June 2006 Archives

So you are considering outsourcing search engine optimization, and you have in front of you a statement that guarantees you will get rankings. Should you be impressed? Should you laugh out loud? The answer is and always has been "buyer beware." It is virtually impossible to trust a guarantee of true organic listings within any search engines results page for any keyword phrase, no matter how obscure.

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums has a member posting a promise that comes up about every few months in the big forums:

I was shown an SEO services offer with all the normal submission to 400+ engines, resubmission, keyword research etc. etc. etc. but with one strange new entry Guaranteed Google Listings

The bogus 400+ submissions jargon aside, this is just an invitation to disappointment, in the opinion of many of the responding members. One of the best replies came quickly from 5400 post monster TrillianJedi, who says:

Never trust any SEO (no matter who they are) that says they can guarantee you a position in the SERPS.

Personally, I feel this is not only an invitation to disappointment, but actually a possible invitation to disaster. If you enter into a business relationship with any company that guarantees search engine rankings within the organic (free) results, you may become the subject of future Google or other search engine bans, because if someone is guaranteeing rankings, chances are they are not doing it legitimately within the webmaster guidelines. OK I’ll get off my white hat horse now and let others comment.

Please join the discussion at WebMasterWorld Forums. There is also a nice older thread at Search Engine Watch Forums related to this, and you can find an even older thread back at WMW.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread sprung my interest in locating one of those shopping cart icons near a Google AdWords ad. So far, I have only seen them in screen captures, such as the one posted here. The thread asks, how do I get one of those icons in my listing, of course someone explains that it is from Google Checkout.

The search term that triggers a shopping cart icon in the buy.com ad on the right works for CS50, the thing is, if you are using Safari, you may not see the icon. In Firefox I see it fine, but no matter what I do, it does not appear in Safari. Plus the ad text is slightly different.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forum.

Typically a search engine representative would not reply to a thread where a Webmaster accuses them of penalizing a site for using a competitors service. In a WebmasterWorld thread, a member said that his site is suffering in MSN Search due to placing Google AdSense on the pages.

The WebmasterWorld members reply to the thread creator that his accusations are unfounded and wrong. But then we have a shocker, at least in my opinion, MSNdude (official MSN representative), replied to the thread!

That's certainly not by design. I suspect something else is wrong with your site to cause this. However, we'd like to check this one out -- just in case -- because if it really is our bug, it's very serious and we'd want to fix it immediately.

This is just not typical.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses a topic we discussed a while back named AdWords Adds Account Size Limitation. Basically, at some point, Google does not allow you to add more keywords to your account, they have some account size limitation.

Some forum members say that to increase that keyword cap, all you need to do is call your Google representative and beg. They can increase it for you.

AdWordsAdvisor replied to this thread, in response to what that cap is defaulted at. Some believe it is 50,000 keywords or so. Here is the response;

If you run into a keyword limit and need more, you may certainly contact AdWords support with a request. They'll review your account, and reply dependent on what they find there:

* An account chock full of thousands of keywords that are carefully selected and performing well? Your request will likely be approved.

* An account chock full of thousands of randomly picked keywords that aren't targeted to the products or services advertised? You'll likely get suggestions about how to streamline your keyword lists, and more effectively use keywords within the current limit.

So give your rep a call.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a WebmasterWorld thread named Removing the Google sitemap got all my pages indexed. People in that thread tend to be piggy backing off each-other, saying that after removing their Google sitemaps file from the Google Sitemaps product, their indexing issues (i.e. pages being in the supplemental index) have improved or more stabilized.

Should Google Sitemaps be blamed or attributed to the improvement on ones indexing in Google?

Reviewing these cases in the threads, without specific evidence or examples, I strongly feel Google Sitemaps is not the issue here. Many other sites have recently improved in terms of not displaying the "supplemental result" near the search listing during the time frame of this thread.

I believe this is just one of those common cases of timing and coincidence.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This site, as well as some of my other sites, will be moving to a new hosting location. The same server, just a different location. The move is suppose to take place tomorrow morning, when I do not update the site. So most of you will not be affected. Just wanted to inform you of this prior.

Any problems that you notice with the site, the feeds or anything else, please let me know at barry.schwartz@gmail

Yahoo! sent out a newsletter this month notifying customers that U.S. Sponsored Search Listings No Longer on MSN. And I quote,

MSN's U.S. search distribution agreement with Yahoo! Search Marketing ends this month, and Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings will no longer appear in MSN's U.S. search results. Although we regret the loss of MSN as a distribution partner, it was not unexpected, and we do not anticipate a significant change in the total amount of traffic to our advertisers as a result.

We expect that MSN will continue to display Yahoo! Search Marketing Content Match listings in the U.S., and Sponsored Search listings in non-U.S. markets, beyond June 2006.

As you know, MSN has been powering the sponsored search side of MSN Search and Windows Live Search with Microsoft adCenter. So, is this the official end of the Yahoo! & MSN relationship. Looks that way.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

One of the ways that website owners sometimes try to defray the costs of hosting and other overhead is to solicit donations from their readers. We are fortunate not to need to do that at SER (although I am sure Barry would be happy to accept), but this is a perfectly acceptable method of raising funds, in my opinion. I have sometimes wondered if this method works. As a matter of fact, in recent research for an upcoming conference, I came across a website that actually tried to use PayPal to accept donations but was shut down. This is a different story, however, since the website was soliciting donations in a manner that was somewhat questionable in taste. See that whole story at savetoby.com...

A thread at WebmasterWorld Forums from earlier this month asks a very interesting question:

Has anyone tried to make money with PayPal donations? And if yes, how do the earnings compare to AdSense earnings (same site, same traffic, etc..)?

The answers ranged from

I never received a penny with PayPal donations.

to

While donations are few and far between the value of each is at least an order of magnitude higher than an AdSense click.

Another member claims to make twice as much from donations as from AdSense.

This is an interesting subject. From the responses so far, I would compare AdSense to the slow turtle that beats the rabbit in the long race. Yet the average donation received by the people who spoke up seemed to be certainly worth it. Head on over to the WebMasterWorld Forums to vote for your income champion.

One of the good things about most search engines, including Google, is the fact that if you have your site properly formatted and your content easily crawled and indexed, you will most likely rank first for searches of your own brand name. Many companies or owners of websites, when considering search engine optimization, actually first started thinking about it when they found that their site or name was not ranking - or even worse, that negative articles were appearing above their site.

A thread recently started at Search Engine Watch Forums by one of the arguable leaders in the SEO industry, Barbara "Webmama" Coll, she points out that she has seen a noticeable dip in brand name rankings in the SERPs. Knowing that Barbara works with some pretty big names, this should be a topic of concern. She states

I have confirmed that a number of brand name sites are no longer showing up in their traditional #1 position. The new results do not appear consistently so it must be part of a new algorithm.

Unfortunately, not many people seem to have found this thread yet, because there has been very little input. I tested some of the pharma brands that we work with, and they fortunately are not having the same problem. However, if this is a trend and not just an anomaly, it would be nice as a community to know about it.

If you have experienced a drop in Google rankings recently on very "obvious" brand terms, or if you haven't seen such results, please stop by the Search Engine Watch Forums and share your experience.

Reports are coming from the forums that Google has updated the AdWords interface. The most comprehensive documentation of the changes made are at WebmasterWorld. Basically, Google placed most of the features in additional tabs. When you login to your account and drill down to a campaign, you may notice a little balloon pop up on the right hand side. Under the ballon, which introduces the new tabs, include three tabs, named "Summary", "Keywords," and "Ad Variations." Here is a screen capture.

The AdWords Support page has detailed information about the new tabs. It reads;

Your account statistic tables are now presented on separate tabs, which can be found along the upper right edge of the table. These are the available tabs:

* Summary displays the performance totals for your Ad Group.
* Keywords shows you how individual keywords are performing, and allows you to add new keywords or edit existing ones. This tab appears only in campaigns with keyword-targeted ads.
* Sites shows you how your ad is performing on individual sites you have selected. You can add new sites or change your bid for existing ones. This tab appears only in campaigns with site-targeted ads.
* Ad Variations displays all the ads you have created for this campaign. You can add, edit or delete ads here.
At any time, you can view the information from all your tabs on a single long page. To do so, click the View all tabs at once link below the display table. To return to the tab view, click Condense tables into tabs.

There are other changes, you can read at AdWords.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Chris Sherman has the huge write up on Yahoo's settlement of the click fraud case. He describes;

The terms of the settlement include a cash payment of $4.95 million to plaintiffs' counsel and a provision that will allow advertisers to file a claim for Yahoo to investigate potentially fraudulent clicks back through January 2004. Yahoo will pay refunds to advertisers who file claims if it discovers evidence of fraudulent clicks.

Chris explains that the amount does not come close to the $90M Google Settlement but Yahoo is "offering cash refunds, and there is no ceiling on the amount it will refund if it finds evidence of click fraud," where Google offers advertiser credits.

Forum discussion on this settlement at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread discusses one site owner who has mysteriously received two hours worth of free Google AdWords traffic. He received an extra 800 unique visitors from pagead2.googlesyndication.com, the referring source of Google AdWords. The site owner does not have any active AdWords campaigns running. The site owner does not run any affiliate program.

Possible reasons for the traffic listed in the forum?

(1) Spyware or something that changes the referral source of a fake click bot or something similar.

(2) A mistake by another advertiser, where the advertiser plugged in the wrong URL and let it run four two hours before realizing.

(3) A secret admirer who sponsored 800 visitors for this site. :)

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Probably in coordination with Google Checkout's launch, Google has revamped the Google Accounts page. It now has a sections to update your personal information, your credit card information (checkout and wow CC), your default ship to address, and your Google services which include;

AdWords, Analytics, Base, Browser Sync, Calendar, Co-op, Gmail, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, Groups, News, Notebook, orkut, Personalized Homepage, Personalized Search, Sitemaps, Spreadsheets, Video

Forum discussion at DigtialPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Google has been busy with the AdSense product, this time adding channel tracking support for the referrals program. The Google AdSense whats new page says;

We've added channel support to our referrals feature to offer you more tracking flexibility. Now you can track the perfomance of your referral units across different pages, sites, or topics. You can also use channels to determine whether one referral design works better for you than another.

Better tracking is always appreciated.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The rumored Gbuy (click to see historical tracking of coverage) has been launched under "Google Checkout" at http://checkout.google.com. It basically has the same exact interface from the sellers or buyer accounts perspective as when I first tested it in March.

As Chris Sherman wrote;

Checkout isn't a person-to-person, stored-value system like PayPal. But with its pricing and ease of use, it's a compelling alternative for businesses of any size that are currently using PayPal as a payment processing system—particularly with its aggressive pricing and incentives for AdWords advertisers to use the system.

The cool thing is you can checkout with Google at many stores, here is a list of them. Want to see a tour of Google Checkout from the buyer's side, click here.

If you are a seller, you can learn more about it at http://checkout.google.com/sell. As a seller, and an AdWords advertiser, you get a special little shopping cart logo near your AdWords ad in Google. (WOW). Here is the sellers demo.

Are you a developer and want to code in Google Checkout, check out Google Checkout API.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums & Cre8asite Forums.

I spotted over at Philipp that Google seems to be manually scanning books for the Google Book Search service by hand. Don't believe me? Check out the first page of The Trial and Death of Socrates. Yea, there is a hand there. Is it Matt Cutts's hand? Chris Boggs thinks so (kidding). Very nice find Dan Cohen.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Arbitrage is defined by Wikipedia as "the practice of taking advantage of a state of imbalance between two or more markets." When related to Internet Marketing, specifically paid search and contextual advertising, this practice has become known as "AdSense arbitrage" since this was probably the first widely used platform. Essentially, people make money by bidding on less expensive terms to drive people to a page with AdSense or some other Publisher Network ads. When people click on those ads, the money that the site owner makes for the click exceeds the money that he spent to drive the traffic to the site. With a good enough "conversion rate," this can be very lucrative. Note that we spoke about this in April when covering a SEW thread.

A more recent thread at WebMasterWorld brings up the subject of AdSense arbitrage in a slightly different manner, but leads to many similar points about the ability to make money using this process. One member states:

Arbitrage works best when you can take advantage of the differences in cost/return on 2 different networks.

And another ads:

Whenever I have used AdWords my AdSense earnings have averaged 25-30% of the advertising investment however I use AdWords to introduce new product lines or a new site.

It is speculated that Google and Yahoo are trying to do something about this. One would have to wonder how long that may take, however, since it makes the portals money even though it may muddle some search results. See the thread at WebMasterWorld Forums. The other very long and entertaining thread you may remember is at Search Engine Watch Forums.

What makes a website look legitimate? Is it the design and style? Is it the content? Is it the links to and from the site? This question is very subjective, because for many Internet surfers, "legitimacy" of a website is based on his or her preferences. Some people may feel that a site is more legitimate if it offers no advertising, and others may feel the opposite, for example.

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums links to an interesting study published by Harvard and Berkley scholars titled "Why Phishing Works." The WMW member relates this to AdSense as follows:

It is sometimes a concern that putting ads on a (legitimate!) site will reduce the perceived quality of a site--that somehow the site has been hijacked by the webmaster who wants to make a quick buck. (Whereas we're innocently just monetizing our websites, of course!) But this research seems to indicate that with careful page design and intelligent use of ads, the perceived authenticity or authority of our page content may actually increase.

Whether or not the Phishing paper can be related to this topic is questioned, but I feel it is an important snapshot of some people's views of websites. A few members share what they feel makes a site look legitimate. I personally do not get offended or impressed by sites that host AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, or any other sort of static ads. I do get a little perturbed when pop-ups or pop-unders come into play, however. I can smell a Made-For-AdSense (read more about MFA's) site within seconds of entering, and usually microseconds later I am elsewhere (*unless of course I am fishing for some good overused content- just kidding)

Hopefully some more opinions on this subject will find their way into the thread soon at WebMasterWorld Forums.

We know that Gbuy, Google Payments is coming soon, heck I have been accepted within Google Base to accept Google Payments for a while. But people are anxiously awaiting the public release of this Google Payments, GBuy payment solution from Google.

There is a DigitalPoint Poll asking users Are you going to make the switch to Gbuy? The results so far are a bit shocking, since no one really has publicly tested it.

Currently we have over 38% saying they will switch, only 19% saying they will not and 42% saying they just don't know. Why would someone switch without seeing it first? Well, it is Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The other day we reported that Yahoo! Publisher Network Allows Contextual Relevant Images Near Ads Only. We discussed the importance of placing images near the ads on your site. They increase visibility and increase the click-through rate of the ads. Last night I was talking with Jeremy, ShoeMoney, on NetIncome and he said he wrote a script to automate the process of finding relevant images to place near the contextual ads.

Today I found a thread discussing this at DigitalPoint Forums. Basically, ShoeMoney's advertising banner maker searches image databases based on a keyword phrase and gives you options for images you want to display. You check off the images and then the tool automatically downsizes the images to appear next to your ad units. Try it out, works kinda well.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The forums are buzzing about a new Google AdSense format seen around the Web that has both an image ad and text ads in one ad unit. JenSense has a picture of it in action and you can see an other screen capture of it in action here. One forum member said;

Tonight I noticed on my blog that my 160x600 ad had a picture of a basketball in the top spot.

Others report seeing the image ad in a 120x240 AdSense unit.

This is definitely feasible, since Google has recently been reported mixing Link Units Within Standard Ad Units.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.

This has happened to me several times, I am told to visit a Google property and it turns all my Google properties (web search, gmail, etc.) into the language I just visited. For example, a Cre8asite Forum thread shows a woman who was stuck viewing French only in Google. She was desperate to switch back to the English results.

Want to get stuck using Google France? Do a search on seo and add &hl=fr to the end of the URL. Ah! How do you get back to the English results? Well, you can go back to Google.com, but sometimes that doesn't help. You can click on the link on the bottom of the Google Français homepage that reads, Google.com in English or you can once again append &hl=en the "en" for English to switch back.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Now, search conferences have sessions named "Reputation Management," in fact I have covered not one but two of these sessions at SES. When we first talked about it, I named a post Out-Ranking Negative Reputation Sites, then I don't think it had a name. Now there is a whole business to ensuring your company's online reputation is secure and positive.

A Search Engine Watch Forum thread named Negative Info/Personal Harm discusses a personal brush with online reputation harm. Basically, a local newspaper published negative information about the person, which he says is wrong and if anyone searches on his name, up comes the article. It is harming him both personally and professionally.

Search Engine Watch Forums members offer some great advice on how to try to ease the issue. Basically, rank other pages on top of that bad result. How does one do this?

- Create Personal Web Site
- Put up a blog
- Send out press releases
- Boost other positive pages on the Web by linking to them
- Write articles and have other sites syndicate them
- Join forums and post

Anything to get more pages, targeting your name, and ranking above the negative result is a step towards personal reputation management.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Thank you all for voting, we won the best blog award from MarketingSherpa in the category of Search Marketing. We actually did not win by popular vote, we "were second-highest. However, they did nail the highest percent of "Excellent" ratings -- vs 'Not Bad' and 'Blah,' and that's what matters." Honestly, I was hoping we would compete against Search Engine Watch (a blog I write at), Threadwatch, Matt Cutts and other more well-known in the category. I suspect we would not have won if some of those blogs were in the running.

It is still a huge honor to take the win for "Best Blog on Search Marketing."

Search Engine Roundtable
Bloggers include: Barry Schwartz, Benjamin Pfeiffer, Chris Boggs, Kim Krause, Shawn Hogan, Ignacio Hernandez, Morgan Carey, & Dan Thies
http://www.seroundtable.com/

Sherpa Note: This is the second year in a row for this group Weblog to win the Search category. Notably, the voting for the entire category as a whole was fairly even (aside from one obvious ballot stuffer). The guys did not get the highest total votes, they were second-highest. However, they did nail the highest percent of "Excellent" ratings -- vs 'Not Bad' and 'Blah,' and that's what matters.

I just updated the post to attach the winners logo, and I hear they are sending me another mug. :)

More details at MarketingSherpa.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Search Engine Optimization often involves creating relevant content and adding it to your site on a regular basis. If the site is properly coded and spiders can get around easily - or even if you use Google Sitemaps properly - you should be able to count on the number of pages of your websites in the Google index increasing. So what happens if Google comes to town and your server has crashed? Will they immediately drop a bunch of your pages from the index? All of them? Obviously the answer to the last question is no, but could they hit your total pages indexed for this?

A recent thread over at Search Engine Watch Forums has a member asking if a server crash could be responsible for a dramatic dip in the number of pages indexed when he checked the next day. He says:

the number of indexed pages drastically dropped to 100+ (from 2000+) and for certain sub domains started appearing supplemental results. Even after 3 weeks, Google doesn't seem to pick these pages again.

Now this post was written about 3 weeks ago, so it is time for an update, but a couple of good answers followed the question.

Vayapues, a newer member who is very active and seems quite knowledgeable, immediately brings a calmer tone to the topic when he says:

Google understands that your server goes down from time to time, and will not penalize you for it, unless it is down for a few crawls in a row.

Then another member Fathom hints that this could have had something to do with Big Daddy, saying:

As many websites lost many pages recently you quite possibly suffered the same fate, and the crash merely occurring in and around the same time provided a convenient camouflage.

I have asked DinSurf for an update...hopefully the thread at Search Engine Watch Forums will pick back up...

Shawn is incredibly creative, he wrote code to follow the Digg Spy page for his forum. The page named DigitalPoint Forums Spy has a play and pause button at the top. When in play mode, it shows you in real-time, the new posts as they happen. Kinda neat to watch on such an active community. The tool is AJAX driven of course, so that makes it even cooler, we all love AJAX.

Shawn said it only works in Firefox and Safari at this moment. He is working on making it Internet Explorer compatible.

This is one more reason why Shawn's community is so loyal, proud and constantly growing.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo Publisher Network, Google AdSense, and a slew of competitors are all clamoring for Internet space to host their advertisements. Although this is causing some problems with the overall quality of content found for many competitive topics - due to sites specifically created to host these ads - we won't go there this time. The bottom line is that the portal pays the website owner every time someone clicks on an add within their designated box. These boxes are usually pretty obvious, marked with "Ads by Google" or "Ads by Yahoo." So how much can you make off this sort of Internet marketing?

A nice poll at Digital Point Forums asks YPN publishers what their average revenue per click (RPC) is. The choices range from less than 25 cents to above 2 dollars, with most respondents so far somewhere in between. In fact, in the small sample so far, 31% say they make an average of between 25 and 50 cents per click. That's not bad. Hopefully we'll get a much larger sample in there over the next few weeks and see where we as publishers stack up to the averages.

One thing to keep in mind when reading a thread/poll like this is that it is very specific. In this case, the only question is how much you make per click. Determining your actual profit takes many more calculations. Simple numbers (like your overhead including how much you pay to host the site, for example) mix with more complex numbers involved with arbitrage and other marketing techniques used to drive the traffic to the clicks. In either case, it is nice to try to get a good idea of what you could make. Of course it would be nicer if the poll was public and people told us what they made per industry, but chances are you can figure that out based on how much you are paying per click in one industry versus another.

Join the thread and add your average RPC at Digital Point Forums. I also dug up an old post from SER that actually ranks top page at Google for a related search. I wonder if this RPC theory still holds true?

We have discussed in the past how placing images near the contextual ads in the Google AdSense program works well in increasing ones clicks on the ads. Which in turn increase ones revenue. Those past articles are named Images Vertically Aligned to AdSense Ads, Using Images To Increase Your Adsense and Image Ads Above AdSense Ads Increase CTR. But what is Yahoo! Publisher Networks' policy on the use of images near the contextual ads to increase visibility and CTR?

A DigitalPoint Forum thread has a response from Yahoo! on the question of placing images near the YPN ads.

A review of your URL NOT LIVE PAGE shows that the only possible issue with that page concerns the images placed next to the Yahoo! Publisher Network ads. These images must be contextually related to the content on the page as a whole. For more information about our policies, please visit the Terms and Conditions link, found at the bottom of most pages within your Publisher Network account.

And I quote again, "these images must be contextually related to the content on the page as a whole."

So you cannot place random images on the site, which make sense. The images most be related to the content and then you can place them near the contextual ads.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

WebmasterWorld has a featured thread named Three Warning Signs of a Nightmare Client. I find this thread very important for most business owners to read. I have been living by these signs for a long time now and I believe it works well. So what are the three warning signs of a bad client?

"I need to do this as cheap as possible"

If price comes up right away in a phone call or email, I am not afraid to tell them. I know my company does not offer cheap services and if they are looking for cheap services, then they will tell me we are over budget. The thing is, when I give a price and then they try to pick it apart. "Well, if I just wanted this piece, how much would that only cost?" I tell them that we do not build sites in "pieces" if you want to use us, we build out the site from scratch. Now that is me and most companies do work on portions of sites. But having this policy, of only working on brand new sites, makes it much easier to say no to the "cheap client."

"I need it yesterday"

Good thing we are busy, I tell them an ETA of a few months and then they jet. Anyone who needs it yesterday, and seriously needs it yesterday, has not properly done their planning. If they have and they have the budget to cover expedited services, then go for it, if you want the stress. But often, the stress is not worth it.

"My current web designer won't call me back"

This is classic and I have fell for it in the past. I got a big brand client, who hired us and soon we learned that the design they are using was from another design firm. The thing is, any changes we want to make to the design, we had to do on our own. The design firm was not available to make those changes on our behalf. That made me think, why? Guess what, 75-percent through the project the client became horrible to work with. The deliverables were not there, the people in the company did not respond to our needs and we had a deadline to meet for the VP. What happened? I gave them a full refund and walked away. Learned a lesson and moved on. Why a full refund? That is just how we operate and we are fortunate enough to be able to do that.

It is often not feasible to walk about from a project 75% through, so it is important to look at these warning signs.

Let me be clear, after they become a client and do continued work for you. You can expect that the client may want to cut some costs and have the occasional "need it yesterday" email or call. That is expected. And since they are a client, you do your best to meet those needs. Building a client base is also about building a relationship. You want the best for your client as you do for yourself. So you work through these times with them. But before you have established a relationship with a client, they should not be asking you for the above three, in my opinion.

Continued forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I found a thread at DigitalPoint Forums a bit shocking. The member said, "I am going away for a week trip and I want to take my ads off the website on july 20th, when I leave, in case of a click attack when i am not here."

Google AdSense publishers are afraid to leave their computers, afraid to go away on a vacation due to competitors or just evil-doers, clicking on their ads to have them kicked out of AdSense.

I run AdSense on a few sites and I never personally worry about this.

My question is, are those who are more likely to worry about getting booted from AdSense already doing something a bit on the wrong side? Do they run MFAs? Are they clicking on their ads in a "natural way." Or does this fear reside on most AdSense publishers that notice a nice income from the contextual advertisements on their pages? I don't know.

But if you want to see what others say, and most responses are back and forth, discuss at DigitalPoint Forums.

Since the Eisenberg's new, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, is such an insightful book filled with ways at understanding how people use web sites, I thought it best to just jump into a discussion on it. Head first.

Even if you've never read it, or plan to read it, we're looking at some of the ideas in a thread at Cre8asiteforums called Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success. I've been taking notes on the book, to write an official review. It's taking longer than normal because I'm not skimming it. I'm enjoying every page.

One of the key points raised in it (and believe me, there's a ton of them), is that our site visitors have agreed to come to our sites. They weren't dragged there. They volunteered, often based on massive marketing efforts. They can just as easily click right off, unless the web page has something they want. This situation can be something as scary as asking a teenager to view a web site during the summer, that is about teens and educational stuff. If you've ever tried to get a cat to bark, or a teenager to go anywhere besides MySpace on the Internet, you will understand why you need to read this book.

In MSN's continued strive to make the best search engine on the planet, they come back to the forums and boldly ask Webmasters, What is Spam? A WebmasterWorld thread started by MSNdude, asks;

Everyone complains about Spam, but the single term hides a multitude of different problems, and different people often seem to mean different things when they use it. I know how we use the term here at Microsoft, but I would be interested to hear your ideas about it; there seems to be enough difference of opinion to make for an interesting discussion.

This post comes soon after MSN asked What Are Quality & Authoritative Sites?. So let's do the same here and try to pull nuggets out of MSN's posts.

(1) MSN talks about "hierarchy of spam," some spam pages being spammier than others.

(2) MSN asks if affiliate sites are spam?

(3) Interesting how MSN seems to imply that an authority or quality site, may be consider spam. And if so, "Is it worth losing a quality or authority result to get rid of a spam result?" Hmm...

(4) Spam is not junk pages. Junk pages are useless. Spam can be useful information. And I quote;

If a page is a useless result for any imaginable query, we call it "junk" not spam. A junk page could be "under construction" or it could be gibberish surrounded by ads, or even a page full of fake links.

(5) MSNdude defines spam as; "A fair definition would be a bad search engine result caused by someone doing something over and over again where once should have been enough, but I'm not sure it'll work to just call ALL bad results "spam.""

(6) MSN suffers a lot from "obscure Javascript redirects" than other spam tactics.

Lots of good information in that thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Microsoft sometimes shocks you, it is like they do not follow the rules that Google and Yahoo! set forth in being secretive about how, why, what and when they do search index updates. Yahoo! recently began giving us updates, that yes, we did do an update. Google followed suit, to let us know during an update, what to expect, in order for us to give feedback on the update. Today, I noticed a post in a WebmasterWorld thread where MSNdude says, and I quote;

It's a pretty safe bet that we won't do an update on a Sunday afternoon -- especially not one as beautiful as today was. :-) Saturday is out too. In fact, we're unlikely to do an update on a Friday, since it can mean sacrificing our weekends if there are problems.

Now, I try my best not to update our sites on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays also. But I never saw Google or Yahoo! say they would most likely not conduct a search index update on any particular day. In fact, I think they have done index updates on the weekends.

Anyway, this is a good piece of information to know about MSN. They most likely will not update the index on the weekends, or even on Fridays.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This is kind of funny, a dress up Matt Cutts web site. You can dress up Matt Cutts, famed Google search quality man, in a nice assortment of clothing and customs. You simply drag and drop the clothing on top of Matt. Now, it doesn't drag at all on Safari and drags slowly in Firefox for Mac.

I wouldn't post this if I didn't think Ma