May 2005 Archives

Philipp Lenssen spotted over at Inside Google shows how Findory is Feeding AdSense Keywords to possibly help AdSense serve up better targeted ads. Both blogs link to Greg Linden's comments on this topic.

The additional AdSense code looks like:

google_kw_type = "broad";
google_kw = "Tech then about with that blog this between arousal del

In a thread I started at Search Engine Watch Forums I decided to have some fun by asking the question;
Is this an other form of "acceptable cloaking"?

A thread at WebmasterWorld named What arrives faster? Checks or EFT? Based on the AdSense payment options screen you really have three options:

Of which, the first two give you a hint on when you can expect payment:

*Standard Delivery checks are sent by regular mail and should arrive within 2-3 weeks of the mailing date.
**Secured Express Delivery checks are sent via courier and should arrive within 1 week.

EFT, well that is beta, so we need to go to the forums and see what people have been experiencing. From skimming that thread, it seems that it totally depends on where you live. If you live in the middle of the dessert (no offense if you do live in the middle of the dessert) then it can take a lot longer to get you check. So EFT would be quicker. I personally opt for the 1st option at this point.

I don't remember ever seeing a URL listed in the MSN Search results before. I see it every now and then in Google but I have not seen it in Yahoo! or MSN. A member at WebmasterWorld is reporting such an event at MSN Search. I know it works this way at Google for new pages or pages where Google just has link information for and nothing more.

With this week's PageRank Hysteria many forums started polls at to what Google should do with that (as Mike Grehan would say, but I am making it more techie) "Green Pixel Dust".

At Cre8asite Forums a member posts a poll asking How would you redesign the Google PR bar? with four options:
(1) No more little green bar, please.
(2) I don't like it, but I don't want it to go away either.
(3) Give the PR bar more power and information.
(4) Leave the PR bar as is.

So far there are only three votes, two for number one and one for number three.

At Search Engine Watch Forums an other poll is taking place, asking Should Google remove PR from the Toolbar? with the following options:
(1) Yes, remove PR from the Toolbar Altogether
(2) No, but update it once a month
(3) No, but update it every 3 months
(4) No, but replace it with another Ranking Method

This poll has 26 votes so far. 13 go for answer one, 9 for answer two, 1 for answer three, and 3 for answer four.

On Friday I informed you of Ask's VP, Jim Lanzone, Live Q&A Session taking place over at Cre8asite Forums. Many of the members and even some new registrants signed on to take advantage of this opportunity. Jim Lanzone, Senior VP over at Ask Jeeves, posted a long but detailed response to member questions. In addition, he did it with some humor by uploading an Avatar of himself, but using Bill Gates's photo.

My favorite quote:

We don’t want to spaz out and just turn out product after product just to get headlines, nor do we want to offer something that isn’t an improvement over the status quo (e.g., email just for the sake of it).

Rahul, the Ask Jeeves techie, is suppose to stop by to answer some of the more technical questions. I am not sure if Jim can stop by again soon, but he might.

Tomorrow is the date for the much anticipated SES London show. I really made an effort to attend this one, more so, so I can see some of the UK SEOs that don't come to the American shows.

I doubt there will be much coverage of the show, but if there is, I will let you know. Danny Sullivan posted a SES Toronto Round-Up before it happens.

Before SES London was the ThreadWatch Pub Get Together. There is a lot of feedback and thank you comments taking place at ThreadWatch now.

Well PageRank Dead, nope, just a technical glitch. Also, nothing to do with TrustRank... Message # 359 by GoogleGuy at WebmasterWorld says:

I suspect that the toolbar pagerank will be visible again in a few hours or so--I'll ask around about it... It's true that long holiday weekends are the best time to switch in or out different pieces of infrastructure. no trustrank, just back to the normal display. I talked to a few people and there was some new infrastructure that was swapping in. They expect normal toolbar pagerank display to resume in a few hours--no need for concern.

More forum discussion at Search Engine Watch and I am sure the others. I am seeing the PR values shining, DigitalPoint was right again.

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg's book Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Results made the Top Sellers Lists of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal & USA Today. I am still reading the book, about half way in, and it offers gem after gem. For only $13.95, it almost makes sense to yell at anyone who doesn't buy it.

There are lots of theories about the recent removal of PageRank from all sites and theories on backlink update. One such popular concept is that Google is using something known as "TrustRank".

Aaron Wall from SEO Book has one of the easiest to understand explanations of TrustRank, I have found to date. He says:

Human editors help search engines combat search engine spam, but reviewing all content is impractical. TrustRank places a core vote of trust on a seed set of reviewed sites to help search engines identify pages that would be considered useful from pages that would be considered spam. This trust is attenuated to other sites through links from the seed sites.

Gary Price at SEW Blog in early March wrote an entry named Combating Web Spam with TrustRank and then followed up that entry in late April with Google Trademarks: TrustRank & The Neighborhood Wide Web.

The paper's abstract and a link to the full document can be found at http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-17.

The forums are discussing it at:
- WebmasterWorld Free
- WebmasterWorld Paid
- DigitalPoint Forums
- SEO Chat Forums

I gave up on getting 20,000 rated searches, but can we at least get 10,000 rated searches before I give out the raw data, minus IP addresses?

Please help out and make RustySearch your default search engine for the next week.

Thank you.

Yesterday we reported on forums that were discussing the recent blackout we have been seeing with the Google PageRank Value's Being Null. DigitalPoint makes a very technical point, where he believes that this PageRank thing will not being going away (at least today). He believes there is a technical glitch, his reasoning:

(1)Google lists PageRank on the Toolbar as a Toolbar feature still

(2) toolbarqueries.google.com is still a working subdomain. If they dropped it, might as well drop the sub-domain since that's all it's used for

(3) A query from the toolbar to Google for PageRank gives an error that looks like someone made a boo-boo when configuring the allowed/disallowed IPs (like someone disallowed all instead of allowed all).

A member reported an AdSense click through rate (CTR) of 200 percent at a Search Engine Watch thread.

Jenstar replies with some logic;

There is the possibility it straddled the date changeover - if the impression was recorded the day before at 11:59 pm, but the click didn't actually take place until 12:00 am. Does the day before show impressions without clicks?

Mikkel said he once saw a 300% CTR, but it was a bug. Most likely a reporting glitch that occurs ever now and then.

If you visit the Ask Jeeves Home Page you will see a silhouette of the butler blowing a trumpet. Clicking on that silhouette will take you to an Ask Jeeves search results page for Memorial Day.

I assume Google is too busy working on the PR thing?

Its been about 24 hours and the Google Toolbar is still grayed out for all sites. I have not seen it myself, since I don't have a toolbar installed, but forums are buzzing about it. Is this the end to PageRank? Toolbar PageRank? Google?

Forum discussion at:
- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch Forums
- DigitalPoint Forums
- Cre8asite Forums
- SEO Chat Forums
- HighRankings Forums
- SEOGuy Forums
- IHelpYou Forums
- WebWorkShop Forums
- SitePoint Forums

Jim Lanzone, Senior Vice President, Search Properties of Ask Jeeves, Inc. has agreed to conduct a live question and answer session at Cre8asite Forums. I have named this thread Live Q&A Session with Jim Lanzone, VP of Ask Jeeves.

Jim has promised me to stop by starting Sunday to review and answer questions posted by Cre8asite Forum members. This is a great opportunity to find out what is going on at Ask Jeeves.

Have you ever really wanted to use a single search engine for both research and shopping but somehow tell the search engine that you're looking for one or the either? Well, now Yahoo! announced something new named Yahoo! Mindset Beta, that lets you do that.

A Yahoo! Research Labs demo that applies a new twist on search that uses machine learning technology to give you a choice: View Yahoo! Search results sorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).

I tried it out for ipod cases. Since I do not personally own an iPod, I was doing research only. I decided to slide the lever all the way to the right.

But are those results more relevant to my search on iPod cases, in research mode? Well, ipodlounge.com has a wealth of information on iPods, so its relevant. The second research full mode result was from gizmodo.com. That result sent me to a blog entry of a review of cases, very research mode, IMO. Are the results more research relevant in research mode? Yes, try it out without the slider all the way to the right.

This reminds me of the MSN Slider but this version is for the normal user. I opened a Search Engine Watch thread on this topic and I am sure that WebmasterWorld will have a thread in the Yahoo! Search Forum shortly. The Mindset FAQ can be found here and Yahoo! has a forum thread taking place here.

At around 10AM (EST) this morning, I was notified by Todd Malicoat that the Google cache server was down. I waited and then checked again, and it was still down. I started a thread on this topic at Search Engine Watch Forums at 10:08 AM.

Try it out yourself by doing a search on google cache or whatever you want. Then click on the cache link. What I have noticed is the 64.233.161.104 is having issues, but the 66.102.7.104 is fine.

WebmasterWorld reported this a bit later at 10:32 am. Danny blogged about it at 11:04 AM. So its still an issue at 12, noon.

I felt it was time for a good old fashion directory thread. And there is no better place to go to discuss clean, easy to understand, search engine optimization topics then High Ranking's forum. A recent thread named Buying A Dmoz-listed Domain From An Owner, Is it worth it? shows a member slightly obsessed with obtaining a link from the ODP. Jill quickly tells the member to submit it and forget it. Which is good advice but the discussion kind of leads the member to believe that a ODP listing is just as valuable to the search engines then a link from this site. I have to believe that a listing from authoritative directories like the ODP and Yahoo! Directory are worth more. There is the whole concept of the mighty hub, which would apply to a powerful directory like dmoz (odp). I certainly agree with Debra, "if you're listed in the ODP and your cat is picked up in a topical directory or listed on a category specific site, you're ahead of the game without even trying. For that, being listed is a great thing."

But are there any cons to being listed in the ODP?

(1) Like Yahoo!, Google sometimes uses the ODP title in the SERPs. Which can drive down your CTR for that organic listing.

(2) Dmoz recently shut down the Status Check portion of Resource Shelf which fogs things up a bit more then it was.

(3) Reports of Penalization of Particular DMOZ Categories by Google and PageRank0 are not promising as well.

(4) And you have Corrupt Editors running about.

What a dilemma.

The blogs and the news sites have been buzzing about the recent news that Ask Jeeves is to provide the PPC ads for the new BitTorrent search engine.

The controversy comes in, when you look at what BitTorrent does for a living. Basically, BitTorrent uses peer-to-peer technology to "give you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money." Or BitTorrent, also, allows you to easily download the latest Star Wars movie.

A thread at WebmasterWorld named AskJeeves in Ad Distribution Partnership with BitTorrent, asks the question...Does Ask Jeeves want to serve up sponsored ads for searches on keyword phrases like pirated star wars movie, software serial numbers and so on? As you can imagine, this goes to the heart of many freedom of speech types.

The question at heart is, is this good for the Ask Jeeves brand?

The folks over at WebmasterWorld do not always ask for member feedback when it comes to linkage rules. But this week, things are different, Brett Tabke (owner of WebmasterWorld), started a thread named Frogs, Blogs, Moderation and The Current WebmasterWorld Policy (must be a WMW supporter to access thread). In that thread he outlines the dilemma he has regarding linking to blogs and asks for paid member feedback. I am sure many of you are not "supporters" of the forum, so luckily DG's Desk has a little write up on it, discussing one of the subtopics in the thread on So, Are Blogs "News"?

Basically, I have no issue if they decide not to link to blogs. I have no issue if they decide to not link to any site. WebmasterWorld is its own forum, I go there daily and I know what to expect. Do I dislike the forum because of its strict policies? Absolutely not. I respect those policies and participate, as best I can, within those guidelines. On the other hand, I also participate in extremely liberal forums. Again, I know what to expect there and change my style of posting for that forum. The policies help make up the forum culture. The topic on "what is a blog?" is of more interest to me. That is why I removed the term "Weblog" from this site, see WayBackMachine.

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Will AdSense Improve Given Competition? discusses the strategies Google can use to control advertisements on publishers content. With Yahoo! on the horizon of their own flavor of Yahoo! AdSense, Google has been revving up features and benefits for their publishers. We recently had reports that AdSense Sales Team Reaching Out to Publishers, but is that all?

Jenstar replies to the question stating that "There is no evidence" that Google will increase the percentage of revenue share towards the benefit of the publisher. She goes on to explain that revenue is determined by dozens of factors and to simply increase revenue share will not make all publishers happy. She goes on to further explain;

The last thing they want is a lot of grumpy publishers complaining about a dropping EPC, because grumpy publishers are much more likely to try out the competition than happy ones.

Brett Tabke is doing an outstanding job driving up the buzz on the upcoming WebmasterWorld 2005 New Orleans Conference.

(1) He recently secured John Battelle to keynote the event.

(2) He named the most recent Google Update, Bourbon

(3) And now he secured ~10 Google Engineers to answer your questions, specific to Google.

In an unprecedented move, Google is sending a team of engineers to support WebmasterWorld’s World Search Conference, being held in June 21-24, 2005. Conference delegates can get involved in roundtable sessions with the Google engineers on specific subjects of interest. In addition, the event will feature an invitation-only cocktail party where conference delegates can meet the engineers on specific subjects of interest and relevance.

A forum thread at DigitalPoint Forums named Quadrupled my CTR thanks to DP members thanks DigitalPoint Forum members in helping her (I believe its a woman) increase her AdSense click through rate by four times! In the thread she depicts before and after shots of the site to try to help others realize those results.

This is what forums are about. Learning from each other, improving, sharing, and repeating.

I was just notified that this site, has been nominated for the MarketingSherpa Award. That means if you like this site, you can go over to 2005 Readers' Choice Blog Awards - Voting Form and vote for the "Search Engine Roundtable". Question number 8 is where you will find "Blogs on search marketing" and we are the last in the list.

It is a true honor to have been nominated.

Voting ends Wednesday June 8th, and then we'll announce the winners. Prizes this year include a "Winner" icon for your Blog, a special coffee mug, and your name and blog URL on our site and in a press release. So please vote for us.

With Yahoo! building their own flavor of AdSense, Google is not taking any chances. According to a WebmasterWorld thread, Google AdSense's sales team have been making active phone calls (not only emails or snail mails) to publishers, asking them to add "adsence and other google apps" on potential publisher sites.

Search Engine Watch Forums adds a handful of new moderators this past week. The new moderators are:

- 5staraffliateprograms moderating Affiliate Issues
- Chris Boggs moderating Link Building
- DaveN, moderating Google Web Search
- Jenstar moderating Google AdSense; Contextual Ads & Alternatives
- And one more surprise moderator, to be named later, I think.

Expect there to be an official welcome at the SEW Forums: Forum Policies & Operations Forum.

What an awesome team!

News comes way that Ask has announced two new very useful features named Zoom and Web Answers. John Batelle has a quick & easy write up on those features but I will try to make it even quicker for you below. Chris Sherman & Gary Price has a more detailed write up at SEW.

Zoom: Search Ask for the beatles and look at the right side of the page. "Narrow Your Search", "Expand Your Search" and "Related Names" make up the zoom feature.

Web Answer: Search Ask for deadliest snake and see [Web Answer] in red. You can then click through to the three other Web answers to see 3 groups of answers.

Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch Forums and I have updated the Ask Jeeves SEM Time Line of Events at Cre8asite Forums.

Side note: Notice how I titled this enter "Ask" versus "Ask Jeeves", but what is weird, Jeeves9000 made a surprise appearance last night.

Monday I wrote that Web Analytics Needs Standards Bad, which I then followed up with Bryan Eisenberg live at WebmasterRadio.FM. He told me the Web Analytics Association was working on something and hoped to have it soon. Today, he called me to let me know they posted a white paper at the news section of the WAA site named Web Analytics Key Metrics and KPIs. If you visit that news item, you can then download the white paper from that site. It is very encouraging and I like to see more pressure on the analytics companies to take action on this.

I know Urchin (Owned by Google) is aware of it, but I can not discuss their comments on the topic. Maybe we can drive up enough buzz on this topic that they take action or maybe not.

Just rumors at this point, but there is speculation that Ask Jeeves is to be renamed to simply "Ask.com" or "Ask". Gary Price over at the Search Engine Watch Blog posted an entry named Diller: Ask Jeeves Might Get New Name. In there, he quotes Barry Diller as saying; "Might be one of those words [Ask or Jeeves] without the other," Diller answered, adding that the final decision on AskJeeves' new name isn't "finalized."

Gary rationalizes that ""Jeeves" by itself would be no better than what they have now." So the assumption is that the name will be Ask.com. Does the butler give Ask Jeeves a bad rep?

I have posted a thread for discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

SEOmoz, randfish, created an SEO Quiz, in reaction to the SEW thread asking you to Vote for the Most Knowledgeable SEW Forum Member. If you look at the Leaderboard, you will see some well known forum member's names. I personally find the "texas holdem - spammer ;)" link to be funny.

Forum discussion on this started mid-way in the thread linked to above. I think it is a fairly good quiz, I have some suggestions for revising some of the questions and answers. Danny Sullivan has his ideas as well, including "I want more. I want a news quiz each month."

During the last pagerank update it seems as if Google has gave the PageRank of death to many (not all) directory categories at the ODP, Google Directory and Yahoo! Directory.

Example specific categories that have been assigned a PageRank of 0, reported over at DigitalPoint Forums, include;

- http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/ [Check SEO Chat PR Tool]
- http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/ [Check SEO Chat PR Tool]
- http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines_and_Directories/Directories/ [Check SEO Chat PR Tool]

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Based on your feedback, I have removed the RSS AdSense Ads from the abridged versions of the RSS feeds. You should no longer see them in new entries.

I have made the full RSS feed more visible and left the ads in that feed. So if you like the full RSS feed - it will contain small AdSense ads in it. If you prefer the abridged version, they are without ads at this point.

Thank you for your feedback.

We talked about Google Print becoming Mainstream in the past, and as it becomes more mainstream and larger, publishers will have issues with it. Recently, the Google Library Project has undergone some widespread controversy amongst the publishing community. Gary Price, who is a library guy and also a publisher, blogged about this on Monday under the title Some Publishers Not Happy With Google's Library Digitization Program. Then Danny Sullivan, who has his origins as a writer and publisher, and the leading authority figure in the SEM world, followed up Gary's entry with his own named Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe. Both entry titles are incredibly descriptive of their respective thoughts on the topic. There is some concern as well, that this is leading towards Google Taking Over the World.

A forum thread at WebmasterWorld discusses an article published yesterday at the Washington Post named Publishers Protest Google Library Project. The SEM world is buzzing about it at WebmasterWorld.

The AdSense RSS Ads I have been beta testing for Google have been live for less then two days now. It seems to be really annoying some of the readers here - as Cre8asite Forums points out. Trust me, it is not permanent. My first priority is to bring you the latest from inside of the SEO world, and if I can make some money on the side that is great, if not, then I wont put the ads up.

So let me ask you what you want to see or not see. Here are the options and please, please comment or email me at barry AT rustybrick.com with your feedback.

(1) Convert the abridged versions of the RSS feeds to full entry feeds and keep Google Ads in them.
(2) Remove ads from abridged versions of the RSS feeds and just put them in a full entry feed, for those who want it.

I think those are the two options that seem fair. But you're the reader, so you tell me.

Do you want the full entries in the feed and if so, would you mind if there is an ad at the bottom of each of those entries? Hopefully, they will be targeted and hopefully I will be able to change the colors to make them less distracting. Or do you prefer the clean abridged versions of the RSS feeds? Or something else?

SearchViews blog posted an entry last night named 5 Questions with Jim Lanzone, Senior VP of Search Properties, Ask Jeeves. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Ask Jeeves and Jim Lanzone. He asks Jim in question number 5, if Ask will be pursuing a PPC engine to compete with Google, Yahoo and soon to be MSN. Of course, he said he could not discuss it. He did however say, "But that doesn't mean we'll rely 100% on any one revenue source in the future. Today, about 30% of our ad revenue is generated by our internal products and sales force, and we believe there's a lot we can do ourselves in this space over time."

MapsPoint will ultimately be replaced by MSN Virtual Earth. Right now, MapsPoint covers over 30 countries, however, MSN Virtual Earth is just the US now. They are working fast to cover more countries. I think he said he is going live with this (out of beta) in February or January of next year (but listen to the video to validate this). There is no activex, it works pretty much in both Firefox and IE.

The video is available at virtual_earth_2005_channel9_video.wmv

I am still watching the video, I love hearing techs talk about cool stuff like this.

This comes by way of Michael Nguyen at Social Patterns, nice find!

A reader, kusadasiguy, emailed me last night to point me in the direction of a thread that is giving away "instant gmail accounts." Basically, you do not need an invite, you just sign up directly from the link. The thread is at the Gmail Forums and basically, someone copied links (URL Hash) from unused Gmail invite emails into the forum. Some are already used, but if you want a gmail account, most are not used.

Yesterday we tried to clarify some of the buzz around the recent press release by Yahoo! named the Y!Q Challenge. Y!Q is basically a snippet of code you add to your pages that allows a user to search yahoo from your page. For an example of this, check out a single searchblog entry and see the Y!Q button. A WebmasterWorld thread rightly points out that Y!Q Challenge doesnt pay for the clicks. It is not a program like AdSense where they share the revenue generated. Now maybe, just maybe, that is the reason for the Challenge and $5,000 jackpot.

So now it looks like Google and MSN are competing to allow anyone and everyone to peak into my bedroom window. Search Engine Watch Blog has an excellent write up with screen shots at MSN Virtual Earth To Take On Google Earth. Forums are discussing this at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Reported over at WebmasterWorld, people are noticing favicons on Google AdSense Wide Skyscraper Ad (160x600). Reports dictate that they were displaying favicons of Register.com, Amazon.com, eBay.com and TripAdvisor.com.

Jensese has more coverage on this and she p