October 2006 Archives

Quick reminder that the Search Pulse will be live today at 5pm (EST), after being off the air for the past two Tuesdays. We have a lot of topics we need to make up, I doubt we will cover everything, but I will post a recap of the show as soon as it is archived.

To tune in visit WebmasterRadio.FM or tune in at 128k connection via your streaming media player at 5pm (EST).

Catch you all then!

We have put up our own Halloween logo and it looks like this for this year.

Which reminds me of Google and Yahoo's past logos for this day. Check Halloween 2004 and Halloween 2005, which also sports Jeeves.

Let's also not forget Cre8asites Halloween logo.

But did Google stop with the AdSense themes, remember the AdSense Halloween theme?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Search Engines are in the business of providing relevant results, whether paid or organic. In order to do this in a timely fashion, many major engines will ignore what are commonly known as “stop words,” such as “the,” “if,” “for,” “what,” etc… Thus if someone enters a search phrase such as “what are better mousetraps,” the “what are” is omitted from the search of the index, often yielding most of the same results as a search for “better mousetraps,” in this example. This can actually pose to be an interesting dilemma for search engine optimization managers.

A recent thread at Search Engine Watch forums posed a question about the handling within MSN Live of search queries with and without stop words included. An interesting discussion sprouted, with member fulton savage asking “How many users know of/use search query operators?” This lead Ian McAnerin to state

That's really the problem... The vast majority of users don't use quotes or operators. Therefore the default behaviour of a search engine is a very important issue. It doesn't matter how they act when operators are used (they should all work the same), it matters how they act when explicit operators are not used. At this point, the search engine needs to go into "handholding" mode, basically trying to guess at the best methodology for the words typed in. Generally up until recently, this meant assuming the AND operator.

Please share your thoughts or opinions at the Search Engine Watch Forums.

As a side note: In the above example, in my results, “bettermousetraps.com” disappears from the top 5 when the words “what” and “are” are included. What makes this happen? The supposedly ignored words have affected the rankings slightly in this case, and it is likely the other “ignored” words would do the same. It is possible that "what" and "are" are included in more in-link anchor texts than some of the others that appear without that in the search, and it is also possible that "bettermousetraps.com” has over-optimized for the term "better mousetraps," getting trapped in a filter that does not pick up the flag when "what" and "are" are included...would love to hear more opinions on this idea in the comments.

Barry recently covered the NY Times Google Bombing article discussion, highlighting a campaign tactic of influencing rankings based on buzz phrases or even politician names. For the politicos that are scrambling to find SEO’s for next year’s election, we have found a little Halloween story told by Google’s Eric Schmidt.

Digital Point Forums points to an article at the Financial Times from earlier in October in which Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying that within five years, search engines such as Google will help the public decide who to vote for. Mr. Schmidt claims that search will allow people to evaluate the potential truth of statements uttered during the campaign season by candidates for office. A quote directly from the article explains:

He forecast that, within five years, “truth predictor” software would “hold politicians to account”. Voters would be able to check the probability that apparently factual statements by politicians were actually correct, using programs that automatically compared claims with historic data.

Pretty cool, and it’s highly likely that people with advanced search skills are already performing this type of research, if they care to. I am sure that Gary Price could help find all kinds of voting records and transcripts to support the decision-making process. Politicians better realize that as the power of search grows, so does the power of the voter. When in a hot zone, Marines are always reminded to “keep an eye out for CNN.” Politicians are used to looking for microphones, but Internet databases may be a little harder to avoid.

The short discussion can be found at Digital Point Forums.

Reports via WebmasterWorld that Microsoft's Live Web Search is ranking blogspot blogs that have redirects to adult sites for some popular debt keyword phrases. At WebmasterWorld you are not allowed to list examples, so I tried to dig some up.

I found a search for debt consolidation currently ranks five blogspot blogs in the top ten results. The others also included other hosted redirected sites. They don't necessarily link to adult sites but they do redirect to other sites.

Microsoft is still new at the game. It is a constant battle between search engines and search spammers. Some engines are better than others at staying on top of the battle.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread explains that if you have two sites advertising for the same keywords and one is an affiliate for the other, they won't show the ad of both sites when the domain is the same, but the TLDs are different.

For example, if site A advertises domain.com in Google's AdWords. And also, site B advertises domain.co.uk in Google's AdWords. They both are bidding on the same keywords. In this case, only one of the two ads should be displayed according to Google's affiliate policy.

AdWordsAdvisor2 explains;

Under our affiliate policy, the .com and the .co.uk will be considered the same domain, so they should not both show ads at the same time. On a search where more than one ad with the same domain is available in the auction, we will show whichever one would have the highest position. There is no bidding competition between the same domain ads, so it should not effect what your actual CPC is on that search.

More details at AdWords Help.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo's Site Explorer is a very powerful tool for both competitive intelligence as well as to help your site in the Yahoo! Search index. Yahoo! Stores are now able to easily authenticate their site in Yahoo! Site Explorer, so they too can benefit from the features:

• Find which sub-pages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!.
• Find pages that link to that site or any page. (inlinks)
• Submit and track feeds for your sites.

The Yahoo! Search Blog announced this new feature last night. There are more details at the Yahoo! Store Blog and a how to here.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums discussion has several cases of Yahoo! Publisher Network publishers being banned in the past day or so from the contextual program. The thread believes there is now a round of YPN cuts, bans, going around at this time.

YPN is known to be very strict on the publishers they (1) allow in and (2) keep in the program, when compared with other contextual advertising programs.

I'll be specific and make Google look bad.

I often spot people scraping content on this site, sometimes, if I have time, I'll try to do something about it.

The other day I wrote an article named Forum Hack Enables Google AdSense Code To Be Placed On Site. Soon after, I saw via a blog search engine, the same content on this site (nofollow added -[sc]) with my content on it. So I figured I would email my AdSense rep to let him know. His response;

Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. If you would like to file a formal complaint, I have to ask you to fill out the DMCA paperwork. This is the best way for Google AdSense to resolve conflicts such as these.

Um, you see this person is making a mockery of your contextual ad program, named AdSense. But yet you don't want to remove him? Instead you put it on an other publisher to do the work? YPN, I know, would jump on this are remove it asap, if I reported it.

I told Google because I thought they would want to improve the quality of their contextual program. If I wanted to, I could have filed a DMCA originally and not informed Google right away about it.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Most of the search engines are sporting fancy and scary logos for Halloween today. Here is a run down of this years Halloween search engine logos.

http://www.google.com/search?q=halloween

http://events.yahoo.com/halloween06/

http://www.ask.com/web?q=Halloween (sporting a whole background change)

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/guides/halloween.htm

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Cre8asite Forums thread discusses the response by Ask.com to Google's request for you to only "Google" at Google.com. To summarize, Google posted Do you "Google?" asking;

We'd like to make clear that you should please only use "Google" when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.

Ask.com decided to have some fun with that request, as all of the media did, with their post You Do and/or May, In Fact, "Ask" (or "ask").

As our colleagues at Google work to protect their brand from becoming a generic term for Web search, we're receiving lots of mail and calls asking us to clarify the difference between "ask" and "Ask" (as in "Ask.com®")

To me, this seems a bit like Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com's, humor - but I have no proof of that. It is nice to see Ask.com play like this.

In any event, there is a nice discussion about trademarks and copyrights - and use of terms at Cre8asite Forums if you are up for it.

These pictures come from DigitalPoint Forums and are simple funny.

The Google Car:

The Google Jet:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports you can earn $75 for taking a survey at Google at services.google.com/inquiry/user_study.

The FAQ explains that you can get paid $75 for it.

Do I get paid?

Yes – it depends on the type of study, but typically we pay $75 for each hour that you spend with a Google researcher, either in person or on the phone. Most studies last for one to one-and-a-half hours. We don't pay for your travel time, or travel expenses, though. For online surveys, which you complete from your own computer, the amount varies, depending on the length of the survey.

The FAQ is pretty funny, it also explains that you do not have to attach electrodes to your body for this study. But you do need to be 18 years or older.

When I first reported this, I named it, Want To Be a Google Lab Rat? but I did not see it may be worth $75.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

GoogleGuy is well known in the WebmasterWorld forums. He has over 2,800 post since he joined in October 7, 2001. So he had around one and a half posts per day since his join date. This may have been the longest period of time in recent times for GoogleGuy not to make a post at WebmasterWorld.

His last post was on August 30, 2006 at 1:46 pm (EST) at the Danny Sullivan Announces He is Resigning From Searchenginewatch thread.

Hope GoogleGuy is feeling ok.

We miss you!

A WebmasterWorld thread has some credible sources claiming the site:www.domain.com, site command, at Google is becoming more accurate. In the past, conducting a site command on a domain may have returned a lot more pages than what is currently accessible on the main site.

WebmasterWorld admin, Tedster, said,

I also see sites returning numbers that are reasonable now when they were always 4X or worse -- and I see this even in cases where there was no canonical fix (or issue) on the part of the site owner. I think theBear got it right. The site: operator is returning better url number estimates now. Matt Cutts said that this was in the works.

This may be directly related to some folks using Google Sitemaps within Google Webmaster Central.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I received this email this morning from an individual who asked, "Is the below mentioned email id belongs to any of your company official?" The email was sent from web.rustybrick@gmail.com and read as follows:

From: Rustybrick [mailto:web.rustybrick@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 1:37 PM To: [removed] Subject: Cost for SEO and Link Building

Hi [removed],

I saw your Website its quite rich in content and also ranks on some keywords i am the marketing consultant in usa and i am having various Link building and SEO projects which i wanted to outsource in India.Can you let me know about your Link building and SEO charges in brief and also the portfolio of the websites which your company have been handled.Do you also provide web development services if yes please let me know in breif

Thanks&Regards

rustybrick
Marketing Consultant
web.rustybrick@gmail.com
skype :webrustybrick
aol:[removed]

I was shocked by this, RustyBrick is such a unique combination of words, why would someone in the SEO business use that for their gMail account?

The email is incredibly hard to understand, based on the English used in the email. I emailed this email address asking if they are the official RustyBrick and they responded very quickly saying, "sorry i am not the Concerned person." He then later emailed me a gmail invite, to my gmail account?

Imitation is a form of flattery but I don't want others to think that my company is emailing people trying to sell SEO services or outsource them.

I am not sure what I can do to prevent this?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

AussieWebmaster at Search Engine Watch Forums records an email sent to him from Microsoft about a new ad campaign they have launched October 27th to "promote Microsoft Live Search." Here is the email;

I wanted to make you aware of the beginning of a phased marketing campaign to promote Microsoft Live Search. As mentioned, Microsoft has heavily invested in the development of our Live Search product and we’re launching various marketing campaigns to generate awareness and gain share over time. The information below provides additional information about our initial campaign.

We are beginning the next major phase in the launch of Live Search with an acquisition campaign involving both print and online advertising, so we wanted make sure you were aware of what was happening, and also take a moment to update you on how we are doing on executing the Live Search launch plan.

Today we start a significant customer acquisition campaign for Live Search. There are plenty of details below, but you will want to look for our online ads throughout the web and our print ads running in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, USA Today and the local papers.

The campaign launching today builds on the momentum of the successful MSN migration and expands the target audience beyond loyalists to what we call sharers – people who use our services like mail and MSN channels, but have not heavily adopted Live Search. We’re starting with an introductory phase to build awareness of our new Live Search service. We then quickly move into a direct response phase where we drive people into the Live Search service itself to experience all of the great innovations and features we have spent so much effort building. The campaign starts with a bang on Oct 27 (look for it in your newspaper, MSN homepage, Hotmail, and Microsoft.com), which will include online advertising through the end of March, and sustained strategic online programs through the end of the year.

We will be building awareness using both print media as well as highly targeted, contextual online placements that aim to connect with people at the right time and place for them to consider a new search engine.

Our efforts here will be focused on connecting with consumers at appropriate life moments and through highly contextual placements. For life moments, we have chosen to focus on Travel and Health and will be deploying custom advertising vehicles on the Everyday Health Network, Reuters, the Away Network, and Weatherbug that will demonstrate how Live Search can help with the topic being investigated by driving them to the Live Search service that’s appropriate for their topic.

For the print campaign, we will have full-page print ads in the Wall St. Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer starting tomorrow. These ads will run three times in each publication over a one week period.

This is not the first time Microsoft spent money on advertising their search technology. Late January, early February of last year, Microsoft spent big on promoting MSN Search. Now they need to spend all over again, to promote this new Windows Live Search.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I reported this morning at SEW Blog that Google Enhanced Google Alerts & Adds Blog Search Alerts. Yea, so you can now subscribe via email alerts to blog search for specific keywords. They have also updated Google Alerts to "show results from multiple sources (including Google News, the web, and blogs)."

The thing is, there are two cases that I found where people who have subscribed to Google News alerts a while back are now automatically receiving Google Blog Search results.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one person complaining;

My wife runs a local community site that's been in Google News for sometime. To stay up on who’s talking about our area she has Google News Alerts setup using a variety of keywords (her domain, the community name, etc.). The alerts have been in place for over a year and yesterday she started getting notifications that included blogs that are now part of Google News - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/on-alert-for-bloggers.html.

The problem is, blog search in general is often not wanted for alerts for many people. So getting these alerts, automatically and without opting in, is bad practice.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports how someone with an Invision Power Board, a popular discussion forum software, found Google AdSense code embedded on his site, without him doing it himself.

So if you have forum software, double check that it is your AdSense publisher ID and code in the site and not someone elses.

If you see something sketchy, you should report it to Google at AdSense Abuse. More details on reporting violations at Google AdSense Help.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks why after he set up his site in Google's Webmaster Central Sitemaps, his site was no longer "verified."

Vanessa Fox from Google replied saying;

We recommend that you leave the verification file or meta tag in place after verifying because we periodically check for it. If the file or meta tag is still in place, the site remains verified. If it is not in place, we prompt for verification again. (This is to ensure that the person who verifies the site continues to own it -- sites change ownership from time to time and this verification check ensures that sites don't remain verified after they change hands.)

This seemed a bit obvious to me, but if one person didn't seem so, then I am sure many others may think it is ok to remove it once you are verified.

Again, you can verify your site by either adding a META tag to your home page or adding a special page to your main root directory of the site. Google has personalized instructions on how to do this for your particular site, when you login to Sitemaps.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long on average would you guess that it takes Google to find good links and act on it?

Let's assume that this site gives off "good links" when I link to someone. For example, I am going to link to Justilien who suggests in the WebmasterWorld thread that;

For a high-quality link from a site with "a lot of trust" I have seen it affect rankings in as little as a week.

He should see a bump up in some of his rankings in Google on about November 3rd from that link.

I'll be honest, people have told me that soon after I linked to them from within an article on this site, their rankings did improve.

I think it all goes back to trust. You get links from trustworthy sites, you become more trustworthy yourself.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a poll asking folks if they think if Google "will ever release a Disk Operating System?" By "disk" operating system, I assume he means a OS that runs native on your PC.

I personally don't think Google would go that far. I think they want to make an OS, in some sense, that runs off of the browser. Can a browser be an OS? Honestly, I do not know enough about computers to say if it is possible. There must be some basic kernel components to boot the box up. :-)

In any event, we had a few related topics discussed here in the past, they include:

• Google Developing An Internet Operating System? very detailed by Ben
• Google to Sell PCs with Own Operating System?
• Google Drive, GDrive, Platypus Coming Soon?

Currently the poll is leading towards people voting yes, Google will develop a drive OS. I personally don't know.

Forum discussion and poll at DigitalPoint Forums.

Well that was fast! After I resubmitted the site October 25th at 7am and I checked again this morning at it is back in the index. This is after Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Hacked & Delisted In Google.com, I decided not to ask for favors and used the Google Reinclusion request within Google Webmaster Central. Currently, ranking number one for Jennifer Convertibles like it should be.

I no longer get the message in Google Sitemaps;

No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site.

I know see;

No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index. Indexing can take time. You may find it helpful to review our information for webmasters and webmaster guidelines.

But when I look, it seems as if some pages are included, even spammy pages - which lead no where right now. Conduct a site:www.jenniferfurniture.com and you will see those old spam pages that were hacked in.

Kudos to Vanessa Fox and Matt Cutts of Google for making Google Webmaster Central an efficient place. FYI - it would be cool if you have a tracking number and status within the Webmaster Central Reinclusion request area - like a simple ticketing system, so you know the details.

Also see Time Line To Get Reincluded in Google With Reinclusion Request.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: I got a quote from Matt Cutts of Google that is very insightful:

No one expedited your request. I checked later just to make sure that it was processed in the order that it arrived in the queue. However, you should be aware that things like a hacked site or hidden text are among the easiest to check for reinclusion. More serious webspam incidents can take longer for reinclusion to happen, and we do not guarantee reinclusion in response to each request.

It is funny how Google Bombing is now getting a lot of attention again, with the elections coming up.

A NY TImes article named A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data discusses how it is being used in the political campaigns to win the election.

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.

The project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Chris Bowers, who conceived it, thought some of the negative articles too partisan.

Just makes me smirk. As Chris Boggs said;

Funny how they don't seem to realize that republicans are doing this too, albeit maybe at a slower pace than the dems.

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

Outstanding news, Tim Mayer from Yahoo! has told us via WebmasterWorld that Yahoo! is working on a No Yahoo Directory Tag, to compliment their recent support of NOODP Tag for Yahoo! Search.

Tim said;

Yes we are working on it. Will let you know when it is ready. What do you think is the right approach a different tag or should the NOODP tag apply to both YDIR and ODP?

I personally thing they should use a different tag for YDIR, gives us more control. But I think Danny Sullivan disagrees and thinks it would be easier just to use one META Tag for all.

Add your two cents to this decision at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Yahoo! has now added support for the NOYDIR tag, more details here.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread discusses how long would it take to get back into the Google index after being kicked out. From the day you submit a reinclusion request, how long will it take to get back into the index.

Some people say it can take over 6 months!

As many of you know, a client of mine, Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Hacked & Delisted In Google.com. I submitted a reinclusion request yesterday morning around 7am (EST). The site has fixed the hacked area but removing the script that created them.

The Google Webmaster Central Sitemaps page for this particular domain still reads;

No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site.

We did our best to figure out how they got that script on their in the first place, but since we do not run the server, we do not have enough access to determine the way it was hacked. So it can easily happen again, if we keep things the way they are.

In any event, currently the site is spam free and I will keep you posted on when the site is reindexed.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update on this at Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Back in Google.

Big conference is taking place now, named eComXpo. In any event, a bunch of PPC engines are there giving away coupons. An other accessible coupon for you is from Google AdWords, they are giving away $50 in free clicks for new users. The coupon is available at this web form.

Enter your email address and the URL of the website you want to promote with AdWords, then click "Send me a coupon!" We'll send an email in a couple of days to the address you provide containing a coupon code and instructions for redeeming it and setting up your AdWords account.

Also get your MSN coupon while they last.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Big conference is taking place now, named eComXpo. In any event, a bunch of PPC engines are there giving away coupons. One accessible coupon for you is from MSN adCenter, they are giving away $50 in free clicks for new users. The coupon is available as a PDF document over here for now.

Go to www.msftadcenter.com/events and sign up today!
Enter promotional code: ecomxpo1006
Open a new search advertising account by November 15, 2006
and get a $50 credit for ad clicks when you start an account for $5 today!*

Reading the fine print is almost impossible for me.

Also get your AdWords Coupons.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Chris Sherman has the ultimate write up on Yahoo Updates Toolbar and Bookmarks. Here is a bullet list of updates, as I see them:

• auto-complete feature
• bookmarking with thumbnail captures
• bookmark folders
• bookmark tags
• bookmarks searched by toolbar
• bookmarks and tags are private in nature with this toolbar

Download the new toolbar at http://beta.toolbar.yahoo.com/.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Most you know Mozilla released Firefox 2.0 the other day. And most you know Google AdSense has a Firefox referral program where you can earn money if someone downloads Firefox. As an FYI - this does not apply to them downloading Firefox version 2.0+, as of now.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread received a response to an email from AdSense support saying;

Thanks for writing in about the Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button. We currently offer Firefox 1.5 in our referral download. We can't yet say if or when we will offer Firefox 2.0, but I'm happy to pass along your comments to our engineering and product teams.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

In the past, having a dynamic site caused issues with most search engines. If your site has weird parameters in the URL, they were known as stop characters, and search engines would stop crawling them - in fear of getting thrown in a loop. For example, if you had a dynamic calendar system and the spider can just keep clicking next until year 3405, that is dangerous for the spider, indexer and your bandwidth and server. We have tons of articles on dynamic site topics.

As I reported yesterday at SEW Blog; Google Removes Dynamic Parameter Clause From Webmaster Guidelines. Google has removed the line that reads;

Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.

It doesn't mean Google will index all dynamic URLs. If you have around five or more parameters, the spider still may be wary of crawling those URLs. That is why Google still recommends "rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions" as good practice.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread has tips on how to rank your pages well in Microsoft's Live.com MSN Search. These SEO tips are being debated in the thread right now.

They go through subjects such as:

• Importance of Content
  
• Importance of Freshness
  
• Page size and weight issues
  
• Basic SEO Principles
  

I strongly recommend you scroll down to RichTC's post, where he goes through each component and gives his advice.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A fun debate is brewing at Search Engine Watch Forums on a controversial DMNews article by David Pasternack named Troubled times for SEO firms from yesterday. David has three points, all making a case for PPC being more challenging than SEO. Here are the three main points:

1. Marketers Are Discovering That SEO Isn't Rocket Science
2. Marketers Are Realizing That SEO is a "Fix-it-Once" Task, not an Ongoing Service
3. Marketers Are Wary of Pushing the SEO Envelope

Now, let's look at each point:

(1) SEO isn't rocket science, but neither is PPC. I do not want to take away from either. There are some very smart SEOs that can really do wonders, but SEO as a whole is not rocket science. PPC isn't rocket science, same deal - if you know PPC like Kevin Lee from Did-It, you can try to make it into rocket science and deploy all these fun statistical models (same can be done with SEO) and run with them. But PPC is not rocket science either.

(2) I think he may be confusing "search engine friendly design" with SEO as a whole. SEO includes "search engine friendly design" and I am a strong believer that search engine friendly design can be achieved through a build it once strategy. Build a solid frame work, and you are set with that. You have your title tags, meta data, body content and site architecture all set out from ground up.

But it doesn't mean you do not have to continually work! You have to add content often, you have to get links, you have to get good press and do the whole social thing to rank well over time.

And the same thing goes with PPC. You must have a good framework to build off of. This way you can run your campaigns, make changes, track those changes and continue. But without a solid framework, making changes to a campaign can be cumbersome.

PPC is just immediate. You pay, you get traffic, you convert - or you hope that is the case. SEO takes time and you normally do not see immediate ranking results from any one thing right away.

(3) I can't say anything about this. This goes to a person's personality and type. You don't have to "push the envelope," you just need to spend time and resources to make your site the best. If you don't, then you may want to get risky.

Some really great forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There is a nice poll running at DigitalPoint Forums that asks AdSense publishers to vote on if they use Google Adsense's section targeting or not.

I explained section targeting in the past, and there is also this AdSense help page now that explains it a bit better. But in short, AdSense allows you to specify the content you prefer AdSense use within your page's content, to target for matching the ad relevancy of the AdSense ads to. It should help drive more targeted and relevant ads, which should help increase CTR and revenue.

The poll asks if this really works for you. Currently there are only 17 results, I would love to see more, since the results are pretty even across the board.

Please visit the DigitalPoint Forums thread at take the poll.

Not only did we get support for the NOODP tag but we also have an official weather update for the activity we have seen Monday, 10/22. Webmasters and SEOs are noticing the search results shuffling over at Yahoo! Search.

So it is official now, there is a new index or algorithmic change at Yahoo once again.

The update before this one was on October 11th and was not a good one, according to SEOs.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.