July 2006 Archives

We have upgraded the software here from Movable Type 3.2.x to 3.3.x. Please let me know if you see any issues or problems with the new software.

Here are the main changes, some not visible on the frontend at this moment:

- Tags: Readers can find content more easily and subscribe to custom feeds.
- Widgets: Arrange and re-arrange your page by dragging and dropping.
- Activity Feeds: Get updates on comments, feedback, and blog activity delivered via a secure feed.

Plus the editor now works in Apple' Safari.

Well-known WebmasterWorld member, reseller, started a thread at WebmasterWorld named Possible Shift in Google-Webmasters Communication Policy! Reseller says;

I have noticed in recent months a remarkable shift in the way Google employees communicate with the webmasters communities.

For one reason or the other the Googlers have stopped posting weather reports about the new infrastructure. No more posts explaining critical changes on the serps. No more talking about specific DCs as they use to do. No more chat when it comes to Google serps and possible changes which are so clear and obvious to even novice webmasters. The only thing we have been hearing is the famous "Data Refresh".

Soon later, GoogleGuy comes in and argues, "I think that there is a lot of good things we've been doing for communication with webmasters lately," listing out a few key things. He then gives some specific advice and continues by saying, "I do think that we'll be discussing data centers more toward the end of the summer, if I had to guess."

Then we had Matt Cutts post himself at WebmasterWorld, saying "Maybe it's time to do a miscellaneous question thread on my site, too? " Which leads to this and SEO Answers on Google Video at his blog.

Overall, I think Google is only improving at Webmaster communication.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last week Google launched Google Code Project Hosting a place developers can go to share and host new software they have developed. I guess it is suitable for the king of "beta" to release a repository for others to release beta applications. Ed Burnette has step by step screen captures of how this environment works. Of course, we already have SourceForge for years - which is basically the same thing, I believe.

Folks at DigitalPoint Forums are discussing the long term viability of this Google product. One member said, "I doubt I'd use it. Source forge is way better, and is already established in that area." An other said, "if google can take up just 25% of current SF's share..it would be great."

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a funny recount of a back and forth between an AdSense publisher and Google. I'll quote the back and forth below, but in short, Google tells publisher, that he has invalid clicks. The publisher responses, what can I do to stop it since I am not doing this myself. Google responds to the publisher that he has invalid clicks and they will disable the account if it continues. Publisher responds back asking Google again, what actions can he take to stop the invalid clicks. Google responds that they have disabled his account due to invalid clicks. Kinda funny.

Continue reading "Google Warns AdSense Publishers of Disabling Accounts Due to Invalid Clicks But Gives No Advice"

A Cre8asite Forums thread discusses how Google's PR team sent out a box of Google goodies to a upset Google Checkout shopper. Kirb, at his blog, complained about his difficulties trying to buy something from Buy.com with Google's new Google Checkout. Well, soon after, that unhappy user was showered with an apology letter from Libby Neville at Google and tons of Google shwag.

Cre8asite Forums discusses the press benefits for Google and this act. All I know, is that this made the press and spread pretty quickly.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I reported last Friday at the SEW Blog that Yahoo! has announced the launch of a new crawler, slurp. The new slurp is faster and more efficient;

In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses methods of speeding up the page load of a page that has Google AdSense on it. Sometimes, because of the ads are called from a different server, it may make the page of the site appear to load slower, when in reality, it is the ads that are slowing down the page load times. So what can you do to speed it up?

WebmasterWorld Admin, trillianjedi says;

Source ordered content

Pull the AdSense code last and position with appropriate CSS DIV markup. I'm not sure that's all easy in my particular case as I'm using a full float CSS layout already which is probably pushing the margins of what is currently possible. I don't know that it would stand any additional complexity.

This is the preferred method. Of course, adding some timeout code to the page, just in case Google goes down would also help with things.

Forum discussion for other solutions at WebmasterWorld.

Danny reports that the $90 Million Click Fraud Settlement has been approved. $30 million goes to the lawyers, $60 million goes to AdWords customers, in terms of credits. Danny says that "apparently around 500 companies choosing to opt-out" of the settlement and will go after Google solo.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Kudos to Google for coming up with a search portal specifically designed for the blind and visually impaired! From Google's FAQ's (in nice large Font) for the product, which is still in BETA:

Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.

In Google's Blog, Research Scientist T.V. Ramen explains further:

…In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully--that is, pages with few visual distractions, and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

There are a few forums discussing this groundbreaking product, Cre8asite Forums, WebMasterWorld, and Search Engine watch Forums all have good participation. please feel free to post further relevant links, especially any in forums that cater to the visually impaired community, in the comments.

A new WebmasterWorld thread is theorizing a new Google filter, currently coined, "google 2 kw filter." Now, this is what several Webmasters are reporting:

• 2 kw term
• used to rank very high, now vanished
• with " "'s returns to high rank
• does not affect rankings for other terms on same site
• home page involved
• only happens on google, still rank high on Y/MSN
• appears on only specific but changing data centers
• long standing site
• Without quotes main keywords gone.
• With quotes, main keywords appear in normal positions

I have not validated any of this but there is a three page WebmasterWorld thread with many folks discussing this new Google filter.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo launched a new tool in the Korean domain named Webzari. What it does is use the Site Explorer data to map your inlinks on a map, in the form of planets. A link map, in a sense, with AJAX and more flavor.

You can check it out in action by clicking here.

Pretty cool and here is a screen capture.

View Large Image

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Google's Internet marketing platform AdWords places ads within search engine results: most people now understand this concept. Generally, people will not notice if the ads change on a page-to-page basis. For example, if I was one of the very low number (by percentage) of searchers that went beyond the first page of results, would the ads remain the same or change? The answer is in the number of advertisers bidding on a particular term. There can be as many as 11 (sometime 12) sponsored results within a Google search result page: 3 on top of the results - in rare cases 4- and up to 8 on the side of the page. So if there are dozens of advertisers bidding on the term, it will take quite a few pages to sift through before you found a duplicate on the side. ***Note that if an ad is in the top three, it will stay there on subsequent pages of the results.

An interesting question was posed the other day at Search Engine Watch Forums, asking if a searcher goes beyond the first page of results and "sees" a sponsored listing again, would that be credited as an additional "impression" in its statistics? He adds that this could make a difference in the performance of the ad, since total impressions versus click-through total is measured as "Click-Through-Rate," and CTR is one of the factors used in determining ad position. The answer, according to paid search expert and moderator Frank Watson, aka Aussiewebmaster, is that yes they do count as multiple impressions. He also ads with justified urgency that

The famous back button contributes to the high numbers Google - and other engines - are getting!!!

SEW's "AdWords Rep" joined the discussion and confirmed that the ads receive multiple impressions on their stats, but pointed out that advertisers are not charged by impression, rather by actual clicks. He failed to address the important point of a negative effect on CTR. I personally feel that Google should not count these as multiple impressions, unless they somehow discount them, especially in the case of the top three advertisers, who's CTR can be even more important for high-costing terms.

Join the discussion and give your thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Let's say, for a minute or two, that you are a web site. What would you ask the people that visit you? Do you like my hair? Nah. How about, did you like my landing page or do you think I look better on my homepage? Do you come here often? First impressions count, but who is it you're trying to impress?

Google?

See Cre8asiteforums, As a Site Visitor, What do you LOVE to find the most?. Bring beer.

The is some interesting discussion over at SEW Forums you might want to check out. It is discussing the trends of the major PPC providers in terms of the lengths of their ad creatives and how over time they have gotten shorter or even longer at times. Yahoo in particular seems to want to shorten its creatives while Google on the other hand wishes to test longer versions of its ads including many variations in between. What is going on here? Will Google ever stop its never ending testing? Will Yahoo, conform to the pressure of its larger rival to prevent social rejection from webmasters? Some people would like to know.

One of the members commenting on ad length says:

Our advice to advertisers was always "the more you tell, the more you sell." This is true for PPC as well. Yahoo's longer ads definitely do a better job of getting targeted clicks. But it's hard to compare apples to apples, because the audiences for the two engines are so different, and the programs keep changing in terms of distribution partners, "quality score," and so on.;

Good stuff. To find out more about where the market is heading navigate over to SEW Forums - PPC Search Marketing Creatives

This is a long time problem with the current Yahoo! Search Marketing platform. The only way for you to turn off the auto pay feature, the feature that funds your account when the funds are depleted, is by calling Yahoo!. A WebmasterWorld thread tells a newbie to the AdWords game that phone is his only option.

I do believe email also works. But there is no simple button to shut if off in the advertiser's console.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Two forum threads, one at DigitalPoint Forums and the other at WebmasterWorld show how some, but not all, of the changes that took place on June 27th have been "fixed."

dazzlindonna said this morning at DigitalPoint;

Just so you know, things aren't back exactly as they were. I know because I had some rankings show up in the June 27 update (which made me happy) and they are still there.

WebmasterWorld Moderator, SkiBum, said;

Traffic lost on June 27 appears to be bouncing back very nicely today. No changes made to the site since it got hit, just algo changes on G's end.

And some are reporting that the Google site command is beginning to work again.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Jennifer Slegg (JenSense.com/Jenstar) wrote a SearchDay article at Search Engine Watch that I was highly anticipating. The article is named Analyzing the Google AdWords Landing Page Algorithm and boy does she do that. She covers a lot of detail, but let me summarize some how what we covered in our first edition of Improving Your Google AdWords Quality Score.

Jen recommends that to achieve an improved Google AdWords Quality Score you should be careful with the following points:

• URL for landing page must work - no dead links and link to the right page (obvious but important)
• Does the ad copy jive with the landing page text?
• Clearly pull out navigation and ads from landing page from core context
• Have a contact form and privacy policy page
• Unique content - duh!

Now I am not going to give all the tips listed. The full member version is located here, these alone are worth the yearly subscription.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

This is not new, it has been around for a while now, but I thought it was important to document. Google AdWords sometimes shows local specific data on under each AdWords ad when either the advertiser calls for it or the searcher calls for it.

For example, a ny web design has listings on the right side that display "New York" or "New York, NY" underneath them. Now, I am currently in St. Louis, MO - so if I do a standalone search on web design I get some ads that end with "Missouri."

First case, I called, as the searcher, for new york based web design companies and the second case, I did not. In both, there were advertisers who set the local details in the AdWords campaigns. In the later, I did not make a specific geo based search, but since Google knows my ISPs location, it displays relevant geo based results.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

There is an good thread at Cre8asite Forums discussing the effects of doing search engine optimization on one page websites. Most of us know these sites, generally they always try to sell you on something. Whether it be collecting information, clicking on Adsense, or trying to get you to visit somewhere else these sites can be useful to the marketer but they can also have their limitations. The thread starter asks, "How would this affect one's SEO strategies? Is it more of a benefit to having one page whereby you are scrunching all of your content, and subsequently, your keywords onto one page?"

Ammon posts some thoughts on the subject:

A one-page website always has less options than a multi-page website. That always means it has limitations, and is slightly handicapped (possibly a lot more than just slightly).

Your own internal links and link text (navigation) have weight in many search algorithms. Your site structure can have weight. With a one-page site there are neither internal links, nor structure.

Whatever you can do to make one page successful, you could do to six pages to make the site more than six times as successful.

Continued discussion at Cre8asite Forums - One Page SEO

Via Wired, Shawn Hogan, who runs the incredibly popular DigitalPoint Forums and Tools has been sued by Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America for allegedly downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent. Shawn denies this and has turned down the offer to settle the case for $2,500 - he wants to stand up for everyone who has been falsely accused and fight. Shawn said he is willing to "spend well into the millions on this." Wired calls Shawn a "Hero."

Let's show our support by dropping him a note in DigitalPoint Forum Thread his sister started for him.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread shows that Microsoft is conducting some focus groups for the adCenter product this August. The thread creator notes that this is run by an independent agency that is "conducting a user interview session in my area (San Francisco) that is sponsored by Microsoft Adcenter in August."

Yahoo! has done this in the past and also sent out recent paid surveys, and I hear they may be doing focus groups during SES time (but not 100% sure).

Nice to see MSN Search doing the same.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has members estimating how much the forums make in AdSense income. Some estimate $500 per day, which is $15,000 per month. They base it off of how much they make in the revenue share feature of the DigitalPoint Forums community.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Have you ever accidentally searched for a number at Google? Practitioners of search engine optimization would probably agree that trying to rank well for a single digit in Google search results is probably a waste of time, except possibly for the testing that could be accomplished. How many searches are there per month for "1" or "2," or even "3275984," for example?

A thread at Cre8asite Forums describes how a UK member performed a search at Google UK without selecting "results from UK only," and was returned some interesting results. He found BBC Radio station websites 1, 2, and 3 listed as number one for each of the respective digit searches. This lead to others around the world trying the same thing, and it seems that media companies have the slight early lead in this rankings category.

I think personally that this could be an interesting marketing idea for a company with lots of money to spend on optimization and link building. We have discussed the merge of traditional advertising with search engine marketing here is the past. I could see pitching something along the Pontiac lines of: “Want to find our product? Search for the number 1 at Google.” Of course your competitor would probably buy the top paid listing. Also, this sounds like an SEO Contest in the making...

Join the discussions and add your results at Cre8asite Forums.

Every now and then I check the directory listings I have at Yahoo! to see what is up with them. I have bookmarked them ages ago and when I have some free time I check them out. I checked last night and noticed that Yahoo! has added the "Save to My Web" button to the top right corner of the pages.

Social search, online bookmarking, is found everywhere with Yahoo!. In Yahoo! Local, where I bookmark phone numbers I use every now and then and now in the directory, which gets less and less attention from Yahoo.

The little icon to me is very useful. If you want to see my listings you can check them out in the New York Consulting list or the generic Yahoo! Web Rank.

I posted a forum thread on if this is a new feature for the Yahoo! Directory or not at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google's AdWords blog just announced that the AdWords reports now give you the ability of Estimating invalid clicks. Yea, you got that. Google will be showing you which clicks they have deemed "invalid" and credited towards your account. Great move on Google's part, IMO. First to do so and I hope the other PPC engines follow. More on invalid clicks here.

How do you see the data, just add them to the reports as so:

This goes great with Google's invalid click efforts being considered resonable, just one more step in the right direction. Chris also posted a topic on click fraud this morning, asking if you are worried about click fraud? Well this may just help a bit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Wikipedia is, by its own "simple self portrait" an encyclopedia that anyone can change or add-to. Of course, there are editors, who seem to do a pretty good job of keeping content relevant and useful, and of removing blatant attempts of "link dropping." DMOZ, conversely, is a human edited directory of websites which has had its fair share of problems and accusations of corruption.

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums discusses how a member seems to be seeing more and more Wikipedia pages indexed highly in Google search results. Others concur (including me). Does this mean that Google is starting to place as much or more faith in Wikipedia references as those from long-trusted and powerful DMOZ? The member asks about the seemingly fruitless process of submitting to DMOZ:

Why should I bother now when Wiki sits atop Google (for nearly every information search term) and they let you add your link if you have a extra good resource.

Good discussion follows. Naturally, any discussion about DMOZ will lead to agreement about the headaches associated with submission and acceptance. It also is beginning to seem many people are wary of the "Web 2.0" folksonomy aspect of Wikipedia - and how much you can trust it. I have seen examples of people actually attacking Wikipedia's credibility quite often in forums and even in comments to posts in here where I have "dared" to use Wikipedia as a reference link. Some call it a mere content-thief. Some "interesting" people even compare Wikipedia to a cult.

The main point is, however, will Wikipedia help to affect your own search engine rankings if you have a listing there? As one comment points out:

You're missing the point. Wikipedia pages might rank well, but that's not the same thing as saying that out-bound links from Wikipedia are valuable. Google doesn't have to PR0 a directory to devalue it's OBL’s (outbound links).

It may be wise if you are a brand owner to ensure that your brand has not been ill-defined by a competitor or even someone who is just a little too excited about your product or service. I would recommend taking the time to at least submit an article before that happens...

Join the thread at WebMasterWorld Forums. Another related WebMasterWorld thread discusses Wikipedia getting two listings in Google for one term.

The Internet marketing platform known as "pay-per-click" marketing has grown in popularity, gathering new participants at a very rapid pace. Along with the majority of legitimate businesses involved in search engine marketing and the contextual marketing products tied to it (which place the same ads in sites deemed to be relevant), there come the "fraudsters." Click fraud is naturally a worry to many. Following up on recent coverage of this topic in here (Google's Efforts to Curb Click Fraud and Click Pirates), we'll take one more chance to highlight the subject.

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums was started asking if there is a way to stop someone from clicking on your website if you suspect them of fraud. The member describes finding that a site which offers the "you click on me and I'll click on you" version of click fraud was the number one referring site in his logs. The first thing to do, as pointed out, is to contact the portals that are publishing your ads. Then someone offers code which specifically blocks a website from accessing yours through a link, returning a 403 "Forbidden" error.

I wonder...is this enough to protect yourself from an individual site? Does the click still count in some networks even if it leads to the error page? Join the discussion at WebMasterWorld Forums.

I personally feel that the problem needs to be tackled at a higher level. People do not have time to police their logs to find suspected fraudulent “clicksters,” but paid software does exist for that purpose. One free product that seems to be gaining traction is ClickFraudNetwork. Also, SEMPO is teaming with Fair Isaac to produce an in depth report on the matter.

I'm convinced, after reading Cre8asiteforums' Multiple Domain Names & IIS?, Just set it in IIS or 301 Re-Direct ..., that programmers are not unlike football players. They like to call out code words to their team mates and spend hours practicing plays to fake out the offense. Okay. I take that back. Programmers AND SEO/M's are like football players.

"An ANAME points a domain name to an IP, i.e.:
blah.com => xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

A CNAME points a domain name to another domain name, i.e.:
blah.com => webserver.blah.com"

What I tell ya?

Next time your late to an event or to work, you won't be able to blame Google or wild animals getting out of the zoo. Thanks to Google, they have enabled Google Maps for Mobile with traffic information reports. Get the situation on the interstate highway before you head off to work, or even if your sitting in traffic find the best route to get out. The unique feature provides an overlay of traffic problem areas on the current Google Maps application for your compatable phone. To enable your phone for this functionality, point your web browser on your phone to: www.google.com/gmm

According to Google:

The latest version of Google Maps for mobile will enable users in the U.S. to view comprehensive information on traffic conditions in more than 30 major metropolitan areas–and partial information in many others–right from their mobile devices. To get information on traffic conditions in a particular area — including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and New York City — users simply move to the desired location within the application and select “show traffic” in the menu. The most up-to-date traffic information will be sent directly to the users’ mobile device, and will highlight the conditions on the covered commuter routes using red, yellow, and green overlays.

In addition, when mobile phone users search for driving directions, they will now see the expected drive time as well as any unexpected traffic delays, making travel planning much easier and more effective.

I downloaded the Google Maps for my blackberry this morning, and just now tried to monitor the traffic in Austin, Texas. While I was delighted to get the traffic information, I found it hard to decipher the yellow (moderately slow) areas from the rest of the map (as all roads are already yellow). Despite that, its a cool utility for the super geek.

Discussion at SER Forums - Google Maps for Mobile with Traffic Information

Billboards exclusively promoting websites? Does you domain enable others to remember it if it were on a billboard? There is an excellent thread on WMW that examines the uses of domains on billboards and what "type" of domain would be an excellent choice for advertising on a billboard. These days having a short and memorable domain for your business or website is priceless. People are paying more today for premium domains then they were several years ago. With type-in traffic being captured by all sorts of purveyors in order to monetize it. Businesses with excellent memorable single or easy to remember words and phrases can really benefit from these domains in the offline world.

One of the admin's on WMW starts the thread with some criteria he considers useful for making a "billboard" test for your domain.

1) Easy to remember, because drivers won't be able to write them down.
2) No hyphens or non dot-com TLDs - drivers will forget hyphens, and probably type in the .com even if you advertised ".net".
3) No easy-to-confuse variations that you don't own. (E.g., plural/singular variants when applicable).
4) Relevant to the buyer's interest or need.

While I agree with most of those, there are a few things I don't. I think .net's in general can be good for billboard purposes, there are plenty of examples of companies using .net's out there. Hyphens' are not good I agree, but they are still in use. One of the members cuts it down a little and says "Any chance you can get a memorable URI in front of an audience, take it!" Can't beat that assessment.

So what about all those Web 2.0 sites with plenty of periods and compressed words such as "http://del.icio.us" or "ma.gnolia.com"? One of the members dmorison states his rule is "#1 rule is never to use anything that requires clarification when dictated. Before registering a domain, imagine yourself telling someone about your URL or your email address over the phone". Good advice.

One of the gems from this thread is the discussion of geo-targeting with domains for specific services and how in the future direct navigation will become important. Webwork, a moderator on WMW says:

Billboards are the toughest medium for recall since exposure is brief, the viewer is concentrating on something else, and writing is often impossible.

What happens, come the day, when the lemmings latch on to this idea? When you pass 213 billboards emblazened with URLs on them?

My advice to the local webmaster, the webmaster or business that is geo-targeting for a service company, a service company being one that performs locally: Make the URL real simple for the masses, bordering on brainless, to remember. Apply the same thinking that went into building the domain-as-direct-WWW-navigation model.

Some great information all around. I would encourage you to take a peak at this thread today if you have the time.

Continued discussion at WMW - Drive-by Business URL's - The Billboard Test

On July 19th, we reported that Microsoft's adCenter's reporting features were severely delayed. Today, reports come from WebmasterWorld that the daily statistics are back to normal.

No other reports have been published in forums, as far as I can see.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the procedure one should take when switching a site or server to a new IP address.

(1) Make sure all files are properly moved
(2) Make sure the site functions properly
(3) Try and keep your old site running on the old IP for two weeks after switching

The first two are no brainers. The 3rd, well, search engines run their own domain name servers (DNS), and those servers don't always update their records as quickly as other DNSs. So, that is why folks recommend keeping the old site on the old IP for at least two weeks. This way if the search engine's DNS does not update as quickly, it will still find a site to go to.

A week or so ago, we moved our physical server to a new data center. That means we did not have our sites running on the old IPs for any amount of time. What we did instead was lower the TTL (Time to Live) on the domain names to the lowest possible number and then migrated over. This is not the best solution, but for us, it was our only solution at the time. Ranking affects? Unknown... Traffic remains stable in my reports.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Moderator, engine, posted a new thread at WebmasterWorld noting the news that Database guru to lead Yahoo social search.

Yahoo!, if you did not know, invests heavily in social search. From MyWeb, to desktop search to Flickr and Yahoo! Video - social, tagging and all that fun Web 2.0 stuff is something Yahoo! takes seriously.

Yahoo! hired "Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan, 45, as vice president and Yahoo research fellow in charge of defining the strategy behind Yahoo's "social search" system, based on his expertise in databases, data mining and privacy-preserving technologies."

Hopefully this will make things more interesting over at Yahoo!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

My coverage this week will be sporadic at both this site and SEW. There has been a sudden need for me to be offline for this week. I have to be with family at this time. Everyone in my family is OK and well.

I am sorry for any inconvenience.

There are two types of people who read our coverage.

(1) Those who can not make it to the conferences.
(2) Those who can not wake up for the sessions but spend most of their time at the parties

Joe Morin is the later, but he is known as the official party manager of SES events. He has posted the *OFFICIAL* SES San Jose 2006 Party & Events Schedule and plans on updating the thread as we get closer to the SES event.

Here is what we got so far:
Sunday Night: Be in the bars
Monday Night: Two private parties
Tuesday Night: The Google Dance (i'll be bringing my wife)
Wednesday Night: SEMPO's In-House Search Marketer Mixer & Webmaster Radio's SEARCHBASH 3
Thursday Night: Nodda

More details at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Link baiting is when you come up with a unique way to get links through developing cool content, tools, videos and so on. Link baiting gets its name from fishing. You bait your hook, you draw it into a pool of water where you know it is concentrated with fish, and you expect lots of bites. But you better (1) bait it with enticing food and (2) make sure your food is of the tastes of the fish. Same with link baiting. If I create a cool tool about how to cook pork, but I market it to Jews or Muslims, it won't get much attention.

Now, is this frowned upon by search engines? Is it a form of link manipulative link building? I don't think so? If your audience doesn't bite your bait then that is the determining factor. But if you create useful, and tasty bait, and your audience bites, then you deserve the reap the ranking rewards.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Seems like some Yahoo! Publisher Network publishers aren't satisfied with their YPN checks, they need to take the survey YPN is offering for pay. Or maybe they are just money hungry. :) Yahoo! is pa