January 2007 Archives

The sixteenth edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. We talked about how Google solved some of their Googlebombs issues. We also talked about the Yahoo Title issue that is now resolved. Yahoo! Search Marketing's Panama is coming this Monday. We talked about YouTube sharing revenue with users, and the possibility of spam videos. Plus many more fun topics with Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search and some SEO tips. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file here and listen at your convenience.

Update: Show archive link fixed, you can now listen to the archive here.

Topics We Covered:

1. Yahoo! Fixes Titles in Search Results Sourced From Internal Anchor Text
   
2. Ready Or Not, Here Comes Panama: New Yahoo Sponsored Listings Ranking Model Coming Feb. 5th
   
3. YouTube to Share Ad Revenue with Users - "Spideos" Here We Come?
   
4. Writing Search Engine Friendly Titles
   
5. More PageRank Changes at Google?
   
6. Toolbar PageRank Without Page Being Indexed in Google?
   
7. Yahoo! Site Explorer Wants You To Show Off Your Links With Badges
   
8. Google Bombs Defused? Google Updates Link Analysis Algorithm
   
9. "My Publishers" Tab Found in Some Google AdSense Accounts
   
10. Google Offering "Custom Placement Packs" AdSense Publishers
    
11. Google Groups Launches New Design
    
12. Google Images Undergoes Redesign
    

Lightening Round:

Continue reading "Search Pulse 17: Googlebombs, Yahoo Titles, YouTube Rev Share, Panama Monday, SEO, AdSense, PageRank, Groups & More"

Yesterday, I reported at Search Engine Land that Google Officially Adds Docs & Spreadsheets Integration With Gmail, based on Google's announcement. I wanted to be clear that it does support Microsoft Word and Excel documents, so I have been tracking a Google Groups thread, where a Google representative confirms that if an email with a Microsoft Word or Excel file is sent to your gmail inbox, it should show, "Open with Google Docs" or "Open with Google Spreadsheets."

When I try from my Mac, sending a Word or Excel document from Microsoft for Mac, it does not show me the option in my Gmail account. But if it did, it should look like:

Technically, Google is importing and converting the Microsoft document into a Google formatted document.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Middle of December we reported that Yahoo! said they would be adding support for a no Yahoo Directory tag, similar to the NOODP tag, by the end of this month.

Tim Mayer of Yahoo! has posted an update in the WebmasterWorld thread in message number 3238011 saying it has been delayed but they are still working on it.

Update: This is still in the works. I will provide a revised ETA in the near future. Tim

The update is greatly appreciated, and we have faith that it will be coming soon. Hopefully in February?

We broke the news originally with Yahoo! To Add No Yahoo Directory Tag on October 26, 2006.

Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.

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

As, I reported yesterday, Yahoo! announced that they launched new features for their Site Explorer Tool. As an FYI, Site Explorer went live September 29, 2005, it was the first of its kind, until Google came out with Sitemaps, followed by a name change to Google Webmaster Central. (Google Sitemaps came out first, sorry for the mistake, I guess I am losing it. :))

The features Yahoo! added includes:

• Site Authentication using META tags
• Detailed Authentication Errors
• Delete URLs
• Site Explorer Badge

The first two are cool. The last one, Site Explorer Badge, we spotted and reported on yesterday, before they announced it.

Delete URLs scares me a bit. As soon as I heard, I changed my Yahoo! ID password to something more secure.

All you need to do is login to your account (or someone elses) and click the delete URL. I didn't try it, but I would hope there is an added layer of confirmation. Maybe a requirement to add a meta tag or something to confirm it, or maybe an additional confirmation email to a non-Yahoo! email account?

In any event, I would change my password on my Yahoo! account, so maybe you should think of that.

Tim Mayer from Yahoo! explains a bit more about the delete URL feature:

If I use Delete URL, do I also need to use Robots.txt? Yes. Once you've used Delete URL to remove a URL from our index, we recommend using robots.txt to exclude the content from being added to out indexed again. Robots.txt excludes Yahoo!'s crawler (Slurp) from re-indexing your content. A robots.txt exclusion rule reduces the number of pages Slurp will read from your server. It also helps you save bandwidth on your website. Note: Site Explorer Delete URL service facilitates the quick removal of your URL from our index and is helpful when a URL that you have excluded, continues to show up as a thin document, but it may not prevent our crawler from continuing to crawl the URL again. It is not an alternative to using robots.txt.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Yesterday, at Search Engine Land, I reported that Google Adds Local Reviews In Search Results. In reality, they were there in the past, but Google made them bigger and added reviews. When I reported it yesterday, I noted that pizza 10010 returned three local results with reviews. Now when I search for the same thing, I get the same three results, but no reviews.

Here is a side by side:

The image on the left was a screen capture from yesterday, notice the stars, showing the reviews. The image on the right is from just now, no stars, no reviews. I wonder why it is not returning reviews now.

In any event, this is important, because (1) it takes up a huge amount of screen real estate, (2) there can be user reviews on your listing. So you want to make sure you are in Google Local and that you have good reviews. More tips on that here.

I also covered the other engines and how they handle local searches at their main search engine. But Gary Price also has a good review of other local search services.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

One of the biggest complaints over Yahoo!'s contextual network, the Yahoo! Publisher Network, was that when you used multiple ad blocks on a page, it would sometimes show the same ad from ad unit 1 in ad unit 2. Reports via DigitalPoint Forums have been noticing that this has been happening less and less as the days go on.

Ads no longer repeat ad nauseam across your ad blocks on a given page. Before, depending on how many ad blocks you had on a given page, the same ad that showed up in the #1 ad queue position would show up in all the #1 ad queue position of all your ad blocks on that page. Not anymore. I'm no longer seeing repeated ads across the ad blocks.

After that post, it appeared that things went downhill again, but then recent posts have shown to confirm this.

I'm noticing more and more geotargeted ads, and no repeating ads too.

No repeats, CTRs are up by 75%. I'm happy.

3 bocks of 5 ads each and they are showing 15 different ads.

Which is very good improvement.

No official word from Yahoo! yet on this, I will track the thread.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: A Yahoo representative has confirmed to me via email that improvements have been made to YPN ads and to keep an eye out on the YPN blog for details.

Update: Here is that blog post at the YPN Blog.

Monday we reported that Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? YahooSarah replied to that at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums explaining that the Overture tool is having issues but they are not taking it down.

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

In her message, it is clear that Yahoo! will be focusing their efforts on a new keyword tool, as opposed to getting the Overture tool working consistently.

The new Yahoo! tool will have an API, that will enable developers to integrate right into their campaigns, so I look forward to it. But it appears that Yahoo! will not continue to fully support the old, Overture tool.

Aaron Wall reports that Wordtracker is now offering a new free version of their keyword tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Defintely worth bookmarking, in my opinion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion over the PageRank score found within Google's Toolbar. So I thought I explain why I, and many other SEOs/SEM reporters would love to see the PageRank score disappear from the Google Toolbar.

Back in the good old days, SEOs used to do whatever they could to increase their PageRank. If you had a high PageRank, typically a 7 or higher - you were set. You could literally rank for almost anything, if you also followed that up with good, on-page SEO work. That quickly went away, I believe, with the florida update of November/December 2003. In any event, SEOs used to wait for the toolbar PageRank to update, to see how they did in getting links from high PageRank sites. If they did a good job with that, they would see their PR increase and immediately see their rankings improve. SEOs were able to see an update coming, when the various Google Data Centers didn't match each other. Google rankings would change on some data centers, the link counts would change and the PageRank would change. Hence, the term, the Google Dance. Those days are pretty much over. Google is now changing almost daily. Google's current link count is almost useless at the time being. Google's data centers are frequently updating.

Ever since then, top SEOs and even Google engineers have been pushing to explain that PageRank is not as important as it once was. In fact, some go to extremes to declare Google PageRank Lunacy, in Sweden, we had a Google representative tell us that the link command was not so useful, later we had someone quote Google as saying PageRank is for Entertainment Purposes Only, which was then refuted by GoogleGuy. We had two other posts that discussed GoogleGuy Once Again Responds to Link Command and Why Does Google Show Old PageRank Values?

All that understood, it is clear that many would like to see the PageRank score go away from the Google toolbar. I am confident, this won't happen soon. I would say that most engineers would probably like to see it go away. But the marketing folks probably would not. I am not talking for Google her, I am just throwing out my feelings on it.

So we see that people are or were obsessed with PageRank, and rightly so. Hence why SEOs and reporters and even some Googlers wanted to tell people to not live and die by it. Some were extreme in their message, but for good reason.

So what is the bottom line at this time on PageRank found within the toolbar?

As Matt Cutts wrote back in his more about PageRank post:

At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes.

PageRank in the toolbar does show you something about the site. But we are far past the days where a Google PageRank update in the toolbar would have almost an immediate impact on your rankings in Google. This is important and you should not obsess over it. It is an indicator of the quality of links you have to your site, but the indicator is old and is not real time - so you need to understand this.

I hope that explains some of the questions out there on Toolbar PageRank, why SEOs fight about it and what it really is at this point in time.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Link building is one of the most important deliverables of any ongoing search engine optimization plan. All three major engines are known to assign some value to a page based on the links pointing to it, and many SEOs research high ranking competitor backlinks to find the ones that they feel may be helping those pages rank well for desired terms. The problem is, even though search engines advise site owners to get relevant links to their pages, they also frown on linking schemes designed to gain links at a rapid pace.

So the "game," for SEOs, is to build links to a page without arousing suspicion on the part of the engines. Unfortunately, there are many so-called SEOs out there that build links with no regards to relevancy or to the link-host's probable reputation, and end up causing their clients or their own websites to fall in the rankings. The easiest ones for search engines to detect include obvious link schemes such as "free-for-all" link directories or buying links from highly visible networks. However, some people claim that some links are built to their content without their permission, bringing to mind the old argument of whether or not one can be penalized by someone else’s actions.

MSN has recently taken the forefront, carrying the standard for the other engines when it comes to banning or penalizing sites for linking practices, and being very specific about the reason in their communications with affected webmasters. This has caused a rush of posts at WebmasterWorld with members complaining of being penalized or banned due to what MSN terms as unacceptable linking practices- and claiming innocence. Is MSN throwing proverbial babies out with the bathwater?

On January 15, one webmaster claimed:

I was banned from MSN very unfairly , i am not into illegitimate affiliate network or link exchanges...

A thread started 3 days later purports that:

It seems that if one site on a shared IP gets banned, then ALL SITES GETS BANNED!

This was followed by another thread 3 days after that started with the assertion that:

In December, if I read my log files right, MSN changed their way of handling links, the quality of incoming links and if they are natural or not.
Sites that have been in an "illegitimate link exchange" were banned from MSN, and if you have more than one site on the same IP and/or own more than one site ALL sites were banned.

So is MSN handling this problem a little too heavy-handedly? Share your thoughts, experiences or opinions at any of the three WebmasterWorld forums threads linked above.

Since the introduction of the Google Toolbar and subsequent addition of the PageRank display, there have been many discussions about its value. SEO specialists really began to focus on PageRank in 2003, almost to the point of obsession. Since, people have realized that PageRank is an important indicator of the probable weight that Google gives certain pages' inbound links, but not the do-all-end-all.

A recent thread at WebmasterWold forums poses an interesting dilemma for PageRank-watchers: what if there is toolbar PageRank displayed but the page does not appear to be in the Google index? Can this happen? According to a few posters, it has happened over the past few weeks. Does this mean that having PageRank does not necessarily mean the page can be ranked in Google results pages?

The thread has some interesting suggestions, including the idea that the page or site may be banned or penalized, as well as that it may just be a glitch. However, the thread "died" on January 16 with no further follow up. One particularly insightful comment is that:

It would seem like a strange tactic for Google to leave PageRank on a site that has been banned. PageRank is not only viewed by webmasters but a lot of web users and professionals judge their surfing experience on PageRank. (Ex. Where they buy from, trusted sources, etc.)

I personally never use PageRank to help me decide on the validity of a page, trusting instead the content and any linked sources within. But I had never thought of this, and it makes sense that some people would use it as a vote of confidence in the page, even though PageRank is certainly fairly easy to manipulate, which is why it is most likely not the major factor in search rankings.

Some people have chosen to almost completely ignore PageRank...I wonder if Rand still does a year later? Anyway, it would be nice to have an update on this question. Join the thread at WebmasterWorld forums.

There honestly has not been much discussion in the various forums about the recently released adCenter beta by Microsoft. There is a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums that calls the new beta more confusing and has slightly more bugs. But with that, coincided reports via WebmasterWorld that advertisers in the adCenter program, noticed their traffic from adCenter increase dramatically.

WebmasterWorld adCenter moderator, Receptional, said:

It's morning now and apart from one of our accounts being on pause for no discernable reason (yeh... they are still looking into it... come ON Microsoft!) we are piling on the bids so fast that we are experiencing really dramatic increases in volumes but can't directly attribute this to a change in the query share.

People suspect the increase in traffic is due to Microsoft switching on content network by default for all these campaigns.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums.

There are two conferences coming up, outside of the Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld's PubCon events that I would like to bring your attention to.

The first is Elite Retreat where Jeremy Schoemaker and friends are running the second ever show. The first was a huge success and the next one in San Francisco will be a sure bet. Jeremy just announced that he secured Guy Kawasaki to speak at the event. He recently spoke at WebmasterWorld's PubCon and he was great. So check out
Elite Retreat, it takes place on March 19-20 at the San Fransisco Courtyard Downtown in San Francisco and costs $5,000 per person.

The second is a Sydney, Australia event named Search Summit and takes place on March 1st & 2nd.

With over 90 individual presentations on everything from how to research keywords through to optimising your website architecture, 40 speakers from the US, UK and Australia, Search Summit aims to bring the type of quality conference that is common in the northern hemisphere, but has been sorely lacking in Australia.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.

Yahoo! Site Explorer, Yahoo!'s Webmaster tool that details your index count and link count for your pages and site, has released badges. These Yahoo! Site Explorer Badges can be placed on your site to promote how many links you have to a page or to the site overall.

Here is what it looks like in real time:

I find it weird that Yahoo! is offering this badge. Just doesn't jive with what a search company should want SEOs or webmasters to promote. But I can be wrong - something just doesn't sit well with me on this.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums - thanks Kevin.

A Search Engine Roundtable Forums thread spotlights a feature that Google seems to be testing on select advertisers. The feature appears to be a detailed budget report or analysis, on the edit campaign section, under the budget settings section.

For some AdWords advertisers the section has a "New: Come back in 15 days to get a more detailed budget recommendation based on your campaign performance." There is a link to an FAQ section that reads:

Detailed budget analysis: When possible, we will analyse and display the percentage increase in clicks that you would be eligible to receive with an increased budget. We make this detailed analysis based on your campaign performance data over time, so it is only available when you have not altered your campaign within the last two weeks.

Basic recommendation: In many cases, we will supply a budget recommendation based on historical data for the same or similar keywords as yours. The basic recommendation considers variations in language and location, but it does not consider traffic you might receive from the content network.

Kevin Gibbons has a screen capture of the budget settings page.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

We know that when Yahoo! fully moves over from the old search marketing product (Overture) to the new one (Panama) that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool won't be that useful anymore, but it still will have some valid and useful historical data. But it appears that reports around the web are showing that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is currently down.

Also, tools that depend on the Overture tool, are spitting back errors.

Examples include DigitalPoint's tool that is reporting under the "No data for phrase:" under the Overture column. Also, SEO Book's tool returns an error that reads;

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to www.inventory.overture.com:80 in /home/awall19/tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/clsOvertureSuggest.php on line 37

Many of the reports call for it being down for a few hours and then coming back up. But it is now down again. I wonder if Yahoo! will keep supporting this tool in the future.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: YahooSarah has replied to the threads stating:

Hey there, I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

YahooSarah

A WebmasterWorld thread has continued discussion over the past week or so, of the Microsoft Live.com page submission tool being broken.

Microsoft has numerous page submission pages depending on the geolocation of your site. There are various reports of the page bugging out on users.

I have tried the US page and it seems to work fine for me.

But after continued discussion, it is clear that the page is not working for some users.

It can be specific issues with certain browsers or security settings, I am not sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, there were tons of buzz over a prank YouTube video that claims Google launched Google TV. The guy has two videos, taking you through him using Google TV. Here is the most recent one.

Is it real? Probably not.

(1) Any person who knows HTML could have put this together.
(2) tv.google.com, which is the URL that is shown in the video, does not exist as a sub domain for Google within the DNS info.

There is a ton of discussion over at Google Blogoscoped Forums. Also Techcrunch has well over a 100 comments, and we also have a thread at DigitalPoint Forums.

How do we know that tax season is just around the corner? Not because it is a month after the new year, but because we are seeing tons of H&R Block ads promoting their TaxCut program. I noticed it on my blog as Flash ads, and I described how to close out AdSense flash ads, a technique that felt very empowering, but yet only lasted a short while.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread is trying to figure out a few things.

(1) How to block them
(2) Are they paying well
(3) Why they are coming up if they are not relevant to a specific page of content

Right now, no one has posted a secure way to block them with the exclusion tool. TaxCut.com did not work, I wondered if they tried hrblock.com. I suspect the ads pay pretty well, since they are overpowering all the other ads out there. Finally, I do not know why Google dropped the contextual relevancy aspect, and are showing these ads, even without them matching the contextual relevancy of the content of the page.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The news over the weekend was all about Google's YouTube sharing ad dollars with their users, the users who generate the video content. Jennifer Slegg has her Search Engine Land post YouTube to Begin Revenue Sharing for Video Providers.

WebmasterWorld has the largest conversation going on in the forums we track about it. Most are fairly skeptical, thinking people won't earn so much. But some are not so skeptical, if AdSense proved anything, there is money to be made from niche sites, and niche topics.

Video is just an other means of content distribution.

ShoeMoney took a look at what a number one ranked video at Google Video can bring in money wise. Add that to when YouTube starts sharing ad revenue and you can start a whole new industry.

Will it produce a ton of YouTube and Google Video spam? Probably. Splogs for Video, let's coin it "Spideos." I guess that doesn't have the same ring to it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Kevin Gibbons reports that Google Adwords Qualified Professional logo's stop verifying. The Google AdWords Professional Logo can be placed on sites where the company or individual has meet the requirements by Google to be certified as an AdWords Professional. In the past, if you clicked on the logo or seal, it would verify that the user is a legit individual. Now, for many, it takes you to the AdWords Login home page.

I feel it is probably a bug and not some devious and evil scam to get people to sign up directly with Google.

If you are logged into Google, you should get the verification. For example, Kevin Gibbons status shows up for me, only when I am logged in.

This individual has met Google's requirements to attain recognition as a Qualified Google Advertising Professional.

To become Qualified, this individual has:

• Accepted the terms of our programme.
• Managed at least one AdWords account in a master account for 90 days.
• Built and maintained our 90-day spend requirement.
• Passed the Google Advertising Professional Exam.

Kevin Gibbons is one of the first 100 Google Qualified Advertising Professionals in the UK.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

The Google AdWords Blog announced that a Google AdWords Editor for Mac is now available for download over here.

Prior, a WebmasterWorld thread had the PC version working on an Intel Mac with Crossover for Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/).

That is now no longer required.

As AdWordsAdvisor says;

I can assist with that one. ;) Please take a look here:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor/index.html

BTW, this is the sort of update that'll routinely get announced on the Inside AdWords blog - you'll find a post about it there now.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday I reported at Search Engine Land that Google Video Search Now Includes YouTube Results based on a Google announcement. So a search on Scooba Cleaning in Action brings up my YouTube video that I used in My Scooba In Action post at Cartoon Barry.

Part of the announcement clarified the roles of Google Video versus YouTube.

Google's strength -- and its history -- is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.

So Google will be more about the search side of things whereas YouTube will be more about the community aspect of videos.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night, more new reports of PageRank changes have been reported at the various forums. Again, the PageRank score shown in the Google Toolbar is old, not up to date, and is basically for entertainment purposes only - but people still do track it.

On January 9th we reported the last Google PageRank update. It seems too soon for an other PageRank update to be happening, but anything is possible.

This is either a new PageRank push to the Toolbar or it is still some data fluctuations of the old PageRank push.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Since I just wrote Open Advice to Yahoo! Regarding New Search Marketing Tool, Panama, I figure I highlight a WebmasterWorld thread that offers Yahoo! advice on their publisher network product. Here are some of the ideas from the thread:

• Ad Link Units (like Google Adsense offers)
• YPN for search and sitesearch (like Google Adsense offers)
• YPN referral links for advertisers to sign up with Overture (Like Google Adsense offers)
• Open the ad market to other countries. You can start with the other English-speaking countries, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
• Better targeting
• Option to delete old channels
• Option to enable/disable RON ads
• Quick and easy tool for management of multiple accounts ala adwords editor
• Better contextual targeting.
• Unique ads in every ad unit.
• The ability of advertisers to select which sites they'd like to advertise ("Advetise on this Site").
• Image banner ads!
• and more...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night, I, as well as hundreds of other AdSense publishers received an email from Google offering them access to the "Custom Placement Packs" program if they would just add a larger banner ad unit to their site. Here is the full email:

Subject: Add 300x250 AdSense units to your site

Dear Publisher, After a recent review of your site, we would like to include seroundtable.com in our custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers. We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300x250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit. The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites. They require that the units be placed "above the fold" on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site's visitors without scrolling down. If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages. We also recommend you use the newly launched ad placements feature to define your ad slots to advertisers so they can bid on specific placements on your site. For instructions on how to create ad placements, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50691.

My initial response, was a quick reply asking, and I quote:

How much can I make on this?

Seriously, you do not tell people to add larger banner ads to their site without giving them some data. Am I crazy here? Whoopie! I get to place some of Google's largest brand advertisers on my site! So they pay how much more? That is what I want to know.

I thought I was special, but it looks like dozens, if not hundreds of other AdSense publishers received the same email.

Threads at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld are buzzing with it.

The first response to the DigitalPoint Forums thread was, "I would ask them how much more money I am gonna make to see if its worth while." Duh.

Some suspect this has to do with Google wanting more ad space, real estate, to test the video ads they recently talked about.

I will tell you this, I will watch the results of the threads and let you know how it works out for them.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

There is a nice thread at Search Engine Watch Forums that has civilized and useful ideas and feedback for Yahoo! to add to their new search marketing product, Panama. Here are some of the ideas in short from the thread:

• Custom URL Management
• Date Range Selection Needs an "All Time" Feature
• Key Features Unavailable When Setting Up Campaigns
• Default Settings Are Expensive
• The Standard Match/Advanced Match and Content Match Hierarchal Layers are Confusing
• Add a Client Center
• Improve Custom Reporting
• URL Search
• Add Conversion data for ads
• Move keywords from one ad group to another
• Keyword tool with monthly searches
• Working in 2 seperate screens leads to errors
• and more...

That is some useful feedback...

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Matt Cutts and team wrote at the Google Blog that they have minimized "the impact of many Googlebombs" by "improving our [Google's] analysis of the link structure of the web." They then go into the history of the Googlebomb and explain why they did it...

Danny Sullivan with Google Kills Bush's Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs does an excellent job looking at all the angles of this announcement (yea, he is even on the road when he wrote this). So look over there, I am going to steal his before and after screen shot for a search on miserable failure.

Google Bomb Photo credits, Danny Sullivan

One thing Danny did not discuss in much detail was the specifics of the algorithm change, an aspect that is on the top of the mind of most SEOs right now.

For that, we can take a look at Bill Bill Slawski's comment on Danny's post.

Compare that to what Anna Patterson wrote in the section on "Document Annotation for Improved Ranking" in the following document:

Phrase-based indexing in an information retrieval system.

Instead of [BOMB otherwords], it tries to locate "related phrases" (some examples in the patent application). It also provides a means of weighing the strength of related phrases.

Of course, they could be doing something different, but this is the only document I know of from Google that discusses a means of stopping Google Bombing:

[0153] This approach has the benefit of entirely preventing certain types of manipulations of web pages (a class of documents) in order to skew the results of a search. Search engines that use a ranking algorithm that relies on the number of links that point to a given document in order to rank that document can be "bombed" by artificially creating a large number of pages with a given anchor text which then point to a desired page. As a result, when a search query using the anchor text is entered, the desired page is typically returned, even if in fact this page has little or nothing to do with the anchor text. Importing the related bit vector from a target document URL1 into the phrase A related phrase bit vector for document URL0 eliminates the reliance of the search system on just the relationship of phrase A in URL0 pointing to URL1 as an indicator of significance or URL1 to the anchor text phrase.

Matt Cutts replied commending Bill on his find, but saying he cannot confirm or deny if this patent is used in the new link analysis.

Let me paraphrase the paraphrase from Bill's quote.

A related phrase bit vector for document URL0 eliminates the reliance of the search system on just the relationship of phrase A in URL0 pointing to URL1 as an indicator of significance or URL1 to the anchor text phrase.

Seems like a nice method, but who knows...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread spots a third new Google AdSense feature for today, this one is called "My Publishers." It is a new tab added to the top tabs of the AdSense console that allows you to search for "my publishers." This was reported over at Media Vipers and he has some screen shots, I have cleaned one of them up for you.

You can see that it is a search form that allows you to search by email, company name, contact name, client id, association date and country. Very interesting screen...

The URL to get to this page doesn't work for me, but it is at https://www.google.com/adsense/dev-search-publishers.

I am not sure how this will be used exactly. Maybe it will be for a new breed of consultants, those that manage Google AdSense ads for publishers. I guess time will tell.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Search Engine Strategies is coming to London in a few weeks. I will not be going to SES London, so I am not sure if we will have our typical SES coverage of the event. If you would like to sign up, you can do so at the SES site. It is taking place between February 13th and the 15th in the ExCeL London. For a quick glance of the sessions being given go here.

Rob, evilgreenmonkey, posted the *OFFICIAL* SES London 2007 Party and Events Schedule, so far this is what we got:

Monday 12th February
Drinks and socialising in the Crowne Plaza Hotel bar. The traditional pre-conference shindig that gets everyone in the mood.

Tuesday 13th February
No confirmed parties.

Wednesday 14th February
Valentines Day - In contact with one possible sponsor although this spot is still up for grabs.

Thursday 15th February
LondonSEO.org - confirming sponsor.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Andy Beal is running a poll asking SEOs and SEMs in the community to vote for the Godmother of Search, this is a play off of Shoe Money's post on who is the Godfather of Search.

Currently in the running are:

• Vanessa Fox
  
• Marissa Mayer
  
• Jill Whalen
  
• Kim Krause Berg
  
• Elisabeth Osmeloski
  
• Heather Lloyd Martin
  
• Jennifer Laycock
  
• Christine Churchill
  
• Dana Todd
  
• Shari Thurow
  
• Barbara Coll
  
• Jennifer Slegg
  

Jennifer Slegg, aka Jenstar, aka Jensense.com, is currently killing the vote with 332 votes. She is followed by Jill Whalen with 72 votes and then our own Kim Krause Berg with 49 votes.

Jen is a super star, she has risen to the front of the SEO/SEM pack very quickly. However, Jill and Kim are both legendary personalities in the SEO/SEM community. Kim started her forum, where Jill actually was a moderator at, back in the day - prior to Jill starting her forum (I believe that is how it went). So in terms of age, Kim and Jill are more in the "godmother" category - not to take anything away from Jen (trust me, Jen rocks).

In any event, vote yourself for the Godmother of Search at Andy's Blog.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums (Kim's Forum) and High Rankings Forum (Jill's Forum).

A Cre8asite Forums thread is picking at Rand's post this week on Best Practices for Title Tags. First go read his post and then come back here to read the forum commentary on it.

Cre8asite Forums Admin, Bill Slawski, also well known for his outstanding SEO By The Sea blog, goes through some of his points.

The first is about branding your titles with your brand name. I.e. Company Name - Keywords Here. As you can see here, I do not include the name of the blog in the titles for the individual pages. I personally agree that branding is not that important when it comes to SEO titles. Bill says, "branding is something that you could take advantage of in title elements, but it's probably not the place to attempt to build a brand - there are better ways to do that." He explains that putting company name on the contact us page, about us page, etc are smart ideas. I would also put the brand up and front on the home page page title. But there are two schools of thought on this and go with which you prefer.

Bill then looks at the tip to repeat the title phrase in your header tag. I agree that there is nothing wrong with this, but if you want to change it up slightly, that is also fine.

Finally, he added to the list, putting the title of the page in your breadcrumb trail (the links at the top of the page that tell you where you have clicked). Often, it is not able to fit it all in there, so matching the title tag to the breadcrumb trail is often not feasible.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.