January 2006 Archives

A nice thread at High Rankings forum discusses Internal Linking To Your Homepage. A basic SEO topic, but also very important. What is the best way to link to your homepage? In my opinion, http://www.domain.com/ is the absolute best way. You can link to it using absolute links or relative links, but link to it so that you do not link to http://www.domain.com/index.html, http://domain.com/index.html, http://domain.com/ and so on. You just want the www, the domain and the / and nothing more.

You may ask, but what if I always link to http://www.domain.com/index.html type of domain? As long as I am being consistent, isn't that good enough. Well, yeah it is, but can you guarantee that you won't upgrade your site's technology and the index.html page will turn into an index.php page? Of course you can do mod_rewrites and 301s after the fact but if you are just consistent, with linking to http://www.domain.com/ you don't have to do all that work. Plus most people will link to you with http://www.domain.com/ and no other way.

Forum discussion at High Rankings Forums.

Yesterday, Google released the New Google Toolbar Version 4 and with it came "Bookmarks."

Want to create and label bookmarks that you can access from any computer? Simply click the Toolbar’s star icon, or right-click the star to add and label a bookmark. You'll be able to access your Bookmarks menu on any computer with the new Google Toolbar installed. Note this feature stores your bookmarks online, so you’ll need to have a Google Account and be signed in to create and access your bookmarks. You can also view your bookmarks using your Google Account’s Search History feature. Just click the "Search History" link that appears in the upper right-hand corner of the Google homepage when you’re logged into your Google Account and you’ll see your Bookmarks

Aaron has a ThreadWatch entry describing these bookmarks and how they are displayed in your personalized results. Here is a quick screen shot from Aaron. Notice the new link under the results, I placed arrows pointing to them, those are the bookmarks...

But before you install this new toolbar, let's take a look at an old thread started by Bill Slawski back from Jun 18 2005 named If a Googler Offers you a Bookmark Manager, Punch Him. Long read, but he goes through how Google can use that data for personalized search and beyond. So when Bill heard about the new toolbar yesterday, he updated the thread saying, "I might hold off on this upgrade if I can."

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I hope not! Those annoying ads you get when you mouse over them or that float on the page with you on your scroll. JenSense has the scoop describing what these ads are;

Floating ads are ads that either stay on top as the page is scrolled, or ones that "float in" from the side of the page to the center of the page. Expanding ads are those that require user interaction to expand, either with a mouseover or a click. Interstitials are perhaps the most interesting addition to this rich media beta, because they are a format that people love to hate, and that are often more annoying than pop-ups. You have likely stumbled across an interstitial ad - they appear when you click through to read a page, and before they will show you the page, you are bypassed through to a full page ad that you must view before seeing the actual content you were wanting, often by having to click a link on the interstitial ad page.

I was not able to find threads on this topic at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint or Search Engine Watch Forums, but we do have a thread starter at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

In that thread, I reply to the "do no evil" response, asking if it is Google that is evil or the publisher that is evil here? The gun debate can be applied here. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

I can't remember the last time I said anything negative about Ask Jeeves. But honestly, they haven't been tested much on the Webmaster relations front. So I found a perfect opportunity to test them. Viggen, a well known forum member at many forums, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld forums named Previous Domain Owner Penalty. He basically said that he bought a domain name in 2003 that has a previous penalty, Google told him that. In time, Google and Yahoo released the domain from its penalty, but Ask Jeeves did not. So I told the folks I know at Ask Jeeves to reply to the thread. Kaushal Kurapati from Ask Jeeves replied with the following message;

Hello: You can contact us via this page: http://webk.ask.com/contactus

Please choose the "Help with getting your site listed" option and please enter comments on why we should review it.

thanks,
Kaushal Kurapati
Senior Product Manager for Search, Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Great. Now I sit back and track to see how Ask handles this. What is disturbing is that at all the conferences Ask Jeeves says they take all responses seriously and they reply to them by individuals quickly. Why do they do that? Because they don't get the volume of requests that Google or Yahoo gets and they were proud to say they are better at communication than G or Y.

But two weeks later and Viggen has yet to see a response from Ask Jeeves on the topic.

Makes me wonder if Ask Jeeves does take feedback requests seriously?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Kaushal Kurapati emailed me and has now taken care of the issue.

A week and a half ago we covered a topic we named Yahoo Laughs Off Click Fraud Report, soon after the thread was renamed to Click Fraud Report Gets Laugh From Yahoo Rep and featured on the Search Engine Watch Forum homepage.

Yesterday, Discovery, the thread creator, posted an update to the thread. He/She got a call from senior YSM Management, they provided a refund in in excess of the $6,000, and they asked Discovery to provide constant feedback on PPC fraud issues. So Discovery decided to start a new site named http://www.junkclick.com/ which is not yet active. At this site, "search marketers can submit their data regarding junk clicks. We will aggregate this information and provide results to those who submit data. Our goal is to provide the major ad networks with concise and timely information on junk click activity within their networks."

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Danny Sullivan just posted an SEW blog entry named A Picture Says 1000 Words About Google's Censorship In China which is show true. He shows a screen capture, side by side (Google China versus Google US) of a search on "tiananmen" at Google Images China versus Google Images. Here it is.

SEW has a long thread on the topic since its inception named Google Agrees To Chinese Censorship and I started a forum thread just on this Google Images comparison, since I feel that alone is shocking enough.

Forum discussion at Google China: Story Told in Google Images.

With this whole Google Censoring Google China fact, Google had to make a change to its "Does Google censor search results?" page. Gary covers the before and after;

Before:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results. To learn more about Google’s search technology, please visit http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

After:

It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages. Please note: For some older removals (before March 2005), we may not show a notice at this time.

John Battelle is notifying the media front with this news, I love it when he picks this stuff up.

And of course we got the forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Laura is getting some nice coverage the past week or so, first with the Free SEO Basics Video by ZDNet which was starting her and now with this outstanding topic at High Rankings forum named How to Speak SEO. This was already covered by Rand but incase you didn't see it, I wanted to bring it to your attention.

This thread describes how to;

• How to talk SEO to a CEO
  
• How to talk SEO to a Project/Product Manager
  
• How to talk SEO to a developer
  
• How to talk SEO to an editor
  
• How to talk SEO to your girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband/lover/mistress/pool boy
  
• How to talk SEO to yourself

Worth a read, in my opinion, forum discussion at High Rankings Forum.

Outstanding post by martinibuster, moderator of the Link Building Forum at WebmasterWorld, on the thread named I was Cheated on a Reciprocal Link. His advice?

Basically, - You don't exchange links with any page with a white bar. - Don't exchange links with any site that has a huge link directory - Always view the source code to make sure there's no monkey business - Always check the robots.txt to make sure there's no monkey business - Always check the backlinks of any sites they are linking to to make sure they show up as a backlink - Never trade links with anyone who approaches you for links - Always trade links with those that you approach - There are probably more things to keep in mind when trading links.

Of course those last too lines can become circular and the forum thread gets a bit into that, as well as adding a few more tidbits, including this one....

The link page should be in google cache (and not be too different from the original page!)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Jill Whalen started a thread over at her forums named H1, H2, H3 Placement, per W3C standards. In that thread she asks if it matters if the header tag sequence in the source code displays in order of header number hierarchy. Meaning, does the h1 tag have to come before the h2, and h3 and h4 in the source code and in the visible content on the page, as per "W3C standards." I tried looking up the answer, but I failed to find anything where it said it had to be in a particular order.

The thread discusses the topic and most people agree that is makes most logical sense to place the header tags in order of number, much like a structural document for a paper's outline. But in terms of SEO, does the header tag matter? Some say yes and some say no. Does the header tag hurt? If you use it properly, and don't overdo it, I can not see how it would hurt you. Would it hurt if you placed it in the wrong order? I doubt it, the standards on the Web are far from standard. :)

But does anyone know about the W3C standards on this topic?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Looks like Google released a new toolbar today at http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/T4/.

Chris Sherman has the official Search Engine Watch write up he named Google Releases Upgraded Toolbar. The new features include;

Now you can make your Toolbar as unique as you are. You can add buttons and bookmarks; get instant search suggestions; share web pages with friends; and enjoy the Toolbar's pop-up blocker, web form filler, and spellchecker.

I think most people will benefit from "Search smarter with instant suggestions as you type in the search box."

Matt Cutts, Google Engineer, blogs on it also with his ideas and suggestions. Of course we got the forums talking about it, including, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

It was an ad free world at Google, at least for part of Friday afternoon. Reports via WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums show members documenting the outage.

Basically, they reported when they went to Google.com or any Google, and searched on a term, no sponsored results came up.

Maybe it was for "tax free" week in NYC or maybe it was a glitch.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

I had a meeting with a non-prospect this Friday. That means, a family member asked if I meet with a friend of hers and offer advice on his Web strategy. So I did that, as a favor, but it turned out to help me better understand, what I think, is the difference between Search Marketing and Search Engine Marketing. Let me explain...

After sitting with this individual, discussing how his new, non-profit organization is looking for fund-raisers, it hit me. Before I get to that, let me guide you through some of the conversation. I go over many of the basics of SEO. I tell him he doesn't want to rank number one for the keyword term "philanthropy" or the like and I explain why. Basically, as we all know, he is looking for the donors that are sensitive to what his organization caters to. I explain that someone looking to give a sizable donation to an organization will not type into Google, "philanthropy". Instead, they may type in "support [cause] in [location]" or "supporting poverty in America" as one example. There are tons of these examples and the person I was meeting with immediately understood, which was nice. Then I go through how to optimize for those types of keywords on each page.

Finally, I explain that he won't realize top rankings in Google right away. I explain what the "sandbox" is, without using the term "sandbox" in the explanation. And trust me, he understood and excepted the reasoning for some new sites not ranking well. He understood that he is a new kid to the block and will have to earn some respect, respect from his patrons, respect from his industry, respect from the world and respect from Google. He totally got it, and I was really enjoying this meeting.

But then he hit me, he asked. "Is RustyBrick overkill for his needs?" Meaning, should he go with a low cost design shop and ensure that they comply with the basic SEO tactics and save a bundle. I said, at this point, yes. He asked me why.

The reason was "Search Marketing" versus "Search Engine Marketing". It has been what Mike Grehan has been saying in his articles, attacking the sandbox theory for what it is.

The bottom line with this individual that I was meeting with was that he did not have enough money to add a "wow factor" to his organization. I explained that we need to think up of an idea that makes you better then the rest. You need some type of marketing strategy, be it online or offline, that makes you worthy in the eyes of everyone, that your organization is simply WOW.

I explained that you can hire a room full of marketing people to sit there and think up unique ideas. It is done all the time with large companies. But if you can not afford that and most companies cannot, then you need to come up with the idea yourself. And guess what, he got it.

Marketing is discovering the Wow Factor. Search Marketing is utilizing the Wow Factor in the search world. Search Engine Marketing is implementing your SEO tactics off of that wow factor.

I told the individual, to come back to me, when he realizes his wow factor.

Sunday morning rant, hope it makes sense.

It started with an interview I found on "Trustmarks", in which Paul Walsh, the co-founder and CEO of Segala M Test, was talking about a way to enhance personalized search by including a trust rating.

Perhaps you've heard of ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association) descriptors for child protection. I've had this code on one of my sites for years, since I wanted parents to trust it. (And being one, I care about that sort of thing.) Walsh was interviewed about the Segala trustmark scheme and their working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Segala is a founding sponsor of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) responsible for creating best practices and guidelines for the future Web on small screens such as PDAs and mobile phones. Paul Walsh is also a committee member of the Web Accessibility Initiative.

I was very curious about how search engines, or if search engines, would implement "Trustmarks". We started a thread at Cre8asiteforums about it, featuring the interview, and several members were most interested. Some wondered how this trust is tracked. What would stop anyone from being registered, getting a trustmark and then changing their content?

Paul Walsh dropped by when the thread first began to tell us more.

Continue reading "Search Engines Find a Way to Gauge and Confirm Trust"

Doug at Aderit Internet Marketing Consulting once again notified me of a great thread. I actually read the thread yesterday but then lost track of it. The thread is a Search Engine Watch Forums named Up The Creek With Google AdWords Broad Match. So what is the issue.

In short, Google's Broad Match has been getting broader and broader. What that means is that if you sell toner and broad match on "toner" you will now, today, get clicks for "NEC Supersrcipt 860" and other specific models. Google is just that good at expanding the keyword phrase "toner" down to the model numbers. Problem is, this advertiser does have that model number in stock, and doesn't have many other model numbers in stock. So those clicks are a waste of money.

Answer is simple, just use phrase or exact match. Well no, you can't do that, because if you do then you will lose your CTR factor in your ad rank. And your ads will drop in rank.

So what can you do, well you can use negative match, but that is a reactive strategy as opposed to a proactive strategy.

What should Google do? Doug, aka cline, has great suggestions;

Adwords needs to do one of the following:
* Allow the advertiser to turn expanded broadmatch off
* Inform the advertiser of *exactly* what terms expanded broadmatch will trigger
* Get rid of expanded broadmatch.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A post by seo-ireleand at our forums named New look Yahoo Directory listings notifies us of a slight change to the UI of the Yahoo! Directory. Take a look at the Y! SEO Directory and see how it is incredibly spaced out, between results. I have attached a small screen capture and a larger screen capture to document it. I do not have a screen capture of the page before hand.

So it makes me wonder if it is really different. But I really thing there was a change to, at least, the spacing in the directory pages.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread named View Bids Tool Errors, shows that Yahoo! Search Marketing's bid tool is chocking up errors. This tool tells advertisers how much to bid for a particular keyword and advertisers are very dependent on it to run and operate their online businesses.

Deal is this WebmasterWorld thread was posted January 12th! On January 25th, an update popped up for this thread where a user posted that a response from Yahoo!

We are aware of the problem - it's a server issue and have no idea when it will be fixed. We are working on it as it is a priority for us. They also mentioned that this is not the first time it occurs.

So I figured I do my part and call Yahoo! out on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Back in mid December we reported on Google Moves Tabs to Side Bar in UI Test. Over the past few days, lots of folks are talking about an other, but very similar Google UI side bar test. This one looks a bit different,

Large image is at Flickr.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Quick note that the logo on Google's homepage today is due to Mozart's Birthday.

Linking to http://www.google.com/search?q=mozart.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The other day we reported that YPN EPC Was Decreasing and we offered possible explanations as to the reason. However, today, I noticed a featured thread at WebmasterWorld named Declining eCPM where members share their experience noticing that although traffic is rising on some sites, the earnings for those impressions are declining.

eCPM "is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands."

Now this thread's title is just about the ads that pay on a impression basis. There are folks complaining about the CPC (click based payouts).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I love this feature, showing the start time or date of a thread. Some forums have it, but by default, the vBulletin forums do not have it. This morning while surfing for quality threads, I noticed Shawn's DigitalPoint forum has it. Great feature added, like many of Shawn's features on his forum. No wonder it is quickly becoming the most popular Webmaster forum on the Internet.

Here is a screen capture.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Ben aka Phoenix started a thread at our forums named SEO for Video Search basically asking if anyone had any experience to share with search engine optimization for video search. There are some articles on the topic, but we wanted to know if anyone has any practical, hands on experience.

Things to share would be; tips on optimization, what to expect from which engines, is it worth it, and so on.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A new thread stated by Ian (mcanerin), an SEW Moderator, may be the thread of the coming week. He titled the thread SERP Overflow and Butterfly SEO where he describes what he calls "butterfly SEO."

Basically he says for many of the competitive terms (and the number of competitive terms grows daily), the top 30, 50 etc. results are pretty much equally relevant for their keyword phrase. Meaning, Result number five can be flip flopped with result number twenty-five and the end user would be just as satisfied with that result. Based on this theory, Ian is concerned that the search engines will have the "good-enough" approach and give up. But he also understands that engineers are not the type to leave "good-enough" alone. :)

So how does Ian define the butterfly SEO?

This could result in what I'll call "Butterfly SEO", where, once you get to a certain level of optimization, the things that affect your rankings are things that are less and less obvious, and more and more technical. I know for a fact that in certain SERPs you can see this effect, where something that traditionally isn't an problem, suddenly makes or breaks your rankings.

Legendary Bob Massa pulls out Ian's outstanding thread and some up Ian's concerns into one line.

How do I optimize for YOU when you go to Google?

Because that is what is going to set apart the "overflow" of the top fifty results. You and me, our personal preferences. And as an SEO, you need to start thinking about, how to optimize for the individual searching at Google and not for the keyword searching at Google.

Don't these types of threads make you just tingle. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Just a blog administration note. I have removed the YPN RSS ads from this blog. Why? Simply because the FeedBurner RSS ads have been performing very well. And since the YPN ads were not contextually relevant, I might as well show the ad that makes more money. :)

Anyway, the reason for this post is to see if I messed up the RSS feeds by removing the code.

No development environment for this blog... I know I know...

Short Feed YPN Ads Removed √
Short Feed FeedBurner Ads Shown √
Long Feed YPN Ads Removed √
Long Feed FeedBurner Ads Shown √

Talk about a major news story that has caused the two major SEM forums to debate. We got two large threads, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at Search Engine Watch Forums. The WebmasterWorld thread started by the founder of WebmasterWorld, Brett Tabke and the Search Engine Watch thread started by the founder of Search Engine Watch, Danny Sullivan.

Danny does an excellent job explaining the two different sides of the story, in his thread. He explains that it makes sense that the court ruled in favor of Google to allow them to cache pages be default, since they do allow a opt out protocol (i.e. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">). He explains, since spidering a site requires an opt out, not to be included in the index, the same should apply to the caching of those pages. Danny also give other logical and reasonable explanations as to why caching should be allowed by default.

Brett explains that "the court did not understand what real caching is and what Google calls caching." Explaining that what Google called caching "does not meet the crieteria for caching." He continues to warn that this will "effectively neuters all copyright laws on the internet today. It is the wild-wild west again. It legalizes content theft."

There are two sides to the story, the court ruled in favor of Google.

After Danny spoke with DaveN on his Search Cast morning show and read Brett's thread on the topic, he has changed his mind.

But not that we have a court that seems to not understand some real copyright issues, I'm flipflopped. I'm with Dave and Brett -- make it opt in. And we don't need a court decision for that to happen. The search engines themselves could do it. The problem is, with this ruling in their pocket, they have less reason to do so.

It makes you think if that was one of the reasons why the other day the Google Cache Currently Offline (if you do not know what the Google cache is, click on that story, it will show you). The Google cache is currently back online and running properly.

Join the debate, maybe the search engines will listen, forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Shawn asked me if I was aware of this thread at his forum named New referrals adsense ruls? where a member points out that AdSense has added a little line to the TOS that includes a phrase "within 90 days of sign-up." Now, everyone I ask, and every place I look, I can not find the 90 day requirement. That is a big deal. So on November 4, 2005, when the AdSense Referral Program Launched, it did not have the 90 clause, as far as I know.

Of course you can imagine how upsetting this is to those who sent AdSense tons of referrals, and how those will expire.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The first magazine "dedicated to solely covering SEM " has been launched. There is a free subscription offer that runs until February 28th.

If you want to check out The Search Marketing Standard, their press release contains more information.

The first issue is due for May 2006.

"The first issue of the full-color, high-quality magazine is set to be released in May 2006, and will be published worldwide on a quarterly basis. The publisher also announced that until February 28th, subscribers in the U.S. will be eligible to receive a free one-year subscription to “Search Marketing Standard” by registering directly on www.searchmarketingstandard.com. International subscribers will be charged a nominal fee."

Cre8asiteforums ponders the news in Would you subscribe or read a print SEO pub?

Again, Gary with the early scoop yesterday on Web Authoring Statistics. This is a break down of "popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata" of "slightly over a billion documents" in December 2005.

Note: You will need a browser with SVG and CSS support to view the result graphs correctly. We recommend Firefox 1.5.

There are some really cool figures represented in the study.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

New to SEO, old to SEO, want a clear cut refresher on the basics? A Cre8asite Thread links to a SEO 101 - At The Whiteboard by ZDNet. It is a very good basic video that you can send to your client's if you do not want to do the basic education yourself. I'm going to try it and see if any of my client's understand it, because there is a lot packed into the 5 minute video.

I believe Laura goes to the SES conferences, she has links up on that video page to HighRankings, Search Engine Watch and SEOMoz.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I first spotted this a couple days ago at Gary Price's SEW Blog entry named Google Quietly Beta Testing Desktop AdWords Editor.

AdWords Editor is Google's free, downloadable account management application for your computer. Now you can download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, then upload your revised campaigns.

You can download it at http://services.google.com/adwordseditor/

I was waiting for a forum thread on the topic and I have found one at WebmasterWorld today. There AdWordsRep provides more details;

There is a huge faq at http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor?fulldump=1 and if you like to apply to use the editor (Windows only) submit your request here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an excellent thread at Cre8asite Forums named $2000 For a Search Engine Thrill Ride and Low Conversions? It discusses where people should put a $2,000 Web site budget towards.

Honestly, this is a hard one to sum up and the thread is not too long. If you have 2k to spend, not more, then check out the thread for some good ideas.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I found this interesting thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named AdWords "Radio Ad". This member describes how he was able to put up "a regular adwords ad but linked to an mp3 file - so clicking it plays an audio ad." First time I have seen anything of this sort posted in a forum, doesn't mean that it hasn't been posted before. Cute idea.

However, the reason it is a cute idea and that you do not see this ever, is because it doesn't meet the editorial guidelines of AdWords.

AdWordsRep replies saying;

Sorry to rain on the parade - but before considering this folks, please be aware that this is counter to the AdWords Editorial Guidelines, and such ads will be disapproved as soon as they're reviewed...

Your Destination URL must link to a working website. You cannot link to an email address or a file (ex. an image, audio, video, or document file that requires an additional program or application to open or run).

But Cline replies that you "can link to a webpage that runs audio or video on the page."

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Andy Beal pinged me about Google Forcing Desktop Download? Well, it is unintentional, what is happening is if you do a search for anything at Google and try to click on page two or anything in that navigational results bar at the bottom, it won't let you, in Internet Explorer. Andy explains that "Google has a transparent DIV tag that is interfering with the layer behind it. The problem doesn't effect Mozilla." Give it a try yourself, and if it is working, trust me it wasn't. Andy also has images of this.

So I went to our forums to post it and found a thread on it already named Googles' New Desktop Search Ad on SERPs - prevents Clicking SERPs Page Links. You would think they would test it out on IE before going live with the ad. :)

Forum discussion is also widespread; see Search Engine Roundtable Forums or WebmasterWorld.

Andy Hagans is a pretty good link builder, much better than myself. He came up with an idea to throw a contest, to get links. The contest is simple; give Andy a link baiting idea that works and you will earn $1,000. He posted the details at BizNicheMedia Link Baiting Competition: $1,000 Prize.

What is link baiting? Nick Wilson has a great post on it which he titled The Art of Linkbaiting.

But if you think about it, this competition that Andy is holding, is a link bait, in itself. So which idea will work best? The ideas posted in the competition or the competition itself? Hey, it got me to link to it. :)

Forum discussion at ThreadWatch and at DigitalPoint Forums.

I labeled this under "Search Engine Industry News" because that is exactly what it is. DaveN, also portrayed here on the left of the screen, is a well known "black hat" and has decided to start a cartoon blog that depicts what is taking place in the industry. What is interesting Fantomaster had a cartoon blog also. :)

The site is at http://www.seops.co.uk/.

Currently you see an entry named So what will the Search engines do showing Paul Gardi of Ask Jeeves towering over Matt Cutts and Tim Mayer with MSN lagging behind. Paul Gardi, so you know, is a really tall person.

There is a lot more to come, including, cartoon me.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Marcia posted a thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Plagiarism, Splogs and Search Engine Spam where she quoted a blog entry at Plagiarism Today named Why Sploggers Splog The snippet Marcia selected was ironic, to say the least.

One of the interesting things that came out of my discussion with the reformed splogger is that Google is not the target of splogs. As odd as it may seem, Yahoo indexes entire sites much more quickly than Google and is even faster at picking up Blogspot blogs because it considers it such an important domain. Thus, even though the service is wholly owned by Google itself, Yahoo is the first to snatch up links contained with it....

The desired end result is that Yahoo searchers will be directed to the junk domains where they will then click on the Google Adsense ads. This arrangement is not only very profitable for the splogger, since they get a sizeable chunk of the revenue from each ad click, but is very beneficial to Google as they are getting money directly from Yahoo’s visitors.

Now I am not sure if there is a study done that shows that:
(1) "Yahoo indexes entire sites much more quickly than Google", I hear that not to be true. That Google is quicker, but there has never been a wide study done on this. I am basing that on forum chatter for the past four years or so.
(2) [Yahoo] "is even faster at picking up Blogspot blogs because it considers it such an important domain." Again, not sure where this is from but I won't argue.

But if those two statements above are true, which I do not think they are a 100% true, then it is funny.

Yahoo! ranks blogspot splogs high, Yahoo users click through, yahoo users are more likely to click on an AdSense ad, Google makes money, sploggers make money.

Of course this can be applied to any search engine, even Google. And it can be applied to any advertising program that is easy to sign up with and pays on a cpc basis, even Yahoo!.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Loren at SEJ posted Yahoo Publisher Network Expanding This Spring and listed out all the changes discussed on a phone call with the YPN team. I got the phone call also, I was just under the impression that this was not for the public, but I was wrong. So here is some of what you can expect from YPN in early spring.

1. Improvements in Relevance : The ads that are shown by YPN are based upon what Yahoo calls its ‘matching expert’s. These ‘experts’ will be expanded to include :
* Contextual Engine : Targeting based upon the content of the page
* Ad Targeting : Publishers can “tag” their own site by defining their ad targeting category in the YPN admin
* User Data : Behavioral targeting or profiling (geographic & demographic)
2. Wire Service : Offering publishers payment via direct deposit this Spring
3. Expanding Invitations : Continuing on reviewing and approving thousands of high quality web publishers
4. International Rollout : Global expansion beyond the United States to English and non-English speaking countries
5. Yahoo Search Box : Publishers can add Yahoo Search to their site which will pay publishers a percentage of sponsored search revenue
6. Integration into Yahoo Answers : Yahoo may be offering its registered users the ability to earn revenue or points for contributing to Yahoo Answers and other user generated content offerings.

Maybe YPN is trying to bring back the honeymoon? :)

I also started a thread about this yesterday at DigitalPoint Forums and it seems most YPN publishers are happy with this announcement.