competitive ads.

We try our best to keep forum politics and nastiness away from this site. But in some cases, I think our readers would be interested in seeing some high profile backlashing going on.

Recently, Doug Heil, owner of IHelpYou Forums, a forum we cover every now and then, was placed in pre-moderation status over at Search Engine Watch Forums. Pre-moderation, for those that do not know, means that all posts submitted need to be approved by a moderator before they are posted.

It is known that Doug was never happy with certain aspects of Search Engine Watch Forums. Doug is a well known white hat with a mission to remove "black hat" methods from the forums and from the industry. Search Engine Watch's perspective on this topic is that they want to allow both views, white hat and black hat, to be discussed openly in the forum. That is why there are different forums, different people like different styles.

Apparently, Danny Sullivan and Doug Heil have been in communication via private messaging about the pre-moderation. I have been watching a thread at IHelpYou forums, and Danny has made a strong reply. It is hard to imagine, Danny has basically, single-handed, built this industry up.

Anyway, I will not share my opinion on this topic, view the thread if your into the politics and if your into the industry. All I have to say, it is not easy running a forum.

I would like to publicly thank Brett Tabke and the folks over at WebmasterWorld for supporting this site. It is a true honor to have WebmasterWorld appear on the left hand side, under the premium sponsors section. WebmasterWorld is not just a forum these days, although they have the largest forum related to webmaster topics, they run an excellent Search Conference. The next conference will be taking place in New Orleans (based on WMW feedback) and on the dates of June 21, 22, 23. I reported on the WebmasterWorld Las Vegas Conference in 2004, it was a great conference and I am looking forward to the New Orleans show.

Most of the readers here are aware of the WebmasterWorld Forums. They also offer a "noise-reduced" "supporters forum", which is nice. I have been a supporter for a while now. Again, it is a privilege to have a forum at the stature of WebmasterWorld, support this site.

About a month ago we reported on Title Tag "index": Google Dynamically Inserts Content. A WebmasterWorld thread named Site Missing, Google Now Shows "Untitled" where a member reports that his site, which has a title, shows "Untitled" in the SERPs. In the older entry, with the title tag being dynamically inserted into the title of the SERPs by Google (and also saw some cases by Yahoo!), it was the other way around. Now Google, due to issues with ValueWeb (SEW Thread). The WebmasterWorld member reports:

If I search for www.example.com, there is no cache, just a title ('Untitled') and description ('UP'). *However*, clicking on that link takes you to example.com (no www.). If I use the Google Toolbar to check the cache it says:

This is Google's cache of h**p://example.com/ as retrieved on Apr 19, 2004 23:48:31 GMT.

Nice finding these odd cases.

Marcia, an individual who has over 6 years of online moderation and administration background, including well known forums such as WebmasterWorld (she managed the huge Google forum) and now Search Engine Watch forums, started a thread named What are the limits of defining forum spam?. In that thread she says (quoting, can't say it better myself):

If someone is eschewing - condemning- search engine spammers, but is at the same time a forum spammer, in the sense that some of us define and recognize it, then IMHO we have a dichotomy to deal with, as well as an ethical issue regarding whether or not forum guidelilnes are universally applicable or preferentially applied.

Do "high profile" individuals have privileges and immunities among us that our lesser members are not afforded? Can they be allowed to get away with more than the "average" member since they are "high profile", including surrpeticiously and promotially linking to their own properties?

Where is the beginning and where is the end of nepotistic, preferential treatment? What do you think is fair and equitable treatment in online communities?

I moderate at two primary forums these days; Search Engine Watch and SEO Chat. My role at SEO Chat has kind of transited into a moderator that just participates in the moderator room. Over at SEW it is a bit different then SEO Chat. SEO Chat is more free, in my opinion, then SEW and other forums - one big difference is the large signatures. Forum spammers are defined differently in the forum in which they partake. I personally would let things slide at SEO Chat that I wouldn't let slide at SEW.

It is interesting to see how forum admins and mods respond to such a thread. Marcia asks some great questions and so far, several SEO forum representatives chimed in. For me, it makes a good read - if you participate in forums, you might enjoy the thread as well.

Yesterday Yahoo! announced at the Yahoo! Search blog that they released My Yahoo! Mobile RSS. For some reason, I have not yet found any forum threads on it, not even at WebmasterWorld. In my opinion, this is a big deal and forums should be discussing it. Many of the top executives believe that mobile is the future of search and computing. I believe Bloglines has a mobile option. I can easily see myself getting more accustomed to the mobile Web. A friend of mine was in a cell phone store and the people behind the counter were all giddy about this new phone that came in. It was the first GPS enabled phone for a certain provider. He told me that they were discussing how this is the future of the wireless industry. I replied to him, that this is the future to how we live our lives.

Check out http://mobile.yahoo.com

A thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Late Lycos Notice discusses a blog posting over at Smart-Keywords.com. In this blog posting, AussieWebmaster said that he received an email from Lycos stating that they have made changes to their "Legacy SearchSubmit (Inktomi) section of the InSite program.

Effective February 18, 2005, Inktomi search results ceased appearing on the lycos.com and hotbot.com search engines. As a result, URLs submitted for inclusion in the Inktomi search catalog will no longer appear on the Lycos and Hotbot search engines. Inktomi will continue to submit your URLs to other search engine partners, including Overture.com and About.com. And as always, the Inktomi crawler will continue to refresh your URLs every 48 hours.

What is interesting, as Danny Sullivan noted in the thread, "they aren't saying the program will submit you to Yahoo but instead only results at Overture that few will ever see." And even more, "As for About.com, help me if I'm missing something. When I looked today, About.com doesn't appear to offer any web search results at all."

Danny sums up by saying:

In another words, whatever people spent on a flat-fee submission with Lycos, it's hard to see any value still remaining to it -- not that there was likely much before other than being on Lycos itself.

Found this last night in some surfing around the Ask Jeeves site. I was looking for a particular URL that I had written down on a notepad at SES but can't seem to find presently. Still haven't found it, but I did find this. Thought it was fun and worth posting.

The archive in particular tells the story of Jeeves, the fearless servert powering Ask Jeeves Search. The Just Curious, comic collection was launched in the fall of 2001. It only made it to 3 comics before stopping. Not sure why. In any case, they are back for your enjoyment. Click on the comic to see the next one or click here.

Yesterday I was approved for the Google AdWords / AdSense affiliate program. I asked a few of you to sign up with my affiliate links to Google AdWords and/or Google AdSense, in order to see if they are skimming or something.

Later that day, I emailed the individual over at Google that told me my affiliate code links. I asked him how do I log in and see how my ads are doing, in order to make changes to increase the CTR, etc. I got a reply very quickly, they have been very responsive, with the following message:

While we don't currently have the ability to give you real time access to that information (i.e. - a portal that you can log into to see the clicks and bounties), we can provide that information to you at periodic intervals.

I am a trusting guy, so it doesn't bother me. And I am sure they will have some login feature when they go prime-time with this.

Two days ago I wrote an entry on a forum thread at WebmasterWorld about Google Blocking Rank Checkers. Since then, it was features on WebmasterWorld, primarily because GoogleGuy replied to it with the following comment:

That page originally started because when someone has a virus or a trojaned machine, they often don't realize that their machine may be sending queries to Google without them asking. :)

Recently, we've started to improve the software, and it can also detect lots of things like rank checking and other automatic queries to Google. Of course, we don't show the message to everybody that comes onto our radar, but our new software looks pretty good at detecting programmatic queries. If you're using WebPosition or other software that sends queries to Google from a program, I'm not surprised if you're going over a threshold where your queries are on the radar.

If you do see this message, I would recommend not sending so many queries to Google--the volume or type of queries are unusual enough that it's attracting greater scrutiny from us. If you avoid sending queries to Google from a program, you'll be as right as rain.

Since then, others have been noticing this occur. To see what you would see when Google sends you back this remark, click here or view image. A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums discusses the same issue but this time with a simple search on +"powered by phpbb". Organic-Rankings.com has an other image with a image security code requested by Google here.

Not that major, but Google News now allows you to customize the page with colors, layout, content and other features. Just click on the "customize this page" link towards the top right portion of the page. For more on that, read Chris Sherman's article at Search Engine Watch. And for the forum buzz, check out WebmasterWorld.

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Google Index Size Numbers have decreased discusses a theory that Google has lost about 50% of its index. The logic behind this theory, also better explained here, is that when Jean Véronis recorded some figures on stop words, and then compare the same word count to yesterday, there has been a drop of about 50%.

Seems like a logical theory but it is also important to take other considerations into count. We know Google has been recently aggressive with its duplicate content filtering. Maybe they are simply not showing the count of certain results that might match that criteria based on the duplicate conditions. The threshold is now much more tight? Maybe...

I am pretty sure this is the first time I found a Web site promoting a link exchange tool specifically for forum signatures. If you want an example of a signature in a forum, take a look at my profile at SEO Chat, pretty ugly, heh... But that signature file goes on many of my posts at SEO Chat, possibly greatly manipulating (used that word for the search engines reading this) the results to boost my pages up to the top of the search result pages (again, its highly debated as to the affects, if any, that forum signatures place on SERPs).

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums, and I am sure at many other forums, built a tool named SigTraders which helps the buyers and sellers of forum signatures transact.

At the recent SES conference in the Search Behavior session, we got a peek at some of the latest research studying how people view the top ranking search results. I've been looking forward to seeing a full report on the study and the ending data. They started by using eye-tracking to monitor how someone's eye move across the page and marking each spot the eye rested to read or observe. The study gave evidence to back up claims that the top results get the most attention from users. This study was done in part from Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools.

What the study found was that people search in an "F" shape as they scan the listings. Starting from left vertical column, working their way down, and looking for to the right column (paid search listings) if something caught their attention. What they additionally found was the most behavior was predominately very quick. People click faster than originally thought. Previously it was thought that users might take a moment to analyze the content and finally make a decision on what to click.

The researchers define an area called the "Golden Triangle" which implied the area that extended from the top result down to bottom or area above the fold as seen in the image below. For the full image please see here.

The study also produced some interested statistics on relating to the amount of people that actually viewed or paid attention to the search listing depending on rankings. Such as listings below the 5th position were only viewed by 50% of the participants in the study. For the paid search the numbers were a lot worse, if you were listed anywhere below the top 3 positions there chance that someone would notice your ad would be under 20%. Imagine the amount that actually clicked after that, very slim. For full report please visit the article on Enquire eye tracking study.

There is a new thread at WebmasterWorld named What should Yahoo do to lure adsense publishers? where members discuss what would entice them to move from Google AdSense to the new Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Here are some of the suggestions pulled from the thread:
- "defined percentage split"
- "option to run multiple contextual programs on the same pages"
- "more payment options like direct bank deposit or Paypal"
- "More detailed stats (e.g. page by page)"
- "All they have to do is to offer more $$"
- "Negative words filter would be a winner in my book"
- "much more detailed real-time version of Google's channels"
- "A huge advertiser inventory in order to deliver very relevant ads like Adsense mostly does."
- "I'd like to see a program just for quality sites."
- "steadiness in earnings"
and so on...

Side note: I am told that this site will be one of the first to beta test the new program by Yahoo! and Overture, so that is a bit exciting.

A thread at Cre8asite Forums notes that "Yahoo reaching out to small business."

Check out the Yahoo! Small Business Resource. They have "about 1,000 articles from sources like Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur.com on topics ranging from marketing and legal to finance and human resources."

Almost a year ago, on April 20th, I wrote an entry named Subservient Chicken - Viral Marketing by Burger King. John Dowdell over at the Macromedia blog wrote an entry recently named Chicken stats. In that entry he points to an AdWeek article with some of the statistics for the http://www.subservientchicken.com/ Web site.

- Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits.
- Within a week, it had received 20 million hits.
- 14 million unique visitors to date
- 396 million hits to date
- About a month after the TenderCrisp sandwich debuted, BK reported that sales had steadily increased an average of 9 percent a week.
- "double-digit" growth of awareness of the TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich and "significantly increased" chicken sandwich sales

The AdWeek article named Dissecting 'Subservient Chicken' makes for a really interesting read.

Last night I got the final email of the approval process for the Google AdWords and Google AdSense Affiliate programs.

So if you haven't signed up yet, go ahead, and let me know, so we can see if they do any "skimming."

Sign up for Google AdWords!

Sign up for Google AdSense!

Or try these banners.

Yesterday Ben wrote an entry named Google Cloaking Its Own Pages! where he discribes the forums discussing the slip up on Google's part. The thread at WebmasterWorld on the second page, message # 27 by GoogleGuy, we hear the official Google response.

Those pages were primarily intended for the Google Search Appliances that do site search on individual help center pages. For example, http://adwords.google.com/support has a search box, and that search is powered by a Google Search Appliance. In order to help the Google Search Appliance find answers to questions, the user support system checked for the user agent of "Googlebot" (the Google Search Appliance uses "Googlebot" as a user agent), and if it found it, it added additional information from the user support database into the title.

The issue is that in addition to being accessed via the internal site-search at each help center, these pages can be accessed by static links via the web. When the web-crawl Googlebot visits, the user support system thinks that it's the Google Search Appliance (the code only checks for "Googlebot") and adds these additional keywords.

That's the background, so let me talk about what we're doing. To be consistent with our guidelines, we're removing these pages from our index. I think the pages are already gone from most of our data centers--a search like [site:google.com/support] didn't return any of these pages when I checked. Once the pages are fully changed, people will have to follow the same procedure that anyone else would (email webmaster at google.com with the subject "Reinclusion request" to explain the situation).

Many other forums and blogs are discussing this. Mikkel at Search Engine Watch Forums asks some tough questions. ThreadWatch.org has their normal humerous look at the topic. And even the folks over at SEO Chat are discussing it.

Its nice to see that Ask Jeeves has some real people working over there. In the most recent entry at the Ask Jeeves blog named Confessions of a Backyard Orchardist a typical Web developer talks about her love for gardening. Nice touch in my opinion.

Of course, she throws in some nice plugs for the power of Ask's search technology, including the new enhancements to their image search.

The gray area on cloaking just got grayer. Apparently the debate on cloaking got some more fuel to fire more debate. Yesterday their were reports that Google was discovering cloaking some of its Adwords pages. Highrankings has a good thread on what is going on and examples of Google stuffing keywords into the titles of their own pages in order to rank higher for specific terms in their own results. Treadwatch also reported on this here. It appears the Adwords folks are definately not communicating with the Natural Search guys on what is and what is not against the Google TOS. Guess this kinda shows that hand tweaking of the serps is off limits even to Google. What is curious is that this isn't full blown cloaking as some might know it, which is roughly feeding the search engine an entirely different page then what the user sees. This is just cloaking of page titles. It could deserve another explanation which if you can relate please comment in this post. Bit disturbing nonetheless, and the argument could go several ways that what Google is doing is actually benefical to its Adwords customers.

So what is going on?

Clearly this search speaks for itself:

Take a look at the following page from Adwords Support. Notice how the title says: Google Adwords Support: Why do traffic estimates for my Ad Group differ from those given by...".

Now take a look at the Google Cache of this page here. Notice the title now says: "traffic estimator, traffic estimates, traffic tool, estimate traffic"

This is not limited just to that specific Adwords page, as globally there are several versions of the page in different languages and regarding other questions.

Some of the members on Highrankings are reporting these specific pages back to Google as a problem. How can you can shun a particular tactic but then turn around and do it yourself? It could be that the intentions of this were good, and its only to help further aid in the user experience to finding the most relevant results. Which I guess trumps the need to observe the TOS that says: Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. Either way, it doesn't help that Google is doing this, and then going to SES conference like the one in New York this past week and specifically saying to attendees "Do not cloak".

The Yahoo! Directory has gone under some revisions. One such revision is that it now defaults the sorting of the directory listings by "popularity". What does "by popularity" mean? Well, in the Yahoo! Directory Help section it states;

By default, Directory site listings are presented sorted by popularity and relevance. Sites that are most popular with users or the most relevant to the category appear at the top of the site listings. The order of web sites or web documents is based upon Yahoo! Search Technology. If the category is large, the listings will display over multiple pages with pagination displayed at bottom of the page.

If Danny Sullivan didn't write an entry on this at the SEW blog, I might have missed the thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums. Danny has some nice points on why Yahoo! should not make the directory look and feel more like the Web search. Danny said, about the popularity ranking, "I've always felt that clickthrough measurement, along with perhaps some link analysis, was part of the secret sauce." I asked Tim Mayer about it, and he said he will get back to me, we will see.

The SEW Forum thread notes these changes:
1. The directory home page has changed. It now has a new look and feel.
http://dir.yahoo.com/
2. There are a lot of sites without descriptions.
3. There are a lot more internal links using the @ sybmol
4. Some of the listings are not showing up in the "websearch results" with a link to the directory category
5. A lot of new listings
6. RSS Feeds. I don't remember this before.
Edit/Delete Message

An other large change is the "Sites 1 - 40 of X", making people click the next button to see more results for that category.

The rumors have been building for a week now, here is the first thread i have found on the topic, started by Brett Tabke at WebmasterWorld, under the featured title name Yahoo Contextual Advertising Program. Silicon Valley Watcher came out with the most recent story, they always start a big buzz on things. The first rumors on this came from Waxy.org, where they think that the Yahoo! ads look like what is found at this blog.

All I have to say at this point is http://publisher.yahoo.com/. More to come...

The resident scientist to the search engine optimization community, Orion (Dr. E. Garcia), wrote a new short article named Overlapping Patterns: EF-Ratios, Separators, Patterns and Pitfalls; "Overlapping patterns within overlapping patterns! It takes few seconds to realize that query mode implementations can exhibit a fractal component."

In this article, he reviews the concepts of his creation, "EF Ratios", discusses Separators (spaces, delimiters, or stopwords) & EXACT queries (""), and Patterns & Overlapping Regions. But most importantly he explains why some of the "pitfalls SEMs/ SEOs should avoid" in terms of using keyword research tools. I'll quote the last paragraph here:

Ultimately, metrics based on search results are not just affected by tokenization and similar procedures taking place at the level of the individual IR architectures. They can be the result of relevancy scores assigned by the queried system. Combining these metrics with metrics from other search engines that account, let say, for user's query behaviors (i.e., search volume) to come up with a new metric is a highly questionable approach. SEOs, SEMs and keyword research firms should stay away from such practices.

ogletree started a thread over at WebmasterWorld that might be the oddest occurrence I have seen in a while. The thread is named Google is Now Asking for a Code if You Use a Rank Checker and ogletree reports using a rank checking tool (a tool he has been using for over a year now), and getting a response back from Google that he has a virus. He said "I get a google page telling me I have a virus and that I can't search until I put in a code that is in a picture on the page." An other member saw the same thing, so its just not this member. But both only saw this happen once and not happen again. Odd.

A thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Can My AdWords Ad Appear Twice on the Same Page? is a bit amusing. A member posts that his boss is mad at him, because he can not get his AdWords ad to appear more then once on a single page of the SERPs.

He discusses conducting "blackhat AdWords campaigns". By that means, setting up two seperate AdWords accounts with different information and then running the same campaign in each. Of course that might work, but sometimes, blackhats get banned. So he asks, is it worth the risk?

Moderator AussieWebmaster says "This practice has been sidelined pretty much by Google but has been known to occurr.... penalty one term gets dropped."

Gary Price over at the Search Engine Watch Blog writes an entry named A Week After Launch Yahoo! Search Developer Network Lists More than 20 Applications, where he lists several tools that were already developed using the new Yahoo! API.

Here is one such tool that you guys might find useful.

Yahoo Link Pop Checker. Of course, you must download it and install it on your machine, because Yahoo! limits queries by IP address as opposed to by key. So if it was hosted, it simply would not work for you.

I am actually bugging some of my Yahoo! contacts to hook me up with a large volume of queries, so I can build you guys a free nice fancy tool. Wish me luck.

To be honest, I don't see how this can strongly imply that Google is doing mass manual reviews of Web sites. But let me show you a thread that randfish pointed me to at SEO Chat. The thread is named SERPs quality team - EU center, and in this thread, a member named damalo said that Google came to his university to discuss jobs available at Google's EU headquarters in Dublin. The main job they were pushing was "SERPs quality team". Here is a snippet of the post:

One of the jobs areas they mentioned was a task group that was being set up to review SERP's quality. They said it was a new team and that they needed alot of people for it. Perhaps these people will be responsible for going through the mail they get from dissatisfied searchers and webmasters alike? I dont know - But thought it was interesting all the same.

I think some are relating this to the sandbox and that Google lines up sites to be reviewed manually before getting into the SERPs. I doubt that and so do many. So let's take it for what it is, a team to do quality reviews of random search results, to answer quality questions and to clean out the spam.

I have been pretty busy today, so let me just give you a bunch of threads over at WebmasterWorld Forum where they are discussing some recent industry news that came out while we were covering the SES NYC conference.

- Google Deskbar API
- Yahoo! To Build/Buy Blog Tools
- Google Weather Search Short Cut
- Lycos Drops Yahoo! Search for Ask Jeeves
- Google Local Adds Web Reviews
- Yahoo!'s 10th B-Day
- Yahoo! Releases Developer API
- Overture Who? Yahoo! Drops the Overture Brand

Thanks for understanding...

randfish started a thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Level of Trust for Matt Cutts' Sandbox Explanation @ SES NYC where he asks two questions. (1) What have people at the SES conference learned from speaking with Google representatives on the topic of the SandBox and (2) Can we trust what they have told us?

You'll see that towards the end of the thread (post # 15) I discussed some of my one on one discussion with Matt Cutts on the topic. Well basically, let me tell you how it went. I went over to him and I pleaded, there are many in the forums that are saying one thing, and some saying other things, we need something solid - misinformation hurts everyone. I asked him, please give me something that I can tell the forum folks. He gave his Matt Cutts sigh and then told me that in Google they do not use the term Sandbox and it was made up in one of the forums (we exposed that term from WMW here way back when). I said that is not the point, who cares what it is called, there is something out there. His response was, well look at sites like ChristopherReeve.org & Tsunami.Blogspot.com, they rank well and they are brand new domain names. Well, in fact, I believe a subdomain is not affected by it, but the other domain name example was a valid response. So I then took it personal.

I told Matt that I have a client who specializes in specialized environmental rooms. I told him over a year ago, if you write good, quality content on the different types of rooms you build (i.e. insect rearing rooms) that you will rank well. I explain to Matt that insect rearing rooms have little or no competition on the Web. I also explained that this client lives and breathes these types of rooms, and that the content will prove it. So he asked me to show an example and email it to him. I have done so and expect a response, probably by Thursday.

That lead Matt to tell me about some of the other factors Google looks at, like freshness of a page, and age of a domain name (or at least he implied that last point to me). I brought up, is that why you (Google) became a domain name registrar? He replied that they did not become a registrar to register domain names. He explained they can use it to further their analysis of domain names.

That is all I got at the moment. Feel free to join the thread or ask specific questions here.

As a final recap to the SES NYC 2005 conference, I thought I point you in the direction of a Jupiter entry named SES New York Final Numbers. In that entry, Alan Meckler says that total attendance was 50% higher then last year's NYC conference with almost 6,000 attendees, but "Paid attendance was 1734 (52% greater than 2004)," now that is huge, do some of the math.

How did the exhibitors do? Well, most of the first floor of the exhibit hall were very happy. I believe some on the second floor felt day one was slower then day two. But what would SES NYC be without some controversy outside of the session rooms? A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named SES NYC expo center a joke? discussed the controversy over SEO Inc.'s booth, showcasing "booth babes". Search Engine Journal has a picture of the babes in their tops that read "Want To Be On Top?". There are many in the forum thread that believe it was inappropriate for such a conference. Some of the women find it insulting and degrading to the women leading the SEM industry, and some find it in good nature. Some of the men also find it degrading and some do not. Makes for a fun thread.

Thought you guys might want to check out this clever video posted up at the Better Bad News site, under the title Google Pollutes Links Stream With Evil Precedent For Market Censorship. The video discusses the issues with Google's Auto-Link feature in its Google Toolbar V3. "Proposed Search Tool Redirects Links On Blogs Abridging Author Intent and Meaning." "In this 12 minute Video Blogmash the Better Bad News panel re-mixes commentary and analysis of a pending threat to online free speech drawn from several sources."

There are forms of cloaking that some would consider acceptable practices and then there are some forms of cloaking that everyone would consider unacceptable. One such case of cloaking was presented by Phil Craven over at the Search Engine Watch Forums under the thread title Obnoxious cloaking scam. In that thread, Phil discusses a case where he found a client being taken advantage of by his hosting company. Basically, the hosting company was basically serving up a cloaked page to the search engine bots on arrival. In these cloaked pages were added text links to benefit the hosting company, without the consent of the client. In addition, new subdirectories are added to the unsuspecting client's site.

GoogleGuy saw the thread, as PhilC and others wanted to and offered to help. Its important for this type of scam to get out there in the public, so please tell people about this thread and type of cloaking.

An entry in the Ask Jeeves Blog named Gettin’ the Picture, AJ Style discussed "time in our labs working on some new algorithms for delivering substantially better picture results than before."

No time for the forum coverage today, back to that on Monday.

Yahoo! and I have something in common. We're both celebrating our 10th year of being online. (I first arrived in February 1995 with a personal website that was the foundation for what later became Cre8pc.com in 1996.)

On Tuesday morning, March 1, in a ballroom at the NYC Hilton, Danny Sullivan sat down with Jerry Yang, Co-founder of Yahoo!. Of the many questions and answers we heard in that packed room (they had to open up the balcony to fit in more people), the one theme that was constant is Yahoo!'s committment to the people who use their web site and services.

I can't say I've always been happy with Yahoo! all these years. Their submission rules changed often, and without warning, like their fee-based inclusion for business sites. I had trouble finding what I wanted in their search engine and worse, the Directory. When Yahoo! bought E-Groups, they took the fun out of it and made Yahoo! Groups annoying to use.

But, to hear Yang tell the story, people are first and foremost in their minds. He said, "The Internet has grownup." So has Yahoo!.

Continue reading "Yahoo! and You. The Long Hello."

I know its in beta, like almost everything else they release, but this is just embarrassing in my opinion. I was chatting with Gary Price at SES about Google Local. He showed me that Google Local for a search on What: "search engine" and Where: "mountain view ca", brought up Google Inc as number one (see here). Now he said if you try the number, 650-318-0270, it is the wrong number, I did not try it. Second thing, I noticed is that you see the hyperlinked URL "digitalpoint.com". Now what, at all, does that have to do with mountain view ca search engine companies? DigitalPoint is located in San Diego, they are not a search engine, and I think they are not even friendly with the company.

View Large Image

Gary told me he discussed this with some one at Google and their response was something to the effect of "mistakes happen and Google is always working
to improve the system". When I told this to Matt Cutts yesterday, he said, "oh really?"

Then Gary was kind enough to share some more fun examples of problems with Google Local, from my office town, Suffern, NY. This is what he emailed me:

Attorneys, Suffern NY
http://local.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&q=attorneys&near=suffern+ny&btnG=Search&sc=1&rl=1

Lawyers, Suffern NY
http://local.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&q=lawyers&near=suffern+ny&btnG=Search&sc=1&rl=1"

Results should be the same, IMHO

Also, according to a couple of other local directories, Suffern has a few
italian restaurants. Google says just one and it's not the first result.
http://local.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&q=italian+restaurants&near=suffern+ny&btnG=Search&sc=1&rl=1

Chris Ridings sent me this email and I thought it is an excellent idea. So please take the time to read it and make a decision as to the action you want to take.

Good morning Barry,



Thought this might interest you:

I thought you might be interested to know that we're pushing an opt out meta tag targetted at any application that alters content client side. Full details are on the script page: http://www.searchguild.com/autoblink but I'll reproduce them here for your convenience:

"First things first - we've just made up this meta tag. It's actually not supported by anything yet! So why, I hear you ask, might you implement it? The answer is easy: because there should be one that programs such as the Google Toolbar listen to. People like Google aren't going to invent one for us, their reps have practically said as much. If, as webmasters, we all start using the same one then pretty soon honourable software developers will start to use it and then, hopefully, some of the rest will follow.

The very presence of such a tag on webmaster's pages makes a point. It says to developers such as Google "Hey! You should be paying attention to this. This is what we want. This is what we want to allow you to do here and this is what you shouldn't".

So we're asking you to help Google and Co do the right thing by placing a tiny little meta tag on your pages and maybe asking other webmasters to do the same thing. You can, of course, put it on your pages in addition to the Javascript we've given you (and we recommend you do until Google eventually decides to give an opt out mechanism - hopefully by recognizing this tag).

As an encouragement to honourable software developers we'll be listing and linking to the programs that obey this meta tag here. Go to the SearchGuild forums and let us know if you're the developer of such a software program

Without further ado here are the details of the tag and how to use it. For people not familiar with meta tags you need to put it in the HEAD section of your HTML.

The meta tag consists of two parts: a name part and a content part. The name is always "ContentAltering". The form of the tag is as follows:

<meta name="ContentAltering" content="{restrictions}">

{restrictions} is replaced with text representing restrictions on content changing of the page. The possibilities are:

* none - the web page author requests no client side content altering
* links - the web page author requests that client side
applications may only alter links or add links to the page
* content - the web page author requests that client side applications may only alter content but not modify links or produce links to other sites
* all - the web page author allows client side applications to alter anything

Thus the following requests no client side altering of the page:

<meta name="ContentAltering" content="none">

Additionally {restrictions} may be divided into sections and targeted to specific applications by using a semi-colon (;) to seperate sections. Each section consists of the application name followed by a colon (:) and then the restrictions. The application name is decided by the developer (so these are just examples seen as there aren't any supporting developers yet!) e.g.
<meta name="ContentAltering" content="GoogleToolbar:none;OtherCoProduct:links">

Where {restrictions} contains such application targetting then any section which does not contain an application name followed by a colon is taken as the default for all other applications. e.g. to request no changes from Google, links from OtherCo and default to allow all other applications to change anything:

<meta name="ContentAltering" content="GoogleToolbar:none;OtherCoProduct:links;all"> "

Granted it seems a bit silly to push a meta tag that no developer listens to yet but it's use will, hopefully, create a response and recognizes that this is likely to be more than just a Google problem in the future. Basically we believe it's the smartest way forward for this issue and the only one that protects webmasters in the future. If Google won't create one then webmasters should and push Google to acknowledge it.

Kind Regards,
Chris

I have never seen Danny Sullivan so busy before at an SES conference. The first three days he was like a machine. Moderating sessions, reporters and session attendees following down the halls, it was pretty cool. Normally, I can get a hello in on the first day, but I really didn't give an official hello until the 3rd day, towards the end of the day. But he seemed very relaxed by the end of the conference.

Danny is due a ton of credit for what he has done for this industry. Everyone knows that. He truly impressed me more then ever before, at this conference. I wonder how the San Jose show will be. Oh, and next year, in NYC, I simply do not know how he can manage it but I am sure he will.

This industry is on fire. Outstanding conference, Danny, Chris, Detlev, Rebecca Lieb, Karen and Steve (who make everything happen behind the scenes) and the other jupiter folks (including Frank Fazio). Outstanding job. Next SES, let's get a session on the history of SES. :)

The conference is over, it was long but good. I'll probably write a recap. To be honest, its getting more tiring. Not because of the sessions, but between the sessions.

For some reason, the public relations people at the search companies feel that bloggers are important. I tell them we are not, but they don't care.

Due to this, the breaks between sessions for me are a bit like this:

(1) I leave the session right before the Q & A (I used to write on the Q&A portions as well).
(2) I run to the official press room (used to be a speaker/press room, which I named the blog room, in chicago).
(3) I pray that the Internet is working and then post my notes.
(4) Then go to a scheduled or unscheduled meet with someone from Overture, Ask Jeeves, Google and Yahoo!
(5) Run from the meet to a session.
(6) Takes notes
(7) Start over again from step 1.

But I got to spend some quality time with people like Jim Lanzone from Ask Jeeves, Matt Cutts from Google, some Overture people, of course Yahoo!'s Tim Mayer and (I am a huge fan of) Aaron Ferstman (the Yahoo PR guy for this area).

Today at lunch, I sat with Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and Matt Cutts. Matt told us how to get out of the sandbox, of course I am kidding. I had coffee with Jim from Ask. Overture took Ben and I out for lunch. But Tim and I could not connect for more then 5 minutes, but I spoke with Aaron a bunch.

Some of the forum folks there included: Danny, Elisabeth, Webby, Phoenix, Egol, Randfish, Nacho, Orion, Mike Grehan, Joseph Morin, Jill Whalen, Scottie, Christine Churchill, Kim Krause (cre8pc), Bill S. (bragadocchio), bradbyrd, Mikkel, Andrew Goodman, Dan Thies, Detlev, I am sure I left some people out - sorry if it was you. Feel free to comment.

Of course, I saw some of my favorite 'spammers' (not all spammers but they are in that clique) as well: Greg Boser (WG), Todd (Oilman), Daron (SEGuru), Jake (BakedJake), and I am sure I left some spammer's names out.

Oh, there were plenty of white hatters like Shari Thurow, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen, etc.

Others, Amanda Watlington, Bill Hunt, Bryan & Jeff Eisenberg, Brett Crosby (Urchin, best analytics), Bruce Clay (wait I didn't see him this time), Andy Beal (respect a ton), and others...

Again, sorry if I left anyone out. As Nacho says, he considers SES events like going to Disneyland.

I'll write an official article on this event some time in the future, I hope.

Christine Churchill from Key Relevance was first up. KW Selection considerations; relevant to site, keyword popularity, stage in buying process, competition, and feedback. Stage in Buying Process: keywords indicate where consumer is in the buying process (problem recognition, information search, select alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision). Search behavior: navigational, informational and transactional. Getting inside the searcher's mind; understand the "why" behind the search and you can better target how to respond. Competition, from an SEO perspective, she liked to look at it from a pricing perspective. She looks at the number of campaigns in Google and Overture are running on a particular term. NicheBot is an other tool for competitive research, it gives her real quick backlinks, indexed, pagerank numbers. She also uses Google Traffic Estimator. She loves using PPC for testing purposes. Its not about the keywords that you want to be found on. It's about the keywords the end user.

Dan Thies from SEO Research Labs and a guest author at my blog. He does some pitching, as he calls it, "SEO Fast Start" is his book. Search Engine Marketing Business Kit, SitePoint.com will publish it soon. His company does great keyword research, advanced SEO/SEM coaching. Keyword modifiers, i.e. the tail end of keywords, half of search terms are 3 words or more. When it comes to the longer searches, you can easily rank for those organically, so do some keyword research. He showed a slide of words highlighted next to a term he plugged into keyword tracking tool. 8,539 for "web hosting" and an additional 12,281 with modifiers and thats just the top 30. The tail is bigger then the head. Assessing relevance, he gets the count of searches on a term, and then they go through and assign percentages to see if its relevant and then use a multiplier to give a "score". Keyword Density - ranks.nl. Then he mentions Dr. Garcia (Orion) for the second time, and discusses the EF Ratio (see the search algorithms research and development session, I explain it all pretty well there, I think). He then goes into term frequency, which I also summarized in that other session. Then c-index review, same deal, in my summary. STAT (Search Term Analysis Toolkit), keyword density analyzer, relevance assessment tool, keyword modifier and more too come with this tool.

Ren Warmuz from Trillian was next up, keyworddiscover.com is an advanced keyword research tool. NeedMoreBeer.com was the case study site he used. He typed in the term "beer" into the tool and it came up with over 7,000 unique beer related terms, and it shows the # of searches per term. Then you can cross relate the terms to a specific page, to see if you are organically optimized for a term. They also have an advanced "related search terms" function; type in related shoes, you get things like "sneakers" and even "socks." Once you got the keywords, you can do keyword analysis & KEI, it shows searches, occurrences, KEI and predicted daily traffic. Then he moves on to the seasonal trends page, where it shows you a graph of the ups and downs of a keyword like "valentines day" (funny; I am writing what he will say, before he says it, why? because I saw it before. well, I find it funny and it makes it easier to report on). They also have a spelling mistakes function; misspellings and typos. They took this one step further and added advanced phonetic algorithms that do sorts of soundex matches (I believe). KeywordDiscovery has an API as well and its sold on a monthly subscription. They have added language support in spanish, german, italian, french, dutch, swedish and english. He claims everyone uses the free tools, but not the paid ones, so to be competitive you need to pay. :)

Steve Dennen from ComScore is now up, with some damn cool tools (expensive too). Passive tracking of actual consumer search activity. He says there is a ton of good tools out there but there is a gap in knowledge that ComScore can fill (really looking at your competitors is a big one). They have two offerings; (1) "search marketer planning:" share of search term, searcher target demo profile, searcher target visitation and search term rankings and (2) "competitive search marketing:" He shows some screen shots of both. (1) He shows on the first offering the share of search term report which shows where are these searches taking place and how does that share compare to the overall market?. Searcher Target Demo Profile tells you about the demographics of these searches and how do they compare to all searchers. Searcher Target Visitation Report, what are the top sites visited by those who search on these terms? Search Term Ranking Report, what are the tip performing search terms within my evaluation set? (2) Competitive Search Marketing Module; sponsored ad share of voices, source of search traffic by term and source of search traffic by engine.

First up was Chris Copeland from Outrider. Outrider is a business that has been around for 9 years, they are a large ad agency with a large global client base. Integration occurs because businesses see a need for consistent interaction with their audience while at the same time leveraging the multitude of opportunities to gain increased efficiency. He challenged the audience to launch a new brand for a car company without TV or paper ads. Reasons against search integration; lack of time, lack of understanding, no desire to share budget, no desire to share spotlight with other marketing activities, and it takes effort. Multi Channel Retailing; 65% of online consumers have researched a product online and purchased that product offline, of those 51% have cross channel shopped in the past three months, consumers spent over $93 billion online in 12 months and spent over $137 billion offline on internet influenced purchase. People buy offline because they want to see it, feel it, etc. but they want to do their homework before going down to the store. "Smarter consumers" poor sales reps... Keys to success; use pre-existing relationships to strengthen search efforts. So he used offline relationship, for nascar, to drive online traffic, "nascar schedule" , from offline sponsorships to online initiatives (funny I was talking with someone about this exact case, but it was just a make up scenario, the convo was this morning, kind of creepy). Offline to Online, consistent brand messaging creates familiarity with consumers, unique tracking at multiple levels allows for integration into offline programs. He recommends to talk to same language in offline and online. Offline spending is based on Gross Rating Points (GRPs). People gather buts of data from different sources to construct the whole picture. Each impression builds on the other by reaching the consumer in a different frame of reference. Daytime is primetime on the Web, he crossed the TV usage patterns throughout the 24 hour time day, versus the Internet usage. Internet during the day is a huge time to reach and then it dips a bit at night, where you might want to up the TV spot. Online exclusive usage day-parting is also very interesting to look at - when compared to offline. Its essential to find the right times of the day to market a specific message. It cost 23% more to encourage consumers to purchase colgate toothpaste using TV alone vs. TV + online together. Understand that there is a bigger spender at multiple channels. Using messaging that targets the dominant offline buying tendency is essential. Integration is a two way street; 1 million searches done in 30 hour period on super bowl commercials.

Andy Beal from KeywordRanking.com was next up, I'll try to give him a hard time ;). SEM is vital component of any traditional marketing campaign. Your targeted customer does not always immediately react to marketing when received. With direct mail costing around $10 per lead, search is a low cost safety net; 27% of all retails ales are influenced by online research (all - source: IBM). Identify the messages contained within your existing ads. Phase One to sync with traditional marketing is to Match SEM to Traditional. compliment the two, identify the existing buzzwords and phrases used in your email, mail, tv and print. Launching a new product? Sponsored ads can get your message out quickly. You can use PPC to build brand awareness. Phase Two is to map the future campaigns together. Sit down and map out your next 6 - 12 months. Identify seasonal offline campaigns so you can prepare SEO campaigns in advance (this way you don't do last minute things). Plan to start paid search campaigns 1 - 2 days before offline campaign - remember set up times. Role reversal, Phase Three: match traditional to SEM. Use your keyword research to help identify targeted keywords for offline marketing campaigns, its your chance to guide your consumers to search for your preferred keywords. Analyze the keyword frequency data (get ideas for new products to stock, find new campaign ideas and use won web site stats), place your offline marketing 'online' in html or pdf versions. Utilize local paid search options. Matching competitors campaigns, sponsored ads can be used to avoid letting your competitors get a jump on you. If they launch a new product or service, bid on phrases that match their marketing. Avoid bidding on competitor's trademarks. Read your competitors catalogs and emails, etc. Expert satellite case study; Direct email campaign to attract new DIRECTTV subscribers, assisted in identifying areas with the highest search frequency, plan to match SEM campaign to attract the "researchers" and the "can't remembers." So they did a local campaign, they matched the direct mail target to the local ppc campaigns and the search terms were matched. They created targeted landing pages to match up with the offline, and the local targets.

Brad Byrd from NewGate Internet was next up (SEW Mod). Search is a unique marketing medium: don't expect it to operate like your other marketing mediums, have different expectations, online and offline differ greatly, Do leverage its unique characteristics toward your specific marketing goals. Some of these unique characteristics are: (1) Fast campaign setup and launch; allows reactive campaigns, based on market opps (2) No long term budget contracts; pay as you go model; flexible search budgets can be adapted to larger org goals. (3) Market Driven pricing; open marketplace model creates a level playing field for advertisers; expenses can sometimes be unpredictable. (4) Tangible, Trackable Results; every campaign can be evaluated midstream, and fast feedback lets you build upon success or problems; budget can more easily be justified. (5) The emergence of performance marketing (higher expectations). Retail example, search as a merchandising tool. Search presents unique merchandising opportunities (proactive customers, search also allows you to "feature" every product). Identify and promote competitive advantages (price, warranty, shipping, etc.) Promote proven winners as they emerge (products become self-selecting and leverage unforeseen demand in a timely way and catalog winners aren't always the same as online winners). Liquidate inventory through search (adjust price points on the fly). Capitalize on opportunities (take advantage of favorable manufacturer pricing - he gave an example of a "bow-lingual" or a bark translator. In summary, everything is in its right place; search is a new marketing model, dont fight it. adopt it.

I figured since the "What is Spam?" session was so popular, I would attend the "What is Content?" session. Spam and Content are basically the same thing. Ok enough with humor.

Chris Sherman mods up this session, for you forum junkies, Jensense is on the panel. Chris said that content really works, "content is king."

Kent Lewis from Anvil Media Inc. explains what content can do. He will give a case study on some pharmaceutical company that hired him. So he created a content site on melanoma condition and its an objective resource site, they are not pushing a sale or a specific treatment. But the client does offer services to treat the condition. Unfortunately the projector is not working at this moment, so bare with me. He said he had to deal with a lot of legal loopholes. Now his own computer went blank so we took a moment for the speaker to dance on the stage, while waiting to get things back online (I would describe his dance but, I am not good with those types of adj.). So what they did was speak with people with this condition, and they can up with a FAQ to use. Then they organized their content into seven basic categories and then further organized it into sub categories. They did a ton of bolding, hyper-linking and underlining. They did not yet get to go live with custom title tags yet, due to politics, but he hopes it to come. He then showed (in words) what a site map was, and he recommended using that as your custom 404 page (but I like to make it a variation of the site map, not exactly like the site map). They have a FAQs, "What is melanoma? Melanoma is..." good keywords. In the end, they ended up with, a reasonably strong visibility percentage. They are #1 for melanoma in Google and #4 in Yahoo. They are in the top 10 and 20 for most words without unique title tags, impressive (he didn't say anything about links). Keyword research he said is key, when you talk about each page, each page needs a theme with stemming. Finally, someone pushed in a cable and the projector popped on. So now he slides back and shows us what he so eloquently described in words. Ok back on track... Balancing objectives with optimization, he rather have a number 5 spot that reads well versus number 1 listing with a site that reads like gibberish (he adds he is a white hat). Source code optimization is important but you can get #1 placement without it, like this site. Leverage content, syndicate to boost link pop. Top performing content types: press releases; articles, FAQs, blogs, directory listings, and glossary.

Jennifer Siegg from Jensense.com, she has a cold she said. She said she has a lot of web sites in all types of web sites. She generates content to make them work, basically. Content Creation Tools: statistics program (give you great ideas), customer service requests and questions, copywriting books, dictionary and thesaurus and professionalism. Don't always focus on the competitive things; dont go after just the primary keywords - look for the secondary words you can capture a ton of traffic from it. She then showed showed some examples of Google searches on primary versus secondary keywords. Seasonal topics, such as "cashing out your 401k can be expensive" and lots of referrals came in so she added more content. She said catchy titles work: "I've been bad in Google, now what? it creates an action for people to click from the SERPs to go to your site. Article length, good content doesn't mean you need to have 3,000 words, all you need is 250 - 300 words. Content ideas; look at your emails and customer service requests, she added what may be basic for you can bring in bring in good traffic. Message boards as content, people write it for you, just make sure its search friendly, watch your forum referrals fly. If you find a particular forum page is very popular, create an article on it or something. Bam, the projector went blank again, they are messing with the same cable, but doesn't seem to be working, so she continues without the PPT. Things she found did not work well were; submitting your content for free content areas but what she found was that the people who were taking the content and not linking. She had an other issue with the duplicate content filter issue and it seems to be a big issue these days. You need a lot of time to track people down, send out letters, contact hosts because Google ranked the content thieves above her - all writers have this issue. She recommends that you take an 10 word abstract and put it in quotes and then search on it. It will bring up all the sites that took your article. To know if you have been dup filtered, just click on that link in Google that says something like "some results have been omitted from the results to see them all...." something like that.

Anthony Garcia Future Persuasion Officer for FutureNow, he is short so his first joke was that "yes I am standing up." You literally can not see his face over the podium. He has been involved in the Internet community for less then a year. Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg, sitting on my right, work with him. Most people write content to reach the masses. Persuasive online copywriting is different, your audience is one single reader, its easier to write in that style. How can SEO non expert optimize content? Its a process of knowing your customers, a customer centric methodology. He brought up Leo Shachter, the number one diamond brand in the world, he showed that the page has one link in and it ranks well. He showed a beer machine site and the site has been live for 11 months and ranks well for home made beer or something like that. Search engines love deeding us relevant content. The major search engines are eager to deliver the most relevant content. Algorithms will change, not the search engines end goal. So work with that in mind and it will work. Content is not king when it exists for its own sake, when it attracts unqualified traffic, etc. Content informs, persuades and relevant content does both. He then showed examples of how content query searches drive the next action after the click. How do you start writing this copy? He said its about knowing your customers and walking in their shoes (persona). They gather data on topographics, psychographics and demographics. They developed 5 user persona for Leo Shachter. He showed examples of 2 of those 5. One was of a nice guy making 32k named David Commonsense, and the other was of a girl named Ms. Goldigger (the name says it all). How can they create the pages of content that work for those two people? Description words appeared on the page 72%. There are two types of actions they plan for (1) macro actions are the end goals and (2) micro goals lead to the macro actions. There are two types of hyperlinks (1) call to actions and (2) point of resolution. Optimize relevant content. They map all the click throughs for each user persona, very detailed. They have a process for keyword research, but how they differ is they map keywords and phrases to their implicit intent. For David Commonsense, they wanted to help him learn about diamonds and how to buy it online. So he showed us a page on "how to pick a diamond" "how much to spend on diamonds" etc. They also have a "find a jeweler" page, on how to find a reputable diamond. Goldigger is a bit differ, they target "perfect diamond" taking you to a page "which is the most perfect diamond he can GIVE me?". "Diamond settings" and they have #1 and 2 ranks for these types of keywords. Secret forumlas for call to actions. What is the micro action I want them to take, what person wants to be persuaded and what do I need to persuade them?

Good session...

Harrison Magun from AR Search presented an overview of European search. He asks, why do US companies want to market on European search engines? Frist there is increased distribution, competitive advantages, more receptive marketing sometimes, and first mover opportunities. He continues that you can leverage foreign exchange possibilities. There are about 190 million internet users in the US, combined in Europe there is about the same. An important fact is that you can buy a listing on yahoo, but users in foreign countries surf on specific sites such as Google.it, etc.. Trying to reach foreign users on Google.com is probably not going to happen. Who are good travelers? Downloadable apps, hotel and air, fragrance & beauty, b2b/wholesale. Who are the poor travelers, such as those things that can’t be shipped to that company. They are consumer electronics, automotive, online/offline education, leads for US-based services (credit mortgage). Another note is that trademark law is quite various from country to country. He gives the quote “My hovercraft is full of eels” (its from Monty Python). What the quote supports is that the wrong translation can end badly. It makes sense to have the ads written translated correctly, valued propositions are offered, and landing pages correctly translated as well. He says that the entire site has to lead the user through the buyer cycle. Elements that are important. Merchandising/pricing and realizing strengths and weaknesses. He gives some examples of bad examples of sites and ads that were lost in translation. He summaries saying that you need to realize whether your business really has customers in Europe. Analyze competitive landscape and barriers to entry.

Ad Maiora representative Massimo Burgio presents on what Europe is like these days. We may not know what its like living here in the US> There are currently 25 countries, with a market of 450 million consumers, and 20 official EC languages. He says you want to find the languages that are spoken most often. There is an active population that is comparable to the United States. The language spoken online varies widely, there are many spoken online even down to Dutch. Search queries with European languages are 1/3 of searches in Google. He goes to explain that UK users have a good relationship with search engines. Massimo continues to talk about European search engines and the data without the presentation. It’s hard to understand what everyone is saying. Harrison jumps in and asks about how many are already advertising in Western European. About half the room raise their hands, about 5 ot 6 people raise their hand that they are selling products in Europe. He then goes around asking about what other people are advertising, everything from boats, heavy equipment (even thought difficult), insurance, timeshares.
Success, presentation system is fixed. Massimo continues to talk about search destinations that are used by Europeans. Quick note: The data in each of these presentation is a bit old (1 year old) and I wonder why its not more up to date.

The UK is the #1 country in terms of SEO/SEM services and awareness. The search advertising spend is on average about 15% (UK is 50%). There are many rising stars, with Scandinavian countries. He breaks into something called e-readiness, developed by IBM, about the likelihood of adoption of internet and the use of online advertising. There are also many search events that are taking place in Europe.

What is going on in the Local Search arena? There is already a good amount on inventory available in local search. Local search data comes from two different content areas. The offline derived local content, which is list compilation vendors, business mailing lists, sales lead generation, and other direct mail. The next local search data is internet derived local content. 20% of websites out there have a local address designated somewhere on their site. Google for example takes a unique approach by spidering the web looking for local content and then verifying this information. Justin Sanger from LocalLaunch! adds an additional content area and that is user-derived local content, or content provided by the user, business owner, or customer. There are also competitors out there can provide content that dictate how your listing is displayed. Some of the local offline players in local content. They are Acxiom and InfoUSA provides the data to many of the search utilities. What you can do is have people search locally and get a bunch of paid advertisers. With local search there are a good number of variables to consider, such as proximity. There is a good push by the providers to enrich their content.

Local results sets changes in the content. Offline content has constraints, this we know. Local search is pure search requiring rich and structured content beyond standard contact information. Content for qualitative, comparative, local buying decisions including the following: proximity scoring, rich & structured data, user reviews, business ratings, and mapping features.

Business profiles is user generated meta data is a source of rich content, revenue, and “spider food” for pure local search. Many are free such as Yahoo, Superpages, and A9. Additional traditional keyword analysis should be employed. SEO should be factored in. Accurate, consistent, and distributed business content will have long term impact on your business. More content means a better user experience. Justin says that much of the local information is dependent on us. He says InfoUSA has a large team of telemarketers just to verify data. He next goes into business profile examples from Yahoo. They are implementing user reviews (Google isn’t doing this) and an extended company profile for a very small fee. He recommends to go to Yahoo and find your business.

Considering ratings and reviews. He says he often has people come to him saying that listings can be changed by someone else. With paid search you control the ad and the listings. Ratings provide this extra level of information. Yahoo also allows you to search by user review. There is time in the marketplace to take advantage of this. You can provide a lot of advantages by considering local search.

The new group, is Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s), he says this a great group. 60% of SME’s conduct 75% of their business from customers with a 50 mile radius. 22 million small medium sized businesses. Problem or opportunity is 3% of SME’s are using paid search. There is a challenge here. SME’s have less than 6,000 a year to spend on marketing. Controlling margins and dealing with SME’s is difficult. This requires product simplication, scale, automation, customer support structures, capitalization, and relationships.

There are also new sales requirements sales. We need to remove the complexity of paid search products. They don’t understand pay per call, SEO, algorithms. Must bundle the products and sell them. For SE’s establish local sales channels and embrace agencies. Example: Feed on The Street Sales Force. Going from traditional yellowpages ads to selling clicks.

About the local marketing mix. Pay attention to enhanced profiling offerings, internet yellowpages (IYPS), Local PPC. Cleanse your data! Other areas include pay per call, local web page development, user review and ratings strategy, and local authority identification. He talks about authority sites gets thrust to the top. When you think about the local search, its more than SEO. Find out who is rankings and the top and get your clients in there.

About depth and horizontal coverage. Is there room in the local marketplace? Yes definitely. He thinks there is room for players to aggregate this and expand this information, because search engines can’t do it. For the same reason vertical search is so hot. Segmentation is about specialization. SE’s inability to rich experience across verticals. Understanding a vertical/geo-targeting is critical. Really incredible presentation, the best I have attended today or seen yet on the industry of local search.

Next up was Patricia Hursh from SmartSearch Marketing, who is going to present ways on how to promote clients locally and present a few case studies. One of her clients is a large local ISP. They need to pre-qualify visitors using zip codes. They approach search advertising 3 ways, local (ip targeted), national, and national w/ local keywords. The ads they are standard, with the only addition is the term “national” to “local” when locally targeting. They concluded from the study that they could reach more people with a IP-targeted local campaign than a national campaign with local keywords. At least in this category, average CPC for the local campaign is less than average CPC for the national campaign with local keywords. IP-targeted ads deliver the best conversion rate and the best online cost/order.

So why do national advertising? It turns out the client loves the national ad for getting good visibility and its inexpensive. Also, if you are only doing IP-targeted campaigns. People searching from outside your specified locations such as people moving into the area, researching options for someone else, and traveling. Running all three campaigns works well. What about Overture – Local Match? Well its great for companies without a website. Works well for business wanting to drive calls or foot-traffic into a store. Currently targeting is based on a specified distance from a physical business address. What they found was the Overture works well for people who want people to walk physically into their store and get that foot traffic. The way they target your ads is the physical address, and surrounding radius. Some comparisons: If you don’t have a website you only option is Overture. If you don’t have a local address you only option if Google Local. If you want to reach the entire state you only option is Google. To summarize, they found that Google and Overture are completely different products. Overture serves ads based on people indicating location.

Robert asked for it, so I am here. I've seen it before, hope they mix it up some.

Patricia Hursh from SmartSearch Marketing. She will present two case studies. Search advertising generated by phone conversions and estimating results when you cant directly control or measure offline conversions. (1) Tracking phone orders: Client is an online retailer of homeopathic cold remedies. Goal was to understand the "true" ROI for paid ads. Approach was to create a unique landing page with a unique 800# and this is how they tracked the sales. 27% of their orders came via the phone and 73% bought online. She said this is the typical distribution in most industries (maybe I got that wrong, doesn't sound right - that it is the typical dist.) Implications: assume you spend $100 to drive 73 internet orders and 27 phone orders. If you are blind to the phone orders (cost per conversion at $1.37 versus the $1 cost per conversion with the online orders). So what they did was make a unique 800# for google, overture and findwhat, respectively. They also added a customer reference code on the site and the reps on the phone asked for that number. There is a "new kid" in town, ingenio, pay per call. Pay Per Call advertising, same concept of PPC but its a call instead of a click. They show a 800# from findwhat and when they call, and you answer the call, it says, lead from findwhat preceding the transfer of the call. The second case study is a national chain of childcare centers, and the goal was to convince management that ppc does drive enrollment. People research childcare options online but all people enroll offline. They came up with options to track these conversions; enhance center's enrollment processes and tools. Train directors to record and report "lead source". Landing page encourages prospects to print an enrollment discount coupon, which is redeemed at centers. Landing page encourages prospects to find their local center and register for an enrollment discount. The client said they will not do any of these. The solution: (1) implement periodic, non-consecutive search ads campaigns. (2) Try to run campaigns when other marketing efforts are at a minimum. (3) Correlate search and ad spend. The results, 157% increase in traffic, 78% increase in online leads (lead defined by a search for a local center - center locator), lowest cost per lead then anything else, in 3 of 4 cases search campaigns were directly correlated with a 2.5 - 4% lift in overall center registrations.

Jon Schepke from Proceed Interactive was next up with two case studies. Great Expectations is case study one. They have a $400,000 monthly internet marketing budget, 20,000 raw leads generated online, 50% from SEM efforts. Solution, work with the client to build an integrated web based lead tracking system. 800# with IVR phone system for tracking. Ultimate goal for everyone; marriage of frontend marketing data and backend conversion to measure roi. The IVR system is www.databasesystemscorp.com, there are many good systems (i love these systems and the flexibility with web integration). 3% of all leads came from IVR system, the cost of IVR is $.35 per minute, so very affordable. He showed a screen shot of the custom lead reports system. Next case study is a LA Weight Loss company. They built an online lead tracking system and 30% of internet leads came from the 800#. Custom landing pages and promo codes are great. Pay per call model he is a fan of.

Mike Sack from Inceptor was next up to show some research first. Over 90% of online searches result in an offline transaction (consumer electronics category). AIC survey concluded that a $180.7 billion in offline spending was do to online research. MSN Media Accountability study in 04 said the results suggest significant impact on brand (no figures disclosed by MSN yet). Methods to track offline conversions; call tracking, lift measurement, post purchase surveys and promo codes. He goes on to explain each, questions, I'll answer them (fingers starting to hurt :)). He then shows a "p-code" which is a code they want the phone call to mention. Results for a specific diamond client; online conversions 1% and offline only were 9%. Combined was a 10% conversion rate. The next step was to start applying formulas, Offline CR + Online CR = Actual CR. Actual CR * Visitors = Sales. Sales * AOV = Estimated Rev. Value and so on. They took that data and improved keyword grouping based on the online and offline data. They changed bid parameters, and they were able to bid more then competitors because they knew they were making money. And then they had more money, so they expanded the keyword program to by more generic terms. He feels that businesses with offline components appear to benefit more from SEM then online 'onlys'. As businesses begin measuring impact of search on offline sales expect to see significant increase in online spending. The price that can be paid for keywords, generic keywords, will rise. You need to track offline conversions, you need to be prepared to spend against ROI metrics that incorporate offline conversions. PPC ads will cost more money, bottom line.

Misty Locke from Range Search Marketing is going to show us how she fought to get a bigger budget from clients. She goes over the ways to track offline conversions; focus groups, in store pickup of referral, coordinate with call centers, track sales locator pages, and only advertise online (scary). She then showed some slides; 61% shop online or research online, 66% utilize both online and offline to buy, she then get a bit more detailed - too much to type it all out that quickly (i am quick but not that quick). She designed a Pier I Design U one page interactive site. They used Google, Overture, MSN and local and findwhat. They did some rich media. And they have a discount that gives 15%. They only put the promo on the rich media (flash). She spent big on generic keywords that were not directly related to Pier I. 76k opted in, 63% of unique registrants 12k avg unique registrants per week. The stores said they drove of 343k in store transaction, 79% increase compared to last year TV ads. Net sorre sales were up 62% and online rev up more then 40k.

The Geico case with regard to Google.
- Oral ruling to be followed by written opinion
- Google's motion for judgment granted with regard to paid listings triggered by GEICO mark but did not include TIM in title or copy
- Judge also held, however, that paid listings triggered by the GEICO mark that included the GEICO mark did constitute TM infringement
- Second phase of trial will determine Google's extent of liability & damages for this second category of listings
- Fed court decision - non-binding precedence may influence future case.

If you do not find "use" for trademark use, then there is not trademark issue. So Google/Overture said that they allow people to bid on it, but there is no use in the ad text. Most of this basic information is in my coverage of the past SES conference.

Through this session Jeff Rohrs (moderator of session) put up slides on some definitions of trademarks, google's policy and overture's policy.

What is the difference between a "brand" and a "trademark"?
A trademark is a word, name, symbol, color, scent or sound used in trade to distinguish goods or services. A trademark is a legal construct designed to protect consumers from confusion as to the source of the goods or services.

Barry Felder, the lawyer on the panel, said that he has clients call him and complain about a competitor using their trademarks. But then a day later, they tell him to do nothing, since they find out that they are bidding on their competitors keywords as well. Charles Ossola (counsel for Geico) explained that geico spent so much money on its brand, and someone searching on geico and someone searching on geico wants geico.

Danny then asks Charles, based on his definition. What about someone saying that they hate Geico, why can't they put up an ad for that. Charles responds, that the court has not yet decided. He said, this case was against competitors and nothing to do with free speech, comparative ads, or hate ads.

What is a brand? Part art, part science, brand is the difference between a bottle of soda and a bottle of coke, the intangible yet visceral impact of a person's subjective experience with the product - the personal memories and cultural associations that orbit around it. A brand is a promise. By identifying and authenticating a product or service it delivers a pledge of satisfaction and quality. A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of consumers.

What does it take to establish a trademark? Use in commerce in connection with goods and/or services.

What does it take to establish a brand? Time, money, sweat equity, consumer experience, consistency of experience, advertising, marketing and PR.

Barry added that it is ok to benefit from someone else's trademark but what is not ok is to cause 'confusion.'

Jeff typed in "faucet" into the Google AdWords Sandbox tool and it came back with moen and other brands of faucets. Now AdWords defaults to broad match, meaning, Google is actually automatically making you bid on moen, etc. He then puts up a slide that shows that branded searches deliver high high success rates (success rates are ctr? conversions?)

Who is bidding on branded search terms? trademark owners, franchisees, retailers, affiliates, agents, competitors, gray marketers, information sites, comparative shopping portals. A Best Buy affiliate manager said that its hard when it comes to managing affiliates, they can be kicked out for abusing TOS and then sign up again under a different alias. But the affiliates do go the extra mile and find new ways to find you targeted, high converting traffic. Personal note: If this was a WebmasterWorld conference, the convo will be going the other way. Not sure how many affiliates are in this room. ;)

Charles said that the Google folks are creative. He said Google made a case that the brand image of having Geico on the page some many times (in the ads) in brand dollars WITH the vast majority of those clicking on the organic first results on geico.com, outweighs the losses of any sales. Danny adds, that he would make the case that since most people see the #1 organic listing and then go to the paid listings, are actually looking for competitors.

Then they moved over to the french case of Louis Vuitton and Le Maridian and Google is losing bad. So US vs. France differ greatly. Danny Sullivan is mocking the French legal minds that they don't understand technology. Google simply can not press a button to make this go away.

Again, I apologize for being late. I spent too much time chatting with Jeeves between the break, but I think it was worth it. So I'll just jump in.

Justin (WMW mod) is on the podium. 60% SEMs conduct 75% of their business from customers within a 50-mile radius. 22 Million small and medium sized businesses. SEMs spend $22 billion on local ads annually. 46% of their ad budgets on Yellow Pages. Only 3% are utilizing paid search. The SEM challenge: SEMs have less then $6k per year to spend on marketing. Controlling margins and dealing with SMEs is difficult. Requiring product simplification, scale, automation, customer support structures. Its important to remove the complexity of paid search (small biz do not have time). For SEs establish a local sales channels and embrace agencies. "Feet on the Street" sale force (google and bell south // dex media and SEM global). Aggregators will simplify pricing and complexities and consolidate set-up, billing, and reporting. Now there is agency support like Google AdWords Pro, APIs and so on. Local marketing mix; enhanced profiling offerings, internet yellow pages, local ppc (geo), data source cleansing, pay per call, local web page dev, user review and rating strategy, local authority identification. There is room in the local marketplace. For some reason, vertical search is HOT. Segmentation is about specialization (rich and specified meta content, vertical depth vs. horizontal range), SEs inability to rich experience across verticals (understanding a vertical / geo vertical better, understanding the indent of the user and the user needs better than an SE can).

Patricia Hursh from SmartSearch Marketing was up next. She shared a client case study from a ISP company. Client is a national ISP and the goal is to reach a prospect in a regional service area (they service 40 cities only). So if you go to the client's web site, they ask you to type in a zip code or phone number, so local targeting is important. They run (1) national campaign (2) national campaign with local terms and (3) geo targeted campaign. (1) Target = US, Keywords - broadband cable, broadband provider, etc. Ad is very national targeted. (2) National but with local keywords, US target, Keywords = STATE keyword and Ad = STATE ad content. (3) Local (geo targeting), so you specify the locations in Google, Keywords = same as 1 and ads same as 1. So the results: National spend is lower on purpose, clicks 13,500 /month, lowest conversion rate. The National campaign with local words had the most expensive CPC, but a higher conversion rate (more then double) but the cost per order is higher then 1. The Geotargeting is the best method, the CPC is lower then national, lowest cost per order and highest conversion rate. Conclusion, they were able to reach more targeted people with the geo targeting then the national campaign. She ads that geo targeting is 80 - 85% accurate, I am glad she added that. So why do national advertising if geo worked best? (1) The client loves the branding of the national ads. (2) You will miss some prospects with an IP targeted campaign (the 15 - 10 %, or they are in NYC searching on local barber shops where they live in la jolla, ca.) She then shifted over to Overture, she said they are two really different products. Overture does not use IP targeting to serve ads, they rely on the words you use in the query. Overture Local Match is great for companies without a Web site. Works well for businesses wanting to drive calls or foot-traffic into a store. Currently targeting is based on a specific distance from a physical business address. Works well with Yahoo! registered members and Yahoo! local (where searcher has specified their location). Which is best for you? if you don't have a site, you must use Overture. If you do not have a local address you must use Google. To reach an entire state you must you Google. Target a city or DMA, Google is preferred. Encourage calls or store traffic, Overture is preferred. Appear as a regional/national company, Google is preferred.

Last up was Stacy Williams from Prominent Placement. She is focusing her presentation around news and announcements. Some stats included projected at 10.8 billion dollars worldwide by 2009 and half of that is in the US. Local commercial searches represented 25% of all searches. Estimated paid search advertisers globally: 200,000-250,000. Estimated SMEs globally: 25 - 30 million. She put up a chart by Bruce Clay, the Search Engine Relationship Chart for LOCAL. She then moves into Amazon's A9, storefront "block views". She showed an example of a local cafe picture in A9 in Atlanta, the page also has multiple pictures, reviews, business next to that business, related business and upload your own pictures. She then showed the "click to call" and her phone rang, she picked it up and the voice said please hold while we connect you and then a few seconds later someone picked up and its free for the local store! SMS Search was the next topic up, send data to your phone from your PC. Yahoo local "Send to Phone" link on all of Yahoo!'s pages, she didn't like the text message that came in. You have to plan ahead to use Yahoo!'s. Google launched SMS search, pure from your phone SMS search, before Yahoo!. GPS-enabled phones will rock. Pay Per Call, 98% of all US businesses dont buy PPC yet - but they all have phones. Some marketers are willing to pay up to 15x more then PPC for a phone call. Allows companies reps to have a human touch. Easy to understand, compared to PPC. AOL announcement late Jan 05 to launch something like this. FindWhat was the first to announce this. Ingenio is a major provider of this with AOL. FindWhat or CitySearch are the only ones that have something you can use right now. Mapping sites, what do mapping sites have to do with search? entry point into local listing, most carry PPC ads, search engines are integrating them into SERPs. Mapping sites usage is up. Google maps is launched mid-Feb and Yahoo! has been around for a long time now. Social networks like linkedin, orkut, etc. now there are yellow page social networks, like insider pages (yellow pages written by friends), right now there is not much data there. Resources are kelseygroup.com and localsearchguide.org. Truelocal, localdirect.com, payperclickanalyst.com, forums SEW and WMW have forums.

How search is going to be taken to other places by the engines.

MSN Search was up first, Oshoma Momoh, and wished Yahoo! a happy birthday. He said they think a lot about this topic, this is where they are excited about. Search today in 2005 is you find what you need in a fraction of a second, but you often need to do more, refine your search, click and more - taking a lot more time. Today's reality is you don't get the right answer right away. The dream is to answer, discover, recall and publish any information anywhere and at anytime. He said you want the answers on anything, PC, mobile, game console (xbox), on things that you would not image. What might convergence world look like? He said that all things (advertising, shopping, research, blogs, people, music, tv, video, sharing, email, messaging the list goes on...This will all revolve or resolved around search. He then spent a few minutes showing off MSN Search and the desktop product, which was nice, he showed some relaxing pictures. What's different in the "c-world"? Search as an ingredient (search in context, enhanced user experiences, entirely new experience), Natural computing (computing, storage, ram, cheap, voice, ink, gestures, devices), Online everything (pictures, video, tv, music, news, blogs, rss, advertising, worldwide). He said imagine asking the search to bring back pictures of my sister, it will figure it out based on knowing visually who your sister is. Happy one month birthday to MSN Search.

Next up was Ask Jeeves, Jim Lanzone. He explained that ask started off as a question/ask service in 1998. He said there are currently certain things we can't do, like answer the question as to "where are my keys?" Then he brought up when they bought Teoma, which was a first big step for Ask Jeeves. They stuck with the original premise of making it very easy to use. They started along a path that is beyond mere html documents. "The Staircase": Step 1 is the Web with billion of pages. Step 2 is PC & Media and Step 3 is Mobile. He then pulled up a book named "Being Digital" by Nicholas Negroponte from 1995 and quoted a few things. "Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living." In Q2 please expect Ask's first mobile product, Mobile Smart Answers. He then showed off some of Ask Jeeves structure data, smart answers (they started doing this in 2003). He said that smart answers are exactly the right way to deliver to mobile environments. They just recently purchased Bloglines that has a mobile product right now. He then showed off Ask's desktop search. He showed how embedded video works well in the desktop search tool, he showed a T-Mobile commercial plugging Jeeves. He quickly moved from desktop, to web to my jeeves. He said Ask is currently looking to integrate the desktop results within the Web results but its a challenge. He then showed Bloglines and explained the importance of monitoring the Web.

Google was next, Marissa Mayer. Google thinks search is the most important aspect. It is a way to navigate information, on the Web that is the way people do it. Google local had more pageviews then Froogle during the holiday shopping season when it was not linked from the home page, which says something. They introduced Google Maps - its a cool tool, she said they are very user friendly. She then typed in Hilton and it showed the results on the map that were brought up, its pretty cool. She showed how direction in NYC can take you around the world, because of all the one way streets, so she clicked a button to "reverse directions" which made it quicker in distance. Marissa then moved over to personal information. In Oct. Google announced Desktop Search, and she showed examples. She then move over to the communication space. Email is the #1 application on the Internet. Search is a great way to organize your email, hence the announcement of Gmail. Don't worry about organizing your email in folders, in fact, she said there are no folders. She then showed some usability aspects of the gmail application, you know the way they thread email conversations together, which is really nice. They recently acquired Picasa Photo Organizer and Marissa shows it off. The most popular feature in Picasa is to share photos. Noticed that she did not wish Yahoo! a happy birthday. ;)

Gerry Campbell from AOL thanked Danny for letting him speak, he loves search. He gave a story on marbles, and how to find your marbles (sorry for not providing the context). How is search changing our lives? People have access to content, there is a ton of content, publishing is easier, and the technology is bringing it all together. Users are taking control of their information, and search is the fundamental tool for navigating the digital life. Generation One is search the Web for text. Generation Two is searching images, audio and visual AND local. Generation Three is about intelligent answers; AOL calls it snapshots. Query driven programming, better answers, faster. He typed in "vince carter" and bam, he has all the information about him. And he went through a ton of examples of "snapshots." From local, sports, music, movies, cakes, stocks, calculators, and games. He explains that these things are all built on the building blocks to make convergence possible. So in the future, it needs to be "me" focused. The real convergence is in the realm of ads and content. He said content and ads in the future become one and the same. Generating "auto leads" directly from search and content.

Last up was Yahoo!, Bradley Horowitz, he said today is the literal 10 year anniversary. Provide the world's most trusted search experience for users, publishers and advertisers. Yahoo! also considers themselves as a media company. In the past it was all about "mass media", today we can easily do "micro media." At Yahoo! they think a lot about "my media", its the ability to do both mass and micro based on the user. Digital Media Dartboard; music and the ipod, TV and tivo, movies and netflix, and publishing and my yahoo. Yahoo! believes that search lives at the center of this world. He said when he uses his tivo it takes him forever to find the content he wants, search would work well with that. He showed The Apprentice image as an example of mass media and then some viral marketing piece that is more micro media - hence "my media". My Yahoo! Search, next.yahoo.com - this tool allows you to define "my web." He then shows Yahoo! Desktop Search. Then moves on to Y!Q, which springs open a DHTML search box and results up at the "moment of inspiration." (Which makes me think, why didn't Google discuss the new "auto link" feature in Google Toolbar 3.) Then he shows off Yahoo! Mobile and throws up dozens of new products, features they added. The last slide read, "We Are Just Getting Started."

Oshoma Moma from MSN Search presents the overview of where search might be headed and the various fun projects they have planned to work on. So what will search be like in 2005? He says today’s reality is billions of web links but it can be hard to find what you need and there become many needs unanswered. The dream is the answer, discovery, recall, and publishing of any information anywhere, anytime. Search engines and portals are great ways to publish data and they will continue to be beyond 2005. He says we might see devices that don’t even look like mobile devices. The example that is given is about how people in Japan do things with their mobile phones that we only do on our desktops. So what might that convergence world look like? He says search will kinda fade into the background. All the things such as communication, productivity, entertainment, learning, commerce, will come along with search. You will not go to a search space to complete a search, it will already be integrated in to our existing activities. Oshoma gives examples from MSN desktop search about the possibilities of search. He shows you can organize you music, photos, etc. Search will just be an ingredient of someone else’s navigation. What’s different in C-world? Search in-context, enhanced user experiences, and entirely new experiences. We may also see natural computing such as cheap plentiful networking, voice, ink, gestures, and devices. Online everything…pictures, video, TV, music, news, blogs, RSS, casting, advertising worldwide. Online everything would be a complement to the other two things. There are trends to use new devices.

Jim Lanzone with Ask Jeeves opens up talking about how they started with trying to answer questions. He asks how we can ask a search engine to find out keys. In 2001 they purchased Teoma, and it was the first big step to what Ask is today. They stuck to the original premise, was to utilize a world class search strategy but also make it simple. One of the things they look at is a staircase approach working their way up the stairs. They look at the two different data types and devices. He quotes from the book Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital. He quotes the author, “Thomas Jefferson advanced the concept of libraries and the right to check out a book free of charge. But he never considered the likelihood that 20 million people may checkout the book for free online.” He continues with the quote “Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living.”

He goes into what they call smart answers that rolled out in late 2002. It gives the user more information such as weather on the location, etc. They also have something called Direct Answers, for searches that might require a full answer directly on the site. It appears Ask is trying to answer you question as soon as it can. If you can get it there, why would you click elsewhere?
Jim talks about their desktop search and making it easy as possible to use the tools in the desktop search. He gives examples of using desktop search, you can find the document you are looking for. They are developing a music search. He says in the future desktop search will be fully integrated into the web. He says people are haven’t fully adopted it yet.

Google and search convergence, they think search is obviously important. Users already navigate the web by search as opposed to categories. What they find is that more information demand, search is the way they want to access this information. They are seeing a large amount of demand for Google Local. Google local had more page views than Froogle during the holiday shopping season when Google Local wasn’t even linked from the homepage. She puts up a map of the United States, and types in New York, NY and instantly a map pops up. She says the maps are colored like old European maps to make it clear and easy to read. Search is also integrated in the mapping technology. This is impressive. You can search for the Hilton, pharmacy, etc. But how do you get there? They have incorporated directions in to the mapping technology. You can get walking directions or driving directions from wherever you are at. Search will become a paradigm that will develop more into the future. There is a lot of information on our computers. Searching our desktops will be important. The one thing people are asking, is “Why can’t I search my computer like I can search Google?” You can now.

On the subject of communication, email is the #1 application on the internet. In Gmail, there is no classic way to create a folder, they want you do a search instead of create folders. Right..but why? Marissa goes into how threaded conversation was one of the ideas they had. Concluding she believes search will continue to grow and provide unbelievable opportuni