March 2006 Archives

Leading off with a blog entry at the Ask.com blog, named What Should We Do? Ask.com asked the blog readers about launching something around April 1, does it make sense to do it, if it may be perceived as a joke. Of course, they released it, "due to popular demand." Ask.com releases for the first time, a full press release via its blog, with the title Ask.com Introduces RhymeRank™.

Tonight at 6PM (PST), to be released in "Gamma mode" at Ask.com is RhymeRank, "Cutting Edge Technology Provides Phaster and Phresher Related Search Results."

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Continue reading "Ask.com's First To Serve Up April Fools Joke with RhymeRank"

As we saw from early tests, Google has officially launched Google local business ads beta. They do not seem to be called GeoAds as we thought, but rather, Google local business ads, pretty straight forward.

Google AdWords is introducing local business ads, a new ad type that allows advertisers to promote location-based products and services to interested users worldwide... Local business ads appear with an enhanced map component on Google Local and in a text-only format on Google.com and other sites in the Google network.

More information on what it is at https://adwords.google.com/select/localbusinessads.html. Here are also, two useful frequently asked questions.

Community buzz on this topic has yet to fully begin, there is currently only one thread that I have found, and it is at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: I posted a full how to with screen captures at SEW Blog.

Matt Cutts posted a blog entry he named Q & A thread: March 27, 2006, in where he answered a nice amount of questions posted in his blog, over the past couple weeks. The entry is well worth a read, if you have not seen it yet. Since then there have been over 75 approved comments on that entry. I do not know how Matt deals with all of that. :) Anyway, here are some solid snippets from the Q&A;

Q: “Is Bigdaddy fully deployed?” A: Yes, I believe every data center now has the Bigdaddy upgrade in software infrastructure, as of this weekend.

Q: “This datacentre http://64.233.185.104/ works differently to all of the others. Noticed just a few hours ago. . . . . Where does that DC fit into the scheme of things? Is it mainly made from newly spidered data?” A: Sharp eyes, g1smd. That wouldn’t surprise me. As Bigdaddy cools down, that frees us up to do new/other things.

Q: “I am seeing a lot of sites with “%09″ (tab) and “%20″ (space) in front of the URL in Googles index.” A: I’ll ask someone about that.

Much more at his blog.

But the forum discussion on this entry is at DigitalPoint Forums.

The other day we reported the Yahoo! Search Index Update, today word comes via DigitalPoint Forums of a Yahoo! Image Search index update. That means, that Yahoo Image Search has a new stock of fresh images for you to search on. It also means, you may be getting more or less search referrals from Yahoo! Image Search.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There have been some sporadic reports of the Dynamic Keyword Insertion feature within Google AdWords has not been working. There is a good thread where AdWordsAdvisor sums up the reports at WebmasterWorld.

To be precise, there have been three threads about this subject so far this week, with two of them being started by the same person. Between the three threads this is where we stand:

* Including this thread, three people report that they are having some sort of issue with Keyword Insertion.

* Also, three people report that it is working just fine for them.

Again, I have not heard of this as an problem elsewhere, and I keep my ear very close to the ground for emerging issues.

My best advice to those who are having problems is to contact AdWords support, and ask them to take a look at the account. Be sure to specify the campaigns and Ad Groups in question, and include a detailed description of what is (or is not) happening.

That said, I'll continue to keep my ears open.

Word for word. But what is really going on? WebmasterWorld moderator, eWhisper, has some ideas. He feels that there may be times when the dynamic keyword insertion function doesn't work, on purpose. The first example he says is when "an adgroup contains misspelled keywords." The second is when "an adgroup contains trademarked terms."

For now, there is no official word from Google on this. If you are having similar issues, let them know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

As I reported at SEW Blog, Wall Street Journal's principal technology columnist, Walter Mossberg wrote a raving article on Ask.com named Ask.Com's New Look Scores Big Points Against Search Rivals. This is huge for The Little Engine That Could. With a recent spike in market share, and its new marketing initiatives I am very exciting for Ask.com's future potential.

Here are some quotes from Mossberg;

I've been testing the new Ask.com against the search champ, Google. I've found that in terms of relevant results and ease of use, Ask holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches. It has some very nice features Google lacks, including previews of the sites it finds, an easy way to narrow or broaden your search results, and frequent top-of-the-screen answers that lead you directly to core information.

In general, Ask's search-results pages are richer and better organized than typical Google results, and they give greater priority to content over ads.

Google is still great, and I'm not suggesting everyone abandon it. But Ask.com is well worth a try if you want to benefit from some features that go beyond Google. Like the George Mason basketball team, it just may surprise you.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

I started a thread over at our forums named Don't Enable GoogleBot To Delete All Your Pages. In that thread I link to an other forum thread that shows how a Webmaster left open the delete button for GoogleBot to click on. This is what happened in short...

Webmaster rebuilt the site months ago, repopulating all the content into a database driven solution. When the Webmaster published the new site, he/she left the "edit" link open somewhere on the frontend, where GoogleBot can get to it. I assume it was not password protected, and GoogleBot got in and looked around. Since GoogleBot just clicks on links, it clicked on the delete link on every single page of the site, until the whole site was deleted from the database and no other pages or content was available to delete.

Pretty crazy, huh? Yea. But GoogleBot is not to blame for this one.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread documents that, at least two, people have seen a different number of results on the first page of the Google results, when compared to the second page of results. For example, you search on any keyword phrase and you are presented with Results 11 - 20 of about XXXX for keyword phrase. If you click the next button, to go to page two of the results, you are presented with Results 11 - 30 of about XXXX for keyword phrase, instead of Results 11 - 20 of about XXXXX for keyword phrase.

WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster, has confirmed that he has seen this as well.

The question now is, is this a temporary glitch or an other one of Google's tests?

I personally have not noticed it myself.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

As I covered a few days ago at SEW Blog, Yahoo has updated their search toolbars for IE and for FireFox. The big change is tabbed browsing for IE and adding a button to bookmark pages to del.icio.us, which is a nice addition.

The folks over at WebmasterWorld are discussing this update. Where Marcia says she uses the toolbar heavily for anti spyware, she likes it because it uses less resources then other toolbars (she says).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

That is the question at a DigitalPoint Forum thread named Google April Fools 2006: Guesses? In that past, we covered a handful of search related April Fools Day pranks. The first one we thought was what is now known as Gmail. Last year we summarized several april fools day jokes, including GoogleGulp, Gmail reaching 2GB no joke, special version of Google April Fools search, and UnderGoos. Do you think this year it is also Gmail related? 3GB of space that turns out not to be a prank? Or maybe the gmail logo is truly replaced by a woman?

The classic Google hoaxes include the mentalplex, pigeon rank, and lunar center.

What will it be this year? Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

This can be completely false and made up but I thought it was weird enough to report here. A DigitalPoint Forum thread named Mysterious GMail Image - Girl Sticking Out Tongue! shows a link to a comment at a particular blog, where a gmail user says his gmail logo was replaced by a picture of a woman. He posted a screen shot here of the gmail screen, with the woman replacing the logo.

This site also notes the image, saying;

Have You Seen This Person?

Many Gmail users have seen this image when checking their mail tonite. This journalist figures it must have been an inside job because Google has a whole team of security experts. The question is then, when will we know for sure?

I am not sure what exactly is up here, it can most likely be a hoax. Or perhaps Google getting ready for April Fools Day.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There have been some major marketing initiatives recently using traditional offline advertising to drive traffic to a website, portal, or search engine. Ask.com has unveiled some new TV spots to get people to try their new technology. This past Sunday, as blogged by Rand and Barry, Yahoo and CBS News program 60 Minutes introduced a new partnership. What seemed to kick the year off, however, was Pontiac's clever use of the verb "google" to ask people to "google Pontiac" in its TV spots. In a search engine marketing stroke of brilliance (my opinion), Mazda purchased the keyword Pontiac, which led to a debate over the use of trademarked terms that has been covered here and elsewhere.

Bill Tancer from Hitwise pointed out at SES NYC 2006:

Did Mazda benefit from the Pontiac ad? Pontiac.com received 66.8% of the traffic from the term, and the second most visited site (3.4% of traffic) for the Pontiac search term was Mazda.

Search Engine Watch Forums Editor Elisabeth Osmeloski stared a good follow up thread to the Pontiac story the other day. She describes reading a recent article about the story in Adweek Magazine, and wonders if Pontiac paid Google to use their name as a verb (and the screenshot showing Pontiac typed into the Google search bar), and reminds us that Google was for a while very protective of its name, forbidding people to use it as a verb in the media. Danny Sullivan reports that Google swears they didn't get paid for the use, and quotes them as being eager to participate.

Not many more answers in this thread yet, but it should lead to an interesting discussion about Google's recent "kindler/gentler" attitude towards the use of its brand as a verb. Read at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There has been a discussion going on for well over a year about "Google Bowling." This is a theory that discusses the potential to negatively impact competitor search engine rankings by creating "unsavory" links to said competitor's pages. Google publicly denies this is possible, yet many in the industry feel that it is very possible. I have always been in the camp that feels that there is nothing that a competitor could do to affect my rankings negatively. Yet recently I have had to think seriously about this, because of the undeniably bad effects experienced by many websites that have been linked-to from so called "bad neighborhoods" ("PPC's"-Pills, Porn, and Casino sites being the unfortunate majority in this Internet community).

A thread started at Search Engine Roundtable Forums on March 16 leads to an interesting case study presented by an anonymous competitor in a recent SEO Contest. He feels that he was inadvertently "Google bowled" because his site solicited links in order to win the contest, and promised the winnings would be donated to a charity. Thus:

LOTS of people thought that donating the prize money to a good cause was a great thing, and so added links on their web sites to mine ... and in several situations, site-wide links.

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, I don't feel that sitewides can hurt, but that they could be discounted. The case study goes on to support a few more interesting theories, in my opinion, including:

What is new/unique about Google Bowling is the concept of negative weighting. If Google detects unnatural linking patterns, instead of devaluing or discarding that link weight, it may count against you…

I personally still don't buy this. One question I would have about the case study is the behavior of the rest of the top 10/15. Where they still the same or did he drop with a bunch of others?

The current discussion is at the Rountable Forum as well as Cre8asite

Rand actually started a discussion about this topic last November that Barry covered. Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl listed it as one of his top twenty contradictions earlier in the year at SEW Forum (before he was saving all his good stuff for his blog :). (**Added: I wanted to mention that I found another recently published and interesting viewpoint on this topic at ISEDB by Tinu Abayomi-Paul)

One more thing: at first I was a bit apprehensive about posting about this, thinking it may tip off even more tricksters. However, if this is an issue, perhaps it should be more in the open so that maybe a new subject line for Google's SPAM complaint center and for the Cuttlets (just added to my spellchecker) could be "I've been bowled." A site owner could identify specifically which links he felt were hurting him and G could come back with a vague answer.

A funny WebmasterWorld thread named house has forum members discussing the type of home they have purchased from their Google AdSense income, if they have purchased a home at all with it.

Many just use a portion of the AdSense income towards their mortgage or rent payments. Some were successful enough to pay off their entire mortgage outright. Some earned enough to by a prestigious home for their birds. Some don't use it towards their home, but rather use it towards their business, to generate more long term income with AdSense (and then possibly use it towards a house then).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A new thread at DigitalPoint Forums polls members on the number of hours they spend with AdSense. That includes your advertising time, your content writing, your coding and your account management. The time slots are broken down pretty broadly, and should most likely be broken down more narrowly. Of currently 48 members polled, here is the break down.

1 - 2 Hrs daily		16	37.21%
3 - 5 Hrs daily		12	27.91%
6 - 8 Hrs daily		6	13.95%
10 - 12 Hrs daily		5	11.63%
13 + Hours daily		4	9.30%

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

John Battelle reports on comScore report that shows Ask.com gaining in market share from Q4 '04 to '05 by 32.8% and Google growing over the same time span by 24.7%. Yahoo dropped in market share by 0.3% and MSN dropped by 2.7%. Still the overall leaders in market share as of Q4 2005 are; Google with 39.8%, Yahoo with 29.3%m MSN with 14.3% and Ask.com with 6.6% of search market share.

With Ask.com's TV recent TV Blitz it will be interesting to see the impact it has in Q1 of 2006.

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

Press Release optimization for search engine purposes has been a growing segment of the SEO industry. One of the first companies to catch the wave is SEO PR, by Greg Jarboe. They have a service that will take your press release, optimize it to rank well in the news search engines and drive a nice percentage click through to your landing pages. He has given plenty of informative speeches on the topic at the Search Engine Strategies conferences (check the archives). But what about building links with press releases?

A Cre8asite Forum thread named Link Building with Press Release asks the power of building links with press releases. Although some of the press releases allow for static, clean, link popularity passing links, many do not. Yahoo! News releases are hosted at Yahoo! for a period of time, until the URL goes away and is no longer valid, so links from there die down quickly.

So where is the value with press releases in terms of link building? Well, a press release, and a well optimized press release, should get in front of the eyes of news reporters, bloggers and other industry experts. They will find your press release, hopefully read it, and god willing think it is interesting. If so, they may write about your service with some quality anchor text pointing to your Web site.

I believe press releases for link building purposes helps increase your site's traffic, gets your more eyes on your brand and encourages people to link to you. This is all incredibly important for the popularity factor of your Web pages.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

In our continued Ask The Moderators thread, the next question we explored was by Viggen. He asked our roundtable of moderators the following question on what he calls; "private search engines."

what search engines are you using for private searches and why...

We opened up a thread named Private Search Engines Explored for moderator only discussion, and last night opened it up for member discussion as well.

I found it interesting in how each moderator interpreted the phrase "private searches." On one hand, does this mean searches conducted at a password protected search engine? Or maybe it means, searches conducted on a company intranet? Perhaps, he is asking about searches one does each day, but are private in nature? Or maybe he is asking about vertical search engines?

The roundtable of moderator's responses were pretty vast.

Rand Fishkin discussed how he uses Del.icio.us to search on tagged content, Ask.com for "non-search type searches" and Yahoo! for link command searches.

Dazzlindonna explained that if private search engines means vertical search engines, she doesn't use them. Donna is a big fan of major search engines and bookmarking for private searches.

Darrin Ward sticks with Yahoo! Search as his default and Google as his back up, he may also use MSN.

Ben (Phoenix) says he doesn't value Yahoo! Search at all, he sticks with Ask.com and Google. He also is a big user of Google Alerts. For internal private searches he uses Desktop Search, like Google Desktop Search. As now uses Bloglines more and more each day.

I personally use RSS News Searches exhaustedly. I subscribe to searches on a few dozen keyword phrases to be notified via RSS about the latest news and discussions taking place about those keyword phrases.

We would love you to join the conversation at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

The process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has many different associated tasks, as many of us know. The subject of linking has been discussed in great detail on many forums and blogs, and the importance of using keywords within anchor text (a somewhat simplified but fairly accurate definition) is unquestionable.

As people (read here: SEO's and SEO-"tinkerers") try to increase the amounts of inlinks to their website using keyword-rich anchor text, questions have been raised as to "how much is to much?" The current consensus seems to be that you should vary your anchor text when actively linking to particular pages. So-called "natural links" (ones that you do not solicit) will naturally [:)] have varied anchor text.

A thread was started at High Rankings Forum the other day which details an email a member received that requested that he go back and vary the anchor text he was using to link to the person's site. The thread, titled "Google Penalizing For Links?, What's your thoughts...." describes someone asking:

...I'd greatly appreciate it if, the next time you are updating your site, you could tweak your links to me so that they express what you think about my site in your own words...

OK, so this may seem a little tinfoil-hattish, and the site owner is risking losing the links completely, in my opinion. Also, I feel like Jill Whalen that there is no penalty for repetitive anchor text, just a possible devaluing of some of the links. Unless the site you are asking to change your anchor text is owned by a friend, I probably wouldn't recommend it. The answer is to instead focus on using varied anchor text in future link building efforts.

See the comments and the interesting spin off discussion on relevancy at High Rankings Forums.

The Yahoo! Search Blog just announced that they have updated their index.

We completed an index update over the weekend. As a result, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index. You might also be seeing a temporary spike in crawler activity. As these things go, all this should stabilize in the near future. Meantime, if you have any comments about the new index, please let us know.

Interesting to note, that Tim Mayer did not write this update entry, as he normally is the one to let us know of updates at Yahoo! Priyank Garg, Product Manager wrote this update instead.

Also, this is the first time someone mentioned an increase in "crawler activity" due to an index update. So tell your hosts to up those bandwidth limits. ;)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums, and HighRankings Forums.

Danny Sullivan started a thread named Who Cares If Google's A Portal. In that thread he posts five consecutive times, so demonstrate the conversation he had with a reader. The posts include a dialog between himself and a reader, who is upset with Danny's tone on his podcast, The Daily SearchCast. Specifically, how Danny was being a tad sarcastic about Google's play on Google Finance and being a portal and not a search engine.

The deal is, Google has for such a long time, repeated that they are not a portal. The word portal, in Google's eyes, seems to be taboo. Danny, as do many in the industry, feel that this is just downright funny. Either say you are a portal or don't do portal like things... Or is it not that simple?

Danny's thread goes deeper into this long standing conceptual debate.

You can read it over at Search Engine Watch Forums.

YahooSarah posts at Search Engine Watch Forums that Yahoo! will be holding a small business event exclusively for small businesses in the New Orleans area. They are working with Bell South to offer "free training and up to $1,500 in free products and services to session attendees to help facilitate small businesses recovery in the Gulf Coast."

WHEN: Friday, April 7, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

WHERE: InterContinental Hotel, 444 St. Charles Ave. (at Poydras), New Orleans, LA

The event page with more information can be found at http://events.yahoo.com/backinbiz.

Yahoo! employees from around the country will be on hand to get your business set up online. You’ll be eligible for up to $1500 worth of free online services. We’ll help you create a web site, build e-commerce offerings, and launch search advertising programs to promote your products and services on the Web.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread named Use of URL redirectors in MFA ads discovers that some MFAs (Made For Google AdSense Sites) have been using redirects to bypass any blacklist the site may be listed on. What happens is that they will advertise using a URL of a public URL redirect tool, and the ads will get through the URL filters. So now you need to follow and continue to block these types of URLs. Let me explain a bit better....

URL: www.mfa.biz (fictitious URL) is a site on my filter list
Owner of MFA.biz sets up a redirect URL with, let's say tinyurl.com, to point to MFA.biz
TinyURL.com is not on my filter list and passes through the filter

What needs to be done? Well, Google needs to check for these redirects and not allow it, period.

Want to see the frustration of some Google AdSense publishers? Visit the thread at WebmasterWorld.

Jennifer Slegg over at the Search Engine Watch blog reports that the Official Google Blog Deleted. In short, yes, Google had accidently deleted their own blog. They have confirmed the mistake;

We've determined the cause of tonight's outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

Oopppss...

Jennifer takes you through the story as it happens. She accounts that this blogger snagged the googleblog.blogpsot.com address, and posted a message saying;

Google, fix your blog pleeasssee! <3 (P.S. Just to clear things up, I'm not associated with Google at all. I just wanted to take advantage of this before someone else with less worthy intentions did. The username was giving a 404, so I tried registering a new blog with it. Surprisingly, it worked. Oh, and no posting URLs in the comments or else they'll be deleted.)

Want to see what it looked like prior to Google getting the blog back? Jennifer posted a picture here.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There is a new Google user interface floating around, it looks similar, but not exactly, like the one I covered here. WebmasterWorld points out a way that you can see it yourself. Here is how...

(1) Delete the Google cookie called "PREF"
(2) Make sure you are on the Google home page
(a) For Google.com users paste this into your address bar while on Google search and hit enter followed by a refresh.
javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=fb7740f107311e46:TM=1142683332:LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.com")
(b) For Google.co.uk users paste this into your address bar while on Google search and hit enter followed by a refresh.
javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=fb7740f107311e46:TM=1142683332:LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.co.uk")
(4) Then search on something...

I personally am not a fan of this look, but that is just my own tastes.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

As Bill Slawski accurately notes in a thread he created at Cre8asite Forums named Google's 3 Wireless Advertising Patent Applications, branding, advertising, and subsidizing, discussion on wireless advertising patents have been the craze recently. News.com reports on it, first the pushed out a title that said Google has won the rights to the patent, but that was quickly corrected. But I much more prefer to read the Cre8asite Forum thread.

Bill summarizes the three patent applications.

(1) Method and system to provide wireless access at a reduced rate:

Methods and system for providing wireless access at a reduced rate. In one embodiment, access to a WAP is provided to an end-user at a rate subsidized by a first entity. The first entity includes advertisements in an end-user view.

Bill explains that this one has more to do with wireless access, which reminds me of a Gary post named Google Awarded Patent To Make Data Move Faster to Wireless Phones and Devices.

(2) Method and system to provide advertisements based on wireless access points:

Methods and system to provide advertisements in a view of an end user accessing a wireless access point. The advertisements are related to the WAP based on a predetermined criterion.

Basically discusses the "integration" of the wireless ads into wireless enabled devices, I believe there are some geo specific ads as well discussed here.

(3) Method and system for dynamically modifying the appearance of browser screens on a client device:

In one embodiment, a connection of a client device to a wireless access point is identified. Further, the appearance of a screen presented on the client device is modified to reflect the brand associated with a provider of the wireless access point.

This is basically about branding the ads with the WAP partner's logo and content.

So in short you have three patent applications from Google. One about optimizing the ads across wireless protocols. The second is about the integration of the ads and the third is about branding those ads.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread named Ads not reviewed for one month shows how several Google AdWords customers are complaining that it can take a month or more for Google to review any ads submitted that require manual Google review.

Some AdWords advertisers say that this is a "trend" he has been noticing in the past several months. The you have to "get back in touch with them and 'prompt' them to approve ads these days," he says. It is kind of like calling someone to make sure they got an email you sent them.

Pretty poor customer service, from the looks of it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

search-engines-web, at our forums, has posted a thread that is quiet useful named Search Engine Optimization Top 50 SERPs since 2004. The thread links to his Google Alert Summary of the top 50 search results for the keyword term, Search Engine Optimization, at Google, since April 2004. He said the report is about 90% accurate. It is always interesting to see how some popular, and/or competitive terms shift at Google over the long run.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

JenSense.com reports on the new Yahoo Publisher Network features launched over the weekend. The most visible change is the new messages window on the portal's homepage. It looks like;

When you click on a message, it fades the window and pops up, AJAX style this message;

As you can see, we've added a new messaging feature! As part of our ongoing effort to communicate directly with you, we can now send tips and information to you that are specific to your account. In addition, you'll also find messages here that are general to all members of the Yahoo! Publisher Network such as announcements and notifications of new features (just like this one). We look forward to being in touch!

Other features include a calendar icon to click on for reporting purposes. Basically, an easy way to select a date range. And you can now also "edit and remove reporting categories and URLs," JenSense says.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Last week we covered service The AdSense Black List For Google AdSense. The service has since undergone some scrutiny in the forums and by some bloggers. DigitalPoint Forums has Jenstar linking to a blog entry named AdSense Blacklist? which shows some history about the person who created the list.

The problem is that the person who created the list, reportedly has created MFAs (Made For AdSense Sites) themselves. The very type that should be placed on the blacklist. In addition, sites that the person created was banned for using AdSense. In addition, the person also created sites that are specifically against Google AdSense's TOS.

The beauty of a forum thread is that the accused can defend himself. Emir Pilavdzic, aka owner of AdsenseBlackList.com had Rod post on his behalf the following message;

Well discussion on this forum made me join, but I still don't have permission to reply to this topic so I'm doing it with help of member "Rod". Thanks Rod!

Ok, first of all, I was very surprised how deep people dugg, and I don't have anything to hide. I am ashamed owner of DirectAsk.com. That site was actually some sort of experiment (made in a name of science) and one of the primary reasons that inspired me to create AdSenseBlackList.com
DirectAsk has never and will never be advertised on AdWords!! So there is no chance you'll see THAT ad running on your google ads!
Right now, directask is kind of profitable and intend to use this money into blacklist site development. By doing so I belive I'm doing more good than bad.

AdsenseBlackList.com URL was banned from google adsense becuase of the buzz it has caused by using "AdSense" in URL. Since that's their trademark, they suspended ads on my pages. That's why I'm changing url in next few days (probably AdsBlackList.com) and it will be focused on YPN and MSN ad center too.

For banning proof, check this pic if you don't trust me:
http://www.slibe.com/image/0be8394f-Slibber_jpg/

Now I don't want to keep Rod waiting to publish this post, but if you have any additional questions, please post them here.

Regards,
Emir Pilavdzic
AdSenseBlackList.com

Since then he has made a public note at http://www.adsenseblacklist.com/.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Reports come from WebmasterWorld that the "Big Daddy" Google update is now complete. The Big Daddy infrastructure rollout has been completely migrated to all of Google's data centers. We expected this would happen soon, and it did. There are still some supplemental issues, people are complaining about, however.

The Big Daddy update is coined as a "infrastructure" change in the Google index. It is a core change to how Google handles certain types of pages and how it stores them, I believe. The rankings and indexing of pages can be affected, and many are.

Forum discussion on the roll out at WebmasterWorld.

Around mid February, we covered a thread discussing the Google Checksum Features. One of those features included an RK or Rank value. It seems as if, the RK values have all been flat-lined. Over at Cre8asite Forums, Jim Westergren updates us that this indeed happened. He also had Matt Cutts from Google say "no comment" on this by stating;

I'm sorry, I can’t shed light on that at this time. :)

Best wishes though,
Matt

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Friday we reported on the Ask commercials, but if you haven't seen them as of yet - you can now. Go to the Ask Blog and read their entry Ask In Primetime. You will need QuickTime to view the commercials.

The first is named the Cafe.

In the midst of an Internet cafe where searchers have yet to evolve, one discovers Ask.com's unique tools starts remembering what it's like to feel human.

The second is named the Animals In Pants.

A scientist using the Binoculars tool on Ask ponders the question of what separates man from beast...and gets some help from an unexpected source.

Major compliments to Ask.com for posting these on the blog. And as always, forum discussion on this specific topic at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google is testing placing icons within Google Maps, for some Google Local searches. For example (it only works if you are on a PC), conduct a search on booksellers nyc at Google Local. You will notice little coffee icons in within the maps. If you click on the coffee icon, you will see a "sponsored listing" for Barnes and Noble. This was first discovered by Shimon Sandler and then I blogged it over at the SEW Blog (check the SEW blog for screen shots of this in action).

In the past, Google tried sponsored listing in Google Local and Google Maps with blue balloons.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums

MSN Search began increasing the volume of its AdCenter PPC ads on the MSN Search portal this past Wednesday. They expect to reach a 70% distribution volume within "several days." On February 24th, we reported that MSN increased the ads by seventy-percent on the MSN Search portal. Here is an other push, to get the AdCenter PPC ads out there more. PPC Discussions posted the verbiage of the email notification, which I will quote here.

ust a short note this time: on Wednesday, March 22, we’ll be raising AdCenter traffic levels to 70%. AdCenter customers should start to see an impact to their campaigns beginning Thursday, March 23, however it may take several days to reach 70%. Just like last time, your budget may be impacted due to the increase. Also, as more traffic is directed to adCenter, you should expect a decrease in traffic from your Yahoo! Search campaigns.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

AdSense Publishers who are serious about making big bucks with Google AdSense tend to be aggressive with the managing sites they do not want to show up in their ads. There was even a small unscientific study, where a WebmasterWorld member tested removing his AdSense filters and noticed a downward affect on his revenues. I was skimming Cre8asite Forums and found a thread named Adsense Black List, interesting.... The thread is probably at several other forums, but I found it here first.

It links to a tool at http://www.adsenseblacklist.com/ that helps you generate an AdSense filter for your industry. The tool will "filter low paying google ads which link to MFA (Made for Adsense) sites AND we will provide you with tools that will help you to substantly increase your AdSense revenue, all for free." You can