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.