August 2005 Archives

Today I had the privilege of guest hosting The Daily SearchCast at WebmasterRadio with Danny Sullivan. It was my first time hosting a radio show of any kind, so I hope it was good for a first time. So what did we discuss and how do you listen to the archives?

Discussed Today:

Today Danny & Guest Host Barry Schwartz chat about the latest Blogs, Feeds and News. Today's topics include Google selling print ads, Yahoo ad management system, Traffic Power & trade secrets, International trade war between France & the U.S. about search engines, publishers accuse Google of violation book copyrights, Google international interfaces, Google Talk, RSS Feed search engines, Google group results, Yahoo mail enhancements featuring a photo gallery... and the South Park Google parody!

You can listen to the archives at http://www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/audio/2005/SC083105.mp3.

A thread at WebmasterWorld asks What happens if we stop paying for Site Match? In response to that we have two replies (I have no experience with this, so I can not comment on its accuracy).

We got screwed both ways. We had a bunch of sites that were anywhere from #1 for 2yrs and mostly top 8 sites in many areas. Joined site match in hopes of maintaining positions, ALL sites disappeared almost instantly. We cancelled site match and NONE of the sites have returned to index must less prior positions. Go figure.

and

Ditto. I would love nothing more that to be able to preach the glory of how great Yahoo is, but no-can-do at the moment.

AussieWebmaster asks Why Can't You OutBid Urchin & Other Google House Ads? He reports that "Web Side Story claims to have even tried $100 bid and no go...." AdWordsRep responds that she (I think a she) will look into this, but she says that "'house ads' are well outside of my ordinary realm. I'm not even aware of who places the ads and looks after the account." Mikkel, of course, adds a valid point.

They could be bidding $10,000 or more - after all, if they limit distribution to their own sites they'll get every cent back.

I see Urchin AdSense ads everywhere, but this morning I did a search on web analytics and found Urchin in the 5th position and web stats Urchin was in the 3rd position.

An update on Google Sitemaps for you.

(1) A Google Sitemaps for Mobile version. Gary Price blogged about this at SEW Blog, other coverage at the GoogleBlog and InsideAdWords Blog. Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

(2) A method to verify that your Google Sitemaps are being indexed. A SEW Forum thread named New Verification For Google Sitemaps & Other Changes says that "G sitemaps now offers a verification feature that shows you what urls had problems being indexed."

I am not kidding with you. Google is actually experimenting with being some sort of brokerage house for advertisers to put ads in magazines. A C|Net article released this morning named Google takes ad sales to print describes this in detail.

Google recently began buying ad pages in technology magazines, including PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords.

I knew about this for days, when Elinor Mills asked me for my thoughts on it, here is the small portion she used to quote me.

"All the big talk today is how the inventory available for PPC (pay per click) ads is shrinking each day," Barry Schwartz, editor of Search Engine Roundtable, wrote in an e-mail. "So it does make sense for Google to look for ways to increase that inventory."

Some revealing URL; http://www.adsbygoogle.com/pcmag and http://www.adsbygoogle.com/maxpc/.

Some other tidbits I looked into while verifying this are. I did look to make sure Google owns adsbygoogle.com and as you can see by the Whois Record http://whois.sc/adsbygoogle.com Google does own it. But it seems its brand new... No links to it (according to Yahoo). Google finds no mention of the site anywhere else or links to it as well. That is pre-release of this article. Some screen captures of the adsbygoogle pages, here and here.

I posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums (which is a tad slow right now).

I enjoy surfing High Rankings from time to time as they do have some good threads going on often. In this case there is a particular thread where some of the members are deciphering, picking apart, learning from some answers that Matt Cutts gave at the recent SES conference in San Jose. I saw him often at the conference and it was usually with a large group of people surrounding him looking for nuggets of Google knowledge they could deploy.

In this case, the member Laura is asking about the following response on Nodes (or websites):

"In graph theory, a clique in every node in the graph is very unnatural. So don’t link to every single node in your network of sites; it’ll get flagged."

Basically this means don't link to every page in your network from your other sites. M. Martinez concludes saying that "A clique would be more like a link circle, in which every page links to every other page, rather than every page simply linking to all the home pages." The advice follows something I started doing a couple years back in order to create unique network linking diagrams, enabling owners of site networks not to get in trouble by linking all there sites together in a way that Google would catch on to and consequently penalize. The technique also works in the reverse for correcting cross linking penalities.

Stephen Spencer who originally blog on the Matt Cutts Q&A explains further into Graph Theory, and provides an example here where you can see about what a "clique" is and how "unnatural" they can be when applied to linking.

There is also some answers about parameters in urls. Such that Matt Cutts says "For dynamic sites, you’re very safe if you have fewer than 2 parameters; keep the values of those parameters to fewer than 5 digits, and don’t name a parameter “id”. Googlebot sometimes tries variations of URLs by dropping parameters, but we only do that deep level analysis on big, quality sites." This is more understandable. Stephan has a nice write up about this on his website Parameters and Dynamic Sites.

For continued discussion visit High Rankings - Deciphering Matt Cutts

I like to follow the leader and Danny Sullivan being the leader of the SEM industry, I followed suit and migrated the RSS feeds on this site over to FeedBurner. Please let me know if the feeds are not working properly. Either leave a comment here or email me at barry AT rustybrick DOT com. All the feeds have been migrated or redirected (if not longer used).

- Full Feed at http://www.seroundtable.com/index-full.rdf
- 1.0 Feed at http://www.seroundtable.com/index.rdf
- 2.0 Feed at http://www.seroundtable.com/index.xml

Any other feed you have should automatically be redirected to one of the main feeds. I will add more features as I get more comfortable with FeedBurner. Also every third entry should have an Ad from Google AdSense or an other.

Looks like SEW forums just got another search engine rep to add to their belts. Promoted from a discussion on whether or not Ask Jeeves would employ the ability for agencies to manage all their client account under one roof. Mike McGrath, with the Sponsored Listings Client Services posted today that indeed their is the ability for SEM agencies to manage all their client account under the same roof. He says:

"The new automated system does allow advertisers or agencies to link together an unlimited number of accounts, each with an unlimited number of campaigns. To set this up, go to the “Manage Account Access” page for your account. Then, input the account name (i.e. email address) in the “Give User Access to this Account Address” and choose the access level (Read, Read and Modify, etc.). "

Go to know, and very nice. I hope Mike sticks around and answer other questions from members. Will be a great resource to have as people develop questions. Some of the stuff they have, in the program that is not mentioned thoroughly and or either not in the help file in detail so having a rep is a good place to start.

Mike also mentions that if you are a not spending more than $5000/month then you are confined to the email service for your questions at listingssupport@askjeeves.com. If you are spending over $5000 a month then you can use the AJSL Managed Account program and actually talk to a real person.

In my personal opinion I really don't see Ask Jeeves sponsored listings doing better than any of the other main PPC providers out there. I have been using the programs since they started about 2 weeks ago, and I keep asking myself when I use the program, why they didn't do anything to spice it up, do something innovative, different, or creative so that they stand apart and users can identify the value in what they are trying to do.

At the last SES conference in San Jose, on the evening forums on the 3rd day was an Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan. We didn't blog on this, but it was a very good sessions for the fact that people finally got a chance to voice their opinions on what they wanted to see. People were primarily pissed at Google. It was the first time since I started this SEO stuff soo soo long ago that I have actually see people turn on Google. They were tired of the canned responses and lack of desire to implement better functions in the Adwords accounts when all along they could just do it very easily. As someone once told me, their is "great money in inefficency".

Some of the primary concerns people had related to very simple things that could be fixed easily, other not so much. But the lack of response on behalf of Google was being to wear people thin. Some of the things from my notes that concerned them the most:

• Better tools!


• Better tools to track success


• What affects ranking...


• Better fraudulent click tracking... tell them what and where its happening


• Better inferface, simplier


• More responsive to customer problems


• Better phone support and better reps


• Support for better tools for agencies


• Integration of 3rd party management tools, API


• Educate the editors


• ...and finally Better Tools!

While there is more, that touches on some of it. People need better tools was the consensus from that session I attended. When it came down to it, tools were important to people, and it was simple stuff like having a tool to schedule when and when not the campaign could run. Currently you can't edit this, its either on or off.

So the jist of my speal here is to identify Ask could have and should have come in with better functionality and some neat features. They could have easily attracted advertisers with ease being that they could say "Hey look, we did what they wouldn't!", and then again maybe they will in the future. Guess we'll see.

Continue discussion on ASK at SEW Forums

Most people I deal with on a daily basis with this blog include industry experts, search engine engineers, search engine PR people, journalists, bloggers and even spammers. It took a really long time to earn the trust of all the different types of people listed above. I have no journalistic background, no schooling in professional writing, nor in the PR industry. Over the past month, C|Net was blacklisted by Google, it was widely discussed. I do not have all the details about the real reasoning behind it. I know how both sides "feel" about it, but I would never publish those thoughts here. Let me get into what code of ethics this site stands-by when writing entries at this site.

Search Engine Roundtable Code of Ethics:
(1) We try to cover public forum threads and quote from public information within those threads.
(2) We will never quote anyone without explicit permission in the following cases:
-- Phone conversations require explicit permission to quote
-- Email conversations require explicit permission to quote
-- IM chat conversations require explicit permission to quote
-- In person conversations require explicit permission to quote
(3) We will quote any publicly posted and available content from forums, content sites, blogs and so on.
(4) Anything said during a public presentation at a conference (not at the bars or in the hall ways but rather, what is said on the podium) is quotable as well.

Basically what it comes down to is a deep consideration of respect towards the industry and the people within the industry.

Often I wish I can write about something presented to me X days before it comes out. Often I wish I can write about something I heard from Matt Cutts or Tim Mayer or Jim Lanzone for the respect search engines. Often I wish I can write about something found by a fellow blogger or a journalist before they do. But I don't.

I thought it would be a good idea to clarify this code of ethics for the Search Engine Roundtable for the readers, guest writers and for anyone else who might not have known. Respect is what is at the core of it all.

The reason I am writing about this, is because I reported this issue probably over two months ago. Basically, if you try clicking on a Google AdSense RSS Feed Ad within Safari, it does not take you to the destination page. I don't click on my own ads, but I happened to click on one of my ads when I was actually interested in the advertisement offering. When I did that, I got the same screen I got today, which looks like...

I first thought it was an issue with the way I configured the ads in my feeds. But then I signed up with FeedBurner and they put the ads in for me temporarily here and I clicked on it and guess what, same error. Now I assume that it has to do with my browser being Safari. It did not work in Bloglines when I tried about two months ago, I also don't think it worked on Firefox for Mac but I am not sure. I never heard back from Google on this, the email probably got lost. I wonder if this entry will help get more answers, if not from Google, at least from readers. Oh, do not click on the ads, it is against the TOS for me to ask you to do that, so do not click, please (I am serious).

I started a thread on this topic at DigitalPoint Forums (where I like to post AdSense related topics).

I first learned of the Dynamic Keyword Insertion AdWords trick at the Ad Copy & Landing Page Clinic during SES NYC 2004 and then I got a refresher in both August 2004 and December 2004, the best description I have is from August.

The "bracket trick", which she told the audience in NY. (1) {KeyWord:Long Beach} = All words with initial caps (2) {Keyword:Long beach} = First word capitalized (3) {keyword:long beach} = All words in lower case. This allows you to dynamically put the keyword the searcher used in the engine in the title of your ad with these brackets "{keyword}".

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums discusses some odd behavior with this trick. One member reports that "In each of these ad groups, 90-100% of the keywords are now inactive, and the new minimum CPC's are 200%-1000% higher than our previous bid prices." He believes it has to do with the new AdWords Pricing Changes.

But Andrew Goodman reports, "I am using dynamic keyword insertion widely and am not seeing low quality scores as a result. I have seen no change in pattern on that front." AussieWebmaster warns that the title area is very short and if the query is long and followed by a brand name, it can get cut off and look weird. So be careful when using it.

The past four out of five entries posted here (including this one) have been about the PPC area within search marketing.

Changing the target URLs of your ads within your AdWords campaigns can really take a toll on your earned rankings within AdWords. As we all know, Google uses a ranking algorithm within its paid listing program which looks at both CPC and CTR, when determining rank. Ads over time can outrank other ads even though they are paying a lower CPC, if they have a higher CTR. By changing the ad (I think in any way - although I am a newbie with AdWords management) the CTR history is wiped out. By losing that CTR history, you can dramatically affect your ad's ranking.

In a WebmasterWorld thread named Google Adwords destroyed my account a member tells us a story;

A couple of days ago, I decided to update my adgroup ads in a campaign that I have run for many months. I had excellent ranking in all of them, some I was #1 and #2 in the blue area for many. I made a domain name change to all the ads in this campaign (about 30 adgroups). When I checked later to see how the ads looked and their position, I could not believe my eyes. Every single keyword that I had worked so hard and spent thousands to get in a great rank and reasonable prices was GONE! It was as if I had started over as a new member. The worst one was one where I was #2 in the blue and ended up as #38 on the fourth page! Paniking, I called google and emailed them. The tech person that I talked to there said this is the worst he has ever seen of destruction of rank. Later on they said that part of the quality part of an ad is its domain name. Then they said the new ad had to get some quality thru I guess getting impressions and clicks. Well I told this gentleman, "how am I going to get quality in the 38th position?" I am getting the run around at google right now. They are not admitting that the system is flawed. There was no warning, nothing written in the literature that this kind of massive destruction of an account could happen.

I feel bad for this member, but others in the thread to not feel as bad as I. One member says that "It is "public knowledge" that a change to URL will get you to loose your history." And then he offers advice, "The better way to go would have been to add a new ad with the new URL, then waiting until it gets the same CTR and position than the old one and then deactivating the old one." Others try to make the member feel that he/she has other options. The member can use the API to try "reinstating your old ads" or try calling Google to do so. But in this specific case, it won't work. Others say that in time, the ads will navigate its way to the top.

We know Yahoo! is working hard on a new paid listing web interface but now we got what we got. WebmasterWorld members complain over a Major Overture Interface Flaw within the Overture interface. Basically, when you set up new keywords, by default, YSM sets the bid price to the number one position. When setting up hundreds of keywords within the system, it is virtually impossible to go through each listing to lower the bid. Plus, it is clear from the thread that it is not easy to understand how to set bids when adding listings. Bottom line, new and even old advertisers are confused by the add listing process at Overture. For one advertiser, it cost them "$200 in about 3 hours" and a lot of frustration.

I just set up a keyword campaign of over 200 keywords yesterday but I did not personally find it confusing. Doing it manually is a lot of work, to set the bid prices properly. But if you are seriously going about adding hundreds of keyword phrases on a frequent basis, consider building a software application that works with the API Yahoo! provides. It will help you control prices and budgets.

It feels like it was just yesterday when Cre8asite Forums turned two and now I turned around and the good, wise forum is three years old! Cre8asite Forums is one of those forums that I would call a hidden treasure. On one hand, I hate to promote it because I would hate to see it get folded with too much volume. Basically, for selfish reasons, I want to keep it all to myself. But on the other hand, it deserves a lot more credit then it gets today.

I would like to wish Cre8asite a wonderful three year anniversary!

Join the celebration at the official Cre8asite's Third Anniversary thread.

Today, I had a need to take several permutations of keyword phrases and bulk them together for a PPC campaign. So I had one of my developers build a tool I named Dynamic Keyword Phrase Generator Tool.

What does it do?
Given a set of primary keywords:

example: vanilla,chocolate chip,strawberry

And Given at least a set up secondary keywords:

example: ice cream,cakes,candy,ices

Also, if you want tertiary keywords:

example: colored sprinkles,chocolate sprinkles,syrup,whipped cream

You can generate a full set of permutations for those 3 sets of keyword phrases. Final list would look something like:

vanilla ice cream colored sprinkles,vanilla ice cream chocolate sprinkles,vanilla ice cream syrup,vanilla ice cream whipped cream,vanilla cakes colored sprinkles,vanilla cakes chocolate sprinkles,vanilla cakes syrup,vanilla cakes whipped cream,vanilla candy colored sprinkles,vanilla candy chocolate sprinkles,vanilla candy syrup,vanilla candy whipped cream,vanilla ices colored sprinkles,vanilla ices chocolate sprinkles,vanilla ices syrup,vanilla ices whipped cream,chocolate chip ice cream colored sprinkles,chocolate chip ice cream chocolate sprinkles,chocolate chip ice cream syrup,chocolate chip ice cream whipped cream,chocolate chip cakes colored sprinkles,chocolate chip cakes chocolate sprinkles,chocolate chip cakes syrup,chocolate chip cakes whipped cream,chocolate chip candy colored sprinkles,chocolate chip candy chocolate sprinkles,chocolate chip candy syrup,chocolate chip candy whipped cream,chocolate chip ices colored sprinkles,chocolate chip ices chocolate sprinkles,chocolate chip ices syrup,chocolate chip ices whipped cream,strawberry ice cream colored sprinkles,strawberry ice cream chocolate sprinkles,strawberry ice cream syrup,strawberry ice cream whipped cream,strawberry cakes colored sprinkles,strawberry cakes chocolate sprinkles,strawberry cakes syrup,strawberry cakes whipped cream,strawberry candy colored sprinkles,strawberry candy chocolate sprinkles,strawberry candy syrup,strawberry candy whipped cream,strawberry ices colored sprinkles,strawberry ices chocolate sprinkles,strawberry ices syrup,strawberry ices whipped cream

We also gave you the ability to choose the syntax you prefer. Google AdWords; Broad Match, Exact Match or Phrase Match AND SEO Types; Title Tags, META Keyword Tags, H1 Tags.

Try out the Dynamic Keyword Phrase Generator Tool when you like. Coming soon, a way to send all those keywords to your AdWords campaign via the Google API. Feedback requested here.

Last week we discussed Yahoo! Local twice; (1) Yahoo Local & 360˚ Adds Vertical Reviews and (2) Yahoo! Local Using Wrong Localized English. Today, I want to point you to a thread I started at SEW Forums the other week, named Yahoo! Local Driving Web Leads?

Basically, some are seeing a positive affect from having a listing at Yahoo! Local and also Google Local. I personally have not "noticed any significant referrals from Yahoo! Local in my stats." (I just quoted myself)... Member, MoneyMan said, "It's worth noting that in terms of "click-through" and viewing detailed business data, the results I have seen from YLocal on clients have been fantastic."

It is a bit early to tell, but I would love to get more feedback at the thread or over here.

Time Magazine, this Sunday, published an article named On the Frontier of Search where it almost scares people into what search features are on the horizon. A Cre8asite Forum thread named The Future of Search is where Bill Slawski actually linked to the technologies available today, discussed in that Time's article.

Some very interesting replies at the The Future of Search Thread.

We know that HTML Entities do not hurt in terms of SEO, but can they benefit you? Well, in MSN Search it can give you better visibility. A DigitalPoint thread discusses how stars work in the title in the SERPs. *** Here is an example.

Google removed unicode characters from the title back in December 10, 2003. Yahoo! removed unicode back in March 2005. When will MSN remove them?

Jamie from Channel9 posted a funny cartoon named at a thread titled GooglePark: "Scoble goes to google" ;) Its worth a look.

SEO Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Aaron Wall from SEO Book wrote last Friday, NOTICE! YOU HAVE BEEN SUED. He has been going back and forth with Traffic Power, an SEO company with many faces, about how he wrote about what Traffic Power has been doing with its SEO clients. Many in the industry are not happy with Traffic Power's tactics and many have voiced it. As many of you know, we try to stay away from political topics here, so I have not been discussing the topic here. And to be honest, if I did and TP threatened me with a law suit, I would pull it. For me, it is not worth the money, time and stress to get involved in a lawsuit based on principle.

I commend Aaron for keeping up the content, many, in Aaron's position, pulled the content. There are many showing Aaron support by participating in Search Engine Watch Forum Thread, Traffic Power Files Suit Against SEO Book.

Linking experts strike out on their own! Two of the industry's top link experts let me know this past week they have been kicked out onto the cold hard street, banished from their hometowns, thrown away their earthly possessions, and to survive will be traveling the globe doing Dali Lama worthy Linking Seminars to business owners and SEO/SEM companies. The world might not be ready for this level of information, but their epic crusade will go on to stamp out bad linking techniques.

Okay, okay, not really, but I had to embellish a bit. The real story is that Debra Masteler and Eric Ward have teamed up together to put on a Linking Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina in October 27/28 at the Charlotte Sheraton Airport. This conference devoted solely to linking is the first of its kind as I understand it, where as linking was paired up with SEO in the whole.

Debra Masteler from Alliance Link and Eric Ward from EricWard.com are putting on this 2 day seminar, and they have also invited Dan Theis to come as a quest speaker. All of which are very talented regular speakers at SES conference through out the year. Both Debra and Eric have a combined 15 years experience building links and generating online publicity to add behind their seminars. They are callling their series the Powerhouse Linking Seminars.

According to the information they sent me (Check out those topics!):

This is a "nothing held back" seminar. Debra and Eric will review and discuss all linking strategies available and share the link building tactics they use to consistently help clients achieve targeted publicity, search engine traffic and high rankings. You'll learn proven and effective link building techniques which can be integrated into your current SEO/SEM process and provide you with an unbeatable path to link building success. You'll leave the seminar with a solid understanding on link building plus valuable online resources and tools to help in your everyday linking.

Topics include:

• Linking For Rank


• Linking for Publicity


• Finding Authority Sites


• Linking Myths & Mistakes


• Buying Links


• One Way and Reciprocal Linking


• Key link Influencers



• Holistic Linking


• Links and Audio/Video, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, PDFs.


• 301 Redirects


• Affiliate Programs


• Identifying Link Farms


• Linking Tools

I guess though the big question you might be asking - Is It Worth It To Do This Seminar?
I would bet that it would be an excellent oppourtunity for companies and other SEO/SEM to get some hands on experience. it however is probably not something an experienced SEO would get much out of. Having done so many conferences, one of the key things I think this seminar will have is the personal attention that you don't get with the larger SES and WebmasterWorld conferences that go on. Its the small classroom verus the big classroom comparison, better oppourtunity to learn the tactics that you need to know for your website to thrive. You get more for your dinero basically. I would recommend my clients attend too.

Check out Powerhouse Linking website: http://www.powerhouselinking.com

Chris Boggs, great guy and he helped out tremendously with SES Coverage, asked me to look at a thread at his forum. The thread is named URL Directories and asks if a shorter URL is better then a longer URL. So I looked back in my notes (this site) and found an entry named Length of a Domain Name which specifically discusses the domain name. But what about the URL structure? I couldn't find any entries here that discussed my humble opinion on that topic.

Talking within reason, having a URL that looks like:
http://www.domain.com/blog/2005/08/22/where-is-carmen-sandiego
versus
http://www.domain.com/blog/where-is-carmen-sandiego

Will not make a noticeable difference in your rankings. What the engines mean when they say a shorter file path structure is in terms of site navigation. For example, if I literally have to click from the main site, to the blog, to the 2005 section, to the August section, to the 22nd day section and then click on where-is-carmen-sandiego - then that is bad. But if I put a link (i.e the first, long, one listed above) on the index page, to a long URL, then the search engines will crawl it and index it well. The shorter the click path to a specific file, the better off you are. The length of the URL itself, is not a major factor in terms of search engines.

Upgrade to MovableType 3.2 just now. Downtime was like a minute.

Things aren't fully working, like related entries and spam things.

Let me know if you see anything funky please.

In the WebmasterWorld supports forum (to click on the link you need to pay) there is a thread named Radio Advertisement: (Just Google "keywords") where Shak (very nice guy) tells us about a radio commercial he heard.

Basically, you know when you hear a radio commercial and they say; call us at 800-###-#### or visit our web site at www.domain.com? Well, this time, Shak reports that the commercial ended with the phrase; "Just Google us for: "Keyword Keyword"."

This is very similar to visit us by "AOL Keyword _____" which we all heard before, but the big difference is that AOL Keyword was/is guaranteed, but not necessarily the Google keyword (paid or not paid). Bold move, nevertheless, and I wonder if this will continue (I bet it will).

The Link Selling O'Reilly Debate continues and a new thread popped up at WebmasterWorld with the catchy title, Google Says: Buying links not allowed?

In that thread, he the thread creator quotes a statement by Matt Cutts; top Google engineer as saying;

Google's view on this...Selling links muddies the quality of the web and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.

This is a touch stance, does Google feel that all paid links should be discounted? Does Google feel that some paid links are not worthy link weight? We all know that AdSense links do not factor in to the link popularity equation at Google. We also know that Google hates link spam (comment spam, guestbook spam, trackback spam, link farms, link exchanges, etc.). But buying relevant text ads on high trafficked sites, is that worth any less?

Many of this debate goes back to some of the discussion at the first indexing summit at SES. Where Tim Mayer discusses a proposal for some sort of manually coded Block Level Page Analysis. It would be similar to the nofollow attribute or even the section targeting by AdSense. Bottom line, search engines want to understand where is the meaty content and meaty links versus the navigation, footer links and advertisements links.

The search engines are not looking to manually address this issue. It is too wide spread and we all know (using that phrase a lot here) that Google loves to solve these issues algorithmically.

A new search engine is pitching a new market segment, COWS! Yea, you got that right, they predict that by the end of this year, "23% of all internet users will be cows." The search engine is at www.mloo.com and it basically serves up results from an other engine as well as throw in Google AdSense, within the SERPs. I like what is hardcoded in the last 10 searches, on the left hand side. I prefer to use Ask Jeeves when searching on cow related searches.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Cre8asite Forum thread named Google is testing a new Adwords format shows how the top three sponsored ads in Google SERPs are showing up different shades of background colors for one specific user (at least).

View Full Image

The screen capture above is from the user reporting the new sighting. It is very possible that this is an other UI test by Google. But this can also be a spyware or adware attack. No confirmation from Google as of yet.

Update: Official Response from Google (Thanks Gary Price):

Looks like our older UI. We used to do ads in different (tasteful) colors. Note the old version of the tabs for (Web Images Groups Directory News Local). I suspect that this is just a screenshot from years ago. The tabs wouldn't look like that on a current UI test.

The other day, when I was reporting on Yahoo Local & 360˚ Adds Vertical Reviews I stumbled across my company's profile also at http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=11262068.

What I noticed was that under the "Payment" type section, it reads "Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Cheque."

Notice anything weird? "Cheque" is not how good American's spell "check." Yahoo! is a US based company, they know that my business is in New York, USA - they should know to spell using American English, right?

I know, I am giving them a hard time. I just thought it was funny so I posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Yahoo! Local Bad with Localized Language describing this. It lead into people rating my company, which I already got myself in trouble with (see bottom).

Yesterday, I wrote about the updates and downtime Yahoo Search Marketing Direct Traffic Center has undergone this week due things unexplained happening over the weekend. At this time it seems that most people are able to get into the Overture DTC without a problem, and some however are still steaming over the length of time it took to fix it.

Yahoo wrote us here at the Search Engine Roundtable in response to (the ads disappearing) and yesterdays post with an explanation as to what happened recently. Why there were delays, and what they are doing about it basically. Its doesn't reveal much but its a good start to at least letting us know.

"Yahoo! Search Marketing initiated a systems upgrade this past weekend to lay the groundwork for performance and availability improvements that our advertisers will see over the coming months. During this process, we encountered some unexpected issues that affected advertisers' ability to access their accounts. Our number one priority right now is to restore service for our advertisers, so we are working around the clock to resolve this as quickly as possible."

You may gleam what you like out of the above snippet. But we do know they are working hard to fix it, and I can't say its probably been a fun round for them with the troubles this past week. What I keep think though, is what would have caused such a delay over the weekend and into the week?

Some of you noticed that as soon as Ben posted the Held Hostage By Yahoo! Search Marketing During Update! entry, the YPN ads at the top of the index page were pulled. YPN called me last night to tell me the word "hostage" in the title triggered the ads to be removed, automatically. Ok, I said that is a neat feature, JenSense told me it is called a "stop word." YPN told me they would fix the issue on the YPN side but if I wanted the ads to show, I can change the title. I told them, I would wait. Its 2pm (est) here and I am still waiting, but I bet they will get it done by the end of the day.

However, what I find interesting is that the YPN ads on the left hand side of the archived version are showing. Why does the stop word apply to the index page and not the archive page? Possibly positioning of the YPN code within the content, but still.

Google AdSense released Ad Links on June 09, 2005 and publishers had plenty of time to test them out. A thread at WebmasterWorld named AdLinks bringing most of the revenue? Can anyone confirm? shows how for some it does well, and for others, it does not to well.

One member reports that "Ad Links have a really low CTR compared to the other ad blocks but it brings in about 1/5 to 1/4 of my income." While an other reports that "for me, one small AdLinks block brings nearly half my AS revenue."

As you can tell, and something AdSense professionals like JenSense has been telling everyone, it all depends on the site, audience, and implementation. You can not compare site A to site B, there are just too many variables.

In August 22, 2005 at 5:48 PM, CNN en Español during Finance and Economy block made a LIVE interview with Gaston Taratuta in a conversation about Search in Latin America.

I met Gaston back in SES New York in 2004. He is the president and founder of Internet Marketing Services Inc. ("IMS"), a leading media firm with exclusive rights to represent UOL and Folha Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest ISP and newspaper respectively. Gaston is an industry veteran and a leading authority in online marketing in Latin America. Some of IMS’ clients include Dell, Microsoft, Sony, and Visa – just to name a few. He is a very dedicated and talented person, but most of all, he is experiencing how Search is growing in Latin America.

In his interview, CNN en Español anchor Alberto Padilla asks Gaston to talk about the differences between Google and Yahoo! as well as their product and service offerings. Gaston talks about the importance of Search in the U.S. in comparison with other online advertising alternatives. Gaston gives numbers about the growth in Latin America for online advertising which was about 25% higher in 2004 and most likely will see an additional 20 and 30% growth for 2005. However, he mentions it's still only 1.5% of all advertising spend, so there is even more potential opportunities for companies to take advantage of this type of advertising by adding search marketing and other online exposure into their total mix.

When he moved on to talk about Search, he was more specific about Brazil, since it's his core focus. He said that there are about 600 million queries per month, which is a great opportunity for the small and medium businesses so that not only the big mayor brands can have access to this type of online advertising. He mentions that there are 7,500 companies already spending money on Search in Brazil, 2,000 companies in Mexico and 1,000 companies in Argentina.

Yesterday, I had a very good phone conversation with Gaston to talk more on this subject. We both agree on the investment opportunity for global companies to be doing search in Latin America. As well as the importance of the mayor search engines (Yahoo!, Google and MSN) to having local presence to educate businesses on search and the impressive returns on investment along with the effectiveness of tracking all information down to the smallest detail.

What a few of my closest collegues and I see, is a great opportunity for search engine marketing firms and professionals that know search engine optimization to take on this NEW roller coaster ride and make tons of money helping these businesses grow. This is the primary reason why SES Latino 2006 is taking place and everyone interested in the topic of making money on search marketing to new markets should definetly attend.

Last night I have changed the encoding on this site to use UTF-8 Encoding as opposed to the default ISO 8859-1 Encoding. That means I can write in all sorts of languages and funky characters. It also means there might be issues with other areas of the site, if you find any, please add a comment to let me know.

Tests:
עמוד ראשי - ויקיפדיה

忍者システムズ - webデザインとシステム開発

الصفحة الرئيسية

“Scooby”

RustyBrick®

´√ ™

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Many of you know I am a big fan of Yahoo! 360, I use it, I believe, the way Yahoo! intended. That is, I use it to connect the dots in my life, work and blogosphere. One recent addition was the ability to use the new Yahoo! Local at http://local.yahoo.com/ to conduct vertical reviews. By vertical, we mean, rate a restaurant based on food, ambiance, service, value and a hotel based on amenities, room quality, service, and value.

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Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld. Also you can view all my yahoo local reviews if you want, I only have four or so.