August 2009 Archives

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 31, 2009"

On August 6th, we reported how Google was pushing the AdWords ads nearer to the organic listings in some browsers. I illustrated the change in a short movie, so that it is crystal clear how much of an impact it makes.

A couple days ago, SearchViews.com released a report that said this change has resulted in a 15% increase in the click-through rate on their ads. 14.47% over the 11 day period, to be exact. That number seems huge to me and I am wondering if there are other variables at play here.

There is a new debate about those numbers at WebmasterWorld but there is an even newer debate on the topic of how this impacts clicks on the organic/free listings.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if this has decreased the click-through rate on the organic side. Right now, there have been no reports that this had any impact on the organic search results, but the test is new and the thread is new.

Here is a poll, please check all that apply:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one 'lurker' reporting that an ex-Googler is using spam tactics to both threaten and intentionally hurt his site. By hurt his site, the ex-Googler is allegedly using hacking and injection techniques to push the site out of the Google search results, thus boosting the ranking for his (the alleged ex-Googler) in the Google search results.

This is a bit hard to believe, but who knows - anything is possible. Let me quote the webmaster from the thread, because he makes it sound like he has been around the block and there is nothing he can do.

Around May I discovered another competitors site recent appearance that looked very similar to mine, in fact even the sentences on my homepage were copied directly to his. Then by reading the press release for the company I found out it was started by a high up google employee who quit his job with google to form the company. Shorty after contacting the owner politely introducing myself, I received a threat letter back through email. I don't know if I can publish the email on this site so I will hesitate for now. Basically the owner said he was going to crush me with his skills he had received from google. He then proceeded to tell me if I want traffic on my site that I should buy links. Being a avid reader of the google webmaster forums and faq's I know this is not a good thing to do.

So at the end of all of this my page rank dropped from a two to a zero. And now my site has started showing up on malicious porn sites on the internet and in bad forums, and some seem to be in the form of hidden links that appear to be bought by someone else.

It just seems so hard to believe that anyone, let alone, someone who was employed by Google, would go to these measures. Yes, I know, people do take extreme measures, especially in this area, but a former Googler? The thing is, anyone can pretend to be anyone else on the Internet - emails, names and so on, can be spoofed. So this may be someone using a name in order to threaten and scare this webmaster out of the competition. This wouldn't be the first time Google had impersonators on the webmaster side of the coin.

Hard to know for sure, based on the information I do and do not have.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Some users have noticed a bug with Bing Mobile at m.bing.com, where Microsoft is loading the wrong language for that user.

Microsoft confirmed the bug as a "language display bug" in the Bing Forums. An apparent Microsoft Bing representative listed out the issue as:

We have a known issue that affects a small percentage of people using Bing on their mobile devices, where Bing shows up in the wrong language.

Microsoft both notes how you can help them fix the issue as well as fix the issue on your device. Microsoft said first asked that you help them troubleshoot the issue by going to http://m.bing.com and then type in the query “BINGLANGTEST” and then send them an email (bingmob@microsoft.com) with the date/time you encountered the issue.

Then to fix your issue, just go to http://m.bing.com/?lc=en-US on your mobile device. This will reset the language back to English.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

This might be clearly obvious to 99.999% of you out there, but there are some of you who don't get it. If you do not want your personal information found in Google, then don't post that information on the Internet. I cannot tell you how many times I see people complaining in the various forums, as well in the comments here, that they do not want Google to list such information about them in the search results.

The issue is, they go ahead and list out their social security numbers, ID numbers and other sensitive information in the post itself. Case in point, a Google Web Search Help thread has one such person listing his identity card number in the forums, asking Google to remove that number from their search results. Guess what, now that ID number is not just listed on a geocities domain, but now on a google domain. Yea, good going!

Anyway, if you are in a jam and need content removed from Google, follow the instructions here and hopefully you will be okay. But do not, I repeat, do not, list what you want removed in a public forum.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I hate it when I read threads of Google AdWords API users who found out too late that the API they have integrated their software with no longer works and that they either lose money or time due to not having the right data (or any data) sent back from the API. This is why Google and blogs like this, give you guys fair notice that you should start coding and testing the new AdWords API with your software.

The new beta AdWords API v2009 is out and now finally available to all advertisers. This was announced a couple months ago but was a very limited beta, now it is open to all to use. It is a major upgrade from version 13, so expect major changes between the two.

So begin reading up on this new API at code.google.com/apis/adwords/v2009/ today.

Forum discussion at AdWords API Help.

Brett Yount from Microsoft's Bing Webmaster team has commented here and in a Bing Forum thread saying the issue with the fake referrers being generated by MSNBot has finally been fixed. By finally, I mean, an issue dating back over two years.

Brett said:

Thanks to our webmaster community and followers we are happy to share an update to the referrer issue that you may have heard or read about recently. First of all, we’d like to express our sincere apologies that this referrer issue continued past the August 20th date when we explicitly stated that it was fixed. With the support of many webmasters' data, our crawling team was able to pinpoint the root cause and deploy a new fix to stop the referrer string in production. This fix has been verified in all of our production beds.

There are confirmed reports by webmasters that the issue is no longer being seen and that going forward their log files are no longer being polluted with fake referrer data.

I am happy to hear reports that this is fixed, but you can't blame me for being a bit skeptical that this issue might creep up again. I mean, Microsoft fixed this issue at least three times in the past. I certainly hope it is fixed forever.

Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

The Google Logo (Doodle) today is for Michael Jackson's 51st birthday. Yes, Jackson died recently and an outpour of support was felt around the world. Google actually has taken some negative PR due to not having a logo up for the day of his funeral (I didn't write about it, but trust me, there were threads about it).

Here is the logo on Google today:

As I said in the title, there are people who are not happy with Google showing this logo. One asked why a logo for Jackson when no logo for D-Day. Another asked why Google had a logo for Jackson but no logo for Mother Teresa. And two different people asked why is Jackson getting a logo when Senator Kennedy is being buried today.

Of course, Jackson is both loved and hated by many and there is a lot of controversy around his history. But Google did indeed have a logo for his birthday and many of his fans are appreciative. Personally, I prefer the logos of lesser known people who have made a huge impact in our lives, because those people are almost always forgotten. But many fans love the logo and there are positive threads about it also.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help (and others, listed above).

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 28, 2009"

This week's video recap goes old school with my old video set up, sorry, I forgot my HD camera at home. Yahoo had a small, unconfirmed search update. Bing is still spamming us webmasters with fake referrals, I say enough is enough! Google unleashes new penalties, new sitelinks and US results in the UK search engines. SEOMoz released their ranking factors, which our readers find mostly accurate. AdWords tries Sitelinks and new open product ads. I talk about duplicate content issues with print URLs and mobile sites. AdSense allows third party ad networks and has a major PSA bug for five minutes this week. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Yahoo Search August 2009 Update
• Microsoft Bing Still Spamming Fake Referrers In Webmaster Log Files
• New Set of Google Penalties & New Siteslinks
• Possible Google Update - August 2009
• Google Tries Same Page Anchor Sitelinks
• What's Going On With Google UK's Search Results?
• The Big SEO Ranking Factors List from SEOMoz, Is It Accurate?
• Results Are In: Is SEOMoz's Ranking Factors Accurate? Mostly, Yes
• Google AdWords Doing Sitelinks Also
• Google AdWords Tests Open Image Product Ads
• SEO & Print URLs
• .ME Domain Names Can Now Be Geo Targetted In Google Webmaster Tools
• Google AdSense Welcomes Third-Party Ad Networks
• Public Service Announcements (PSAs) Ads Showed On All AdSense Sites Yesterday

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

A continuously updated WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about penalties, new sitelinks and more. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, summed up what he is seeing in this thread and others.

There are two main things going on:

(1) Sites that have been ranking very well for years and years have noticed a major decline in rankings. Tedster said maybe "it's a new batch of the OOP (formerly called -950)." This might be related to the not real Google August 2009 update.

(2) Sitelinks have been changing. We are seeing anchored Sitelinks, many Sitelinks not in the top position, one line Sitelinks, four Sitelinks and even the standard eight Sitelinks. Tedster said, "It seems like the algo is getting more fine-tuned and in some cases at least is picking up more on popular internal pages that are not on the site's main menu."

That is a quick update on the state of the Google search index.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A week ago, we asked you if Google should use mouse overs to show more ad details. I made a screen shot of the concept, which I will repost below. The poll results are in and some of you want it and some of you don't. It is really split - with a 56% response rate of people wanting this feature and a 42% response rate of people not wanting this feature.

Question: Do You Want Advertiser's Info In AdWords Mouse Overs?

:: Yes said 65 respondents or 56%
:: No said 49 respondents or 42%
:: Other answer... said 3 respondents or 3%

The other answers were basically one no, one yes and one undecided.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Two days ago, I ran a poll asking our readers how accurate do they find the SEOMoz ranking factors survey. We have over a 160 responses in less than two days, so I thought I would post the results now. Overall, SEOs and webmasters find the survey to be accurate on some level.

Here is the break down:

Question: How Accurate Is the SEOMoz Search Ranking Survey?

:: Very Accurate said 72 respondents or 43%
:: Somewhat Accurate said 63 respondents or 38%
:: Not Very Accurate said 13 respondents or 8%
:: Completely Worthless said 8 respondents or 5%
:: Other answer... said 6 respondents or 4%
:: The Absolute Truth said 4 respondents or 2%

So there you have it! Have what? I am not sure. :)

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn and SEOMoz.

Two threads at Google Webmaster Help report that .ME ccTLDs (domain names) can now be geo targeted in Google Webmaster Tools.

Typically, Google doesn't allow you to geo-target a ccTLD (country specific top level domain). Google assumes that if you register a country specific TLD, you want to rank well in that country. They made an exception for a few ccTLDs including .TV domains a while back, but the .ME domains were not included in that exception.

That has changed as of August 17th. In fact, this blog has a screen shot proving it. But there are other various reports of this actually working. .ME is a natural ccTLD for this exception.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 27, 2009"

Google continues to try out new ad formats for integrating Google Product data from Google Base into the AdWords results. Recently a reader sent Search Engine Land a screen capture of a new form of Google displaying these product results. In short, the new part is that you do not need to click on anything to display the site's product images and or pricing. Here is a picture:

As you can see, this single ad takes up a significant amount of screen real estate. What I see myself for this search result is the typical AdWords product plus box:

The default view is that the images and products are hidden.

Google sent me a statement on this finding, saying:

Google is constantly experimenting with new features, tools and visual representations to improve the user experience and usefulness of our ads. As part of that effort, we’re currently running a test in which images of specific products offered by an advertiser may appear within some text ads on Google search results pages. This experiment helps users quickly find the products they’re looking for, and offers advertisers a new way to engage potential customers. This feature is currently in a limited beta and only visible to a small number of users on shopping-related queries.

In any event, here is some history on Google testing the ad formats. Recently, Google started testing Sitelinks in ads and earlier this month we saw a single product image opened. Back in November 2007, we first spotted reports of this and then again in January 2008. Then in October 2008 we had pictures of products in AdWords ads, which became the real-deal in February 2009. The feature was powered by Google Base linkage with AdWords.

Forum discussion at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of promoting the fact that you rank number one in a search engine for an important keyword. Does it make sense, in some cases or any case, to promote the fact that you are the top result in Google, Yahoo or Bing?

Clearly, if you are an SEO company and you need to show your results to prospects, it would be wise to show off your success. But do you plaster the specific search terms you rank well for on your web page for all to see?

If you are a web site that ranks number one for blue widgets, do you flaunt the fact on your web site? Or do you keep it under the radar? I would assume your competitors already know, so does it hurt? Can it help if you promote that fact to your potential customers?

As you can see, there are many variables mentioned here and many I have not mentioned.

What do you think? Is it wise to show off your success or are you asking for a beat down? Take our poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I found it a bit funny that a WebmasterWorld thread is already discussing if and what Google would be sending out as a holiday gift this year. Yea, four months prior to the holiday season, Google advertisers and publishers are talking about the gift they may or may not send out this year.

Google historically has sent some really nice gifts to both AdSense and AdWords (amongst others) customers. In 2005 they sent a how mobile gadget kit with mobile mouse, mini hub, usb drive, and so on (I wish I took a picture of it). In 2006 they sent us a digital picture frame, in 2007 they sent a USB memory card and 2008 a bunch of shwag (mug, tshirt, pen, etc).

But due to the economy, people think the gifts will be cut this year. I am not too sure - I guess we will find out in a few months. It is just funny that people are already talking about it and eager to know if and what it will be this year.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the past few months, there have been random complaints from Google Maps users about the live traffic data. In short, people are saying that when they zoom into see more detail on the red colored traffic indicators, the color changes to another color.

A Google Maps Help has posts from three different Google Maps users over the course of three months. Clearly, this cannot be a wide spread issue, because of the very few posts. So either this is a user generated error, where the user is zooming into the wrong location or the traffic data has actually changed on the zoom refresh -- or Google has some sort of bug.

Have you ever noticed this as an issue? I tried to replicate this issue, but failed.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread has new discussion around how important it is to have keywords in the URL. This is a very old SEO topic, but new chatter in the industry is saying how keywords in the URLs actually make more of an impact in your rankings in Google today, more than it has in a long time.

Now, keywords in the URL can mean two things (well, more than two, but we will discuss only two) or both of these two things. There is the domain name, i.e. domain.com and there is the filename, i.e. domain.com/filename.html. There is always a benefit to getting a short keyword specific domain name, because people link to you by your name (i.e. people link to my web development shop as RustyBrick and not Web Development because the name is RustyBrick). But the actual words in the URL, just looking at the URL component and not the links you get, how much does that impact your rankings at Google?

Many are of the opinion that Google is really looking more at the keywords in the URL. In fact, Matt Cutts surprised me when he mentioned that they do help in his WordCamp presentation. And now Tedster, the WebmasterWorld administrator, said:

Certainly keyword-in-url seems to be dialed up rather high right now as a ranking factor.

Do you agree? Take my anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an excellent guest article at Search Engine Land named The Curious Case Of Google's Bizarre UK Search Results. In this write up, Bas van den Beld explains some of the recent history with what is going on in the Google UK results and shows specific examples of why he is upset with the results.

Let me catch you up, because it actually goes a bit further back than what Bas explained. In April of this year, folks at WebmasterWorld noticed that the Google UK geo targeting algorithm might be a bit off. Maybe this was an early sign or test from Google, because those signals went quiet until June, when the Twitterverse went nuts about the UK Google search results. In fact, in July, Google tested removing the pages from UK radio button, which upset a lot of people.

This was such a big deal that Matt Cutts created a video about it:

In short, Matt explains that Google UK is now showing a lot more US sites (i.e. dot COMs) in the UK results. In the past, Google typically showed more .co.uk results, but now Google is "getting better" at showing relevant .com results He added that this change, Google will "likely not revert," so we might be stuck with it.

In any event, many UK SEOs are not happy about this and they have expressed this on Matt's video, via Twitter, forums and in blog posts.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 26, 2009"

A thread at WebmasterWorld has a webmaster who is getting a bit nervous that the 301 redirects he set up for a site won't be the best bet in the long run for his end goals. In summary, his original URL was doing "great" in both Google and Bing, with number 3 and 1 rankings, respectively. But about a month ago, he did a 301 redirect and the rankings have not recovered. He wants to know if he should reverse the 301 and go back to the previous state.

Excellent question and something that SEOs and webmasters struggle with all the time. If you have a well-ranking web site, but you need to move URLs, should you do a 301 or look for a way to keep the URL. The answer is not always in the control of the webmaster, but when it is, it is always a painstaking decision to make.

The question here is, after a month in place, should you reverse a 301 redirect? I like the response from senior WebmasterWorld member, willybfriendly, who said:

From my experience it will take a minimum of 3-4 months. Redirecting an entire successful site as you did is not for the faint of heart.

Going back to the old site will in all likelihood only increase the time it takes to get your rankings back. If you are confident that your original reason for moving was sound, then I would advise you stay true to your conviction.

It will probably get worse before it gets better if it has only been a month now. But, assuming you have done it right, it will get better...

I would likely agree with this statement. Stick to your guns, at this point in time, if possible. If after three months, things don't look good, then maybe there is another issue with the new domain.

What would you do?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, for about five minutes during the day, any site that had AdSense ads on them, showed what is known as Public Service Announcements (PSAs). PSAs are ads that are free and don't earn money, and are shown when Google cannot find a contextually relevant ad.

AdSenseAdvisor confirmed the issue in a WebmasterWorld thread, saying:

We experienced a very brief (under 5 minutes) issue that caused Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers diagnosed and resolved the issue immediately, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience.

This also seemed to impact publishers who use Google Ad Manager to serve up their ads (which is what we use on this site). Steve from the Google Ad Manager team said in a Google Ad Manager Help thread, "We experienced a brief issue that caused PSAs to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers quickly diagnosed and resolved the issue, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience."

This is not the first time PSAs invaded the bottom-line for publishers. We reported a similar issue back in 2004 and also earlier this year, in January.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google Ad Manager Help.

My old time buddy, Darrin Ward (founder of SEOChat back in the day), blogged about noticing Sitelinks in the Google AdWords ads. Here is a picture, which I can see myself, for a search on staples.com.

Notice the four links directly under the ad, those are commonly known as Sitelinks in the Google organic search world. They kind of look like the one line product links but these are category specific.

I am pretty sure I saw a form of this a long time ago, but I cannot find my blog post on that find.

In any event, it seems like Sitelinks are here for Google AdWords ads.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: Here is the official Google statement on this test:

As part of our ongoing commitment to help users find the information they're looking for online, we are testing a feature in which links to various pages of an advertiser’s website may appear within the text ads on Google.com. Presenting multiple landing page options is intended to make specific website information such as gift registries, special deals, store locators and the like more easily accessible to users. It also offers brand marketers a new way to quickly engage potential customers. This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of advertisers.

SEOMoz published a revised version of their Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. They had 72 contributors complete a long survey, including myself, answering questions specific to ranking in search engines. I am not going to bother summarizing all the details of the survey, you can read them at SEOMoz in a concise fashion.

I thought it would be fun to run a poll on this survey, asking our readers, how accurate do you find this SEOMoz survey?

Please take the poll, the responses should be interesting.

Forum discussion at Sphinn and SEOMoz.

The Google AdSense blog announced that publishers in the Google AdSense network now have the option to allow "Google certified" third-party ad networks to compete for the ad space on your web site.

In short, this should help publishers earn more money, due to adding more competition into the network. But you have to opt into this and allow image ads. You might not be able to add this today, since it is "slowly roll this out over the next several months."

Here is a picture on where you will be able to activate third part ad networks in the AdSense console.

The overall impression from publishers is positive and they are eager to give this new feature and program a try.

For more details on how this works, see the AdSense Help Center.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 25, 2009"

Many sites feature a way to print a page of your site in a printer friendly view, by removing many of the ads, removing a lot of the navigation and so on. The issue with this, in some cases, is that webmasters creating a new URL with the same content, causing a duplicate content issue on the SEO front.

In the past, the solution was to call these printer friendly URLs in a non-search engine friendly manner, i.e. through JavaScript. But now that many search engines can find URLs within JavaScript, you can run into an issue with this method.

The best solution is to use a printer friendly CSS template. This will ensure that the URL is the same, no matter what view is given to the user or search engine. If you cannot create a CSS template for printer friendly versions of the page, then the next best thing to do is exclude those printer friendly URLs (i.e. the duplicate URLs) with a robots.txt file.

One person asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread, can they use the newish rel=canonical link element to redirect search engines to the main URL, so they pass the link equity? Googler, JohnMu, said you shouldn't. He said, "I don't think using the rel=canonical link element would be that valid here, since the two pages do look pretty differently (they're not really interchangeable canonicals)."

Let me show you a real life example of what we did on RustyBrick.com, my real business (outside of this blogging stuff, which is just a hobby for me).

In the past, we had a print URL for each page of the site, generated through JavaScript. It worked well in the past, the search engines ignored that JavaScript and it was rarely found in the Google or other search indexes. Now, you can clearly see Google indexed both URLs:

On Thursday, we launched a redesign for the RustyBrick site, a redesign and technology upgrade nine-years in the making. Part of that was to fix this issue.

• Created a print CSS template
• 301 redirected the ?print_page=1 to the parent URLs

In addition to that, we created a neat mobile template, which uses the useragent to change the CSS (not the URL) when you access the site on most mobile devices. And our print pages are also using the same URL and look pretty good.

Here are pictures of the same URL on a desktop web browser, on an iPhone and as a print friendly page:

Desktop Version:

Mobile Version:

Print Version:

There are some things we still need to clean up with this design and our templates, but for the most part, I am happy with the look, feel and search engine friendliness of the new site.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Oh, and to comment on the new design, go to my blog post at the RustyBrick Blog and comment there.

Over a week ago, a WebmasterWorld thread reported that Google was testing a new form of Sitelinks. These sitelinks didn't link to different URLs, but instead, linked to the same URL but with anchors (i.e. # signs at the end of the URL, which drop you down to a section on the same web page).

I skipped past the thread, not understanding it as a new feature, until I spotted a post from Google Operating System blog detailing the difference.

For example, a search for [charles darwin] shows a Wikipedia listing with those special sitelinks, here is a picture:

The links send you to, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#Religious_views which anchors you down to that section of the page.

As I noted at Search Engine Land, Yahoo has been doing this for a while with their quick links.

The big SEO question is, how to you get these types of sitelinks on your pages in the search results? Does adding anchor links to pages, where it makes sense, help? I assume so, but this needs to be proven.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A month old bug with Google AdSense where you couldn't change channel names in the AdSense console has finally been fixed. Google has yet to confirm it has been fixed, but publishers are reporting in the Google AdSense Help thread that the bug is now fixed.

After about 90 comments and four weeks, the bug with updating the channel names seems to be resolved. First reports of it being fixed came in at 4:40am this morning.

So if you are a publisher dying to change the name of some of your channels, you can now do it at google.com/adsense/channels.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

The Google Advertising Professional program which launched in 2004 had one major flaw. They were assigned to companies and the scores and professional status could not be transferred with the individual who took the test, to the new company he or she went to.

I am happy to say, that is no longer the case. A new program site for this certification, allows you to migrate your accounts from your old company to a new company. To access this feature, go to adwords.google.com/professionals/migrate. The site reads:

With this new site, each Professional has an individual Profile, which can be associated with a Company account, or moved from one Company account to another. (Please note that, to become or remain a Qualified program member, you must be associated with a Company account; individuals may create Company accounts on this site if they are unaffiliated).

This feature is welcomed by many AdWords professionals.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help which shows how Google can not subtract the numbers 999999999999999 - 999999999999998. Google returns the result as 0, when Yahoo and Bing return the correct result of 1.

Google:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Why is Google returning zero as the answer to this calculation? Is there some type of geek response to this or is Google's calculator malfunctioning?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I normally don't get upset when I report about bugs with search engines, it is what I do. But I am really getting upset with Microsoft and their webmaster support with Bing, really. For the umpteenth time, Microsoft said they fixed the fake referrer issue that has been plaguing webmasters since 2007 and they have lied again. Well, maybe the word lied is a strong word, maybe Microsoft simply has no idea how to manage a search spider or crawl the web?

The day after Microsoft said they fixed the issue with fake referral data showing up in log files, webmasters said the issue is still there. We have updated threads at Bing Forums and WebmasterWorld, the issue is still going on.

I am sorry for being so upset about this, but this is seriously a bit out of hand. Why? Well, we reported this issue so many times, here is an archive:

• Microsoft Claims To Fix Fake Referrals or "Single Word Query" Complaint, August 20, 2009
• Bing Classifies Cloaking Detection as "Single Word Query" Issue, August 10, 2009
• More Cloaking Tests In Form Of Fake Referrers From Microsoft Bing?, August 5, 2009
• Microsoft Disables Fake Referral "Feature" Temporarily, April 29, 2009
• Microsoft To Fix Fake Referrer Data From Live Search, April 22, 2009
• MSN Live Sending Odd Referrals -- QBHP -- to Websites, July 24, 2008
• Microsoft Live Search Continues Referral Spam Tests With MSLIVSOP?, January 14, 2008
• Live Search's Spam Fake Referrals Were Cloaking Tests, Says Microsoft, December 4, 2007
• Microsoft Live Search Spam-Like Referrals Are Still Occurring, November 19, 2007
• Microsoft Live Search's Strange Spam-Like Referrals Are Official Tests, September 6, 2007
• Weird Referrals From Microsoft's Live Search?, August 17, 2007

Now these are only issues specific to fake referrers clogging up our log files. This doesn't mention the issues with Cashback rewards, or Bing clicking on their own search ads, or NOODP tag, the geotargeting issues, crawling too fast, adding pound signs to URLs and much more.

So I am a bit upset with Bing Webmaster support.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: After much pushing here and other blogs I write on, Microsoft has said they finally fixed the issue. They didn't explain why there was an issue, but they did say they fixed the issue. More details over here.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 24, 2009"

There are signals from the forums and via Twitter of a possible Yahoo update. Yes, Google seems to be updating as well, but so is Yahoo.

A WebmasterWorld thread, started on Friday afternoon, shows some SEOs and webmasters discussing changes to the Yahoo search results. The last possible Yahoo Search update was in June 2009.

Vanessa Fox, former Googler and now Search Engine Land's Contributing Editor tweeted that on her sites, "Yahoo Slurp has super slowed down its crawl."

Are you seeing changes in your rankings or in the crawl speed of Yahoo Slurp on your site?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are some early reports of a possible Google web search update currently under way. We have threads on this topic at DigitalPoint Forums and an updated thread at WebmasterWorld.

In the WebmasterWorld thread, in post number 3977195, senior member, BillyS, said:

We started to see some pretty big changes this morning.This appears to be a return to our pre-summer positions.

People first started noticing this possible update over the weekend, so there have not been too many posts on this yet. I guess we will see how large this update is as people get into the office on Monday and begin posting their findings in this thread.

The last update we reported on was a small one in July 2009.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Matt Cutts of Google commented below saying he was not aware of any update taking place now.

I've spotted a few posts in the forums complaining about how Yahoo is reporting very few clicks and impressions on both the Yahoo Search Marketing side and Yahoo Publisher Network side. The simple answer is that this may not a bug, but rather a reporting delay due to a maintenance update.

Yes, there is a lot of confusion about this update, since there was no mention of it on either the official YPN Blog or the YSM Blog, but there is a notification that an update is coming this coming weekend (not the past weekend). So there are rumors that Yahoo put the wrong date on the notification.

If you login to the YPN console, you will see a notification placed on the 21st that warns of an maintenance period on the 28th. Here is the message:

Notification of Scheduled Maintenance - Beginning 8/28/09

On Friday August 28, 2009 there will be a temporary interruption in the ability to access the Yahoo! Publisher Network portal. This comes as a part of planned system maintenance, and will take place on Friday Aug. 28, 2009 from 6:00 pm PDT to Saturday Aug. 29, 2009 2:00 am PDT. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

Again, there are rumors that the maintenance is going on now, which is why there is a reporting lag on both the YPN and YSM side.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Ever notice when you do a search at Google for nfl or seo or ppc or other popular acronyms you see that Google will bold the longer version of the acronym? Yes, Google will not only bold the title and snippet for the words NFL, SEO or PPC but also for National Football League, Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click, amongst others.

Here are pictures:

This is not new, Google has been doing this for at least a year now. Yet, I thought I mention it again, since more threads on this topic of sprung up recently.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

It appears that some webmasters are now receiving warnings from Google Webmaster Tools about SSL certificate issues. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a couple people reporting receiving the warnings over the weekend.

Here is a copy of the SSL warning from Google:

Googlebot noticed your site host name, https://www.banknorwegian.no:443/, does not match your SSL certificate Subject Name August 20, 2009

Dear Webmaster,

The host name of your site, https://www.banknorwegian.no:443/, does not match any of the "Subject Names" in your SSL certificate, which were:

* NotVerified

This will cause many web browsers to block users from accessing your site, or to display a security warning message when your site is accessed.

To correct this problem, please get a new SSL certificate by a Certificate Authority (CA) with a "Subject Name" or "Subject Alternative DNS Names" that matches your host name.

Thanks,

The Google Web Crawling Team

I am not sure if this warning is new, I have never seen this reported before. Now many more webmasters are noticing it, because there may be a bug in how Google detects such errors. Google's JohnMu said:

Generally speaking, we've added these messages to inform webmasters of issues with regards to their SSL certificates. This is just an informational message, it does not affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking.

It seems that some of you may be seeing this message despite having a valid SSL certificate. We're looking into this issue and will let you know more as soon as we can. In the mean time, if you're certain that your certificate is ok, then you can safely ignore this message.

So two take aways:

(1) SSL certificate warnings from Google does not generally impact your site's well being in the Google search results.

(2) There may be an issue with Google's SSL certificate reporting feature.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

In this week's recap, Google began forcing even more advertisers into the new AdWords interface, some are not happy. Microsoft said they fixed the one word query fake referrers issue, again. We have listed several tools to compare Google Caffeine's index to the current index. Google Caffeine seems to be running off of Google's new file system - do we care? Bing's search results are showing up in Google. Google News now recrawls articles within 12 hours. Why do SEO experts get a bad rep? Matt Cutts gives two wonderful presentations, it is a must see. Also, Matt might be the new "hot guy" in the search industry. Did you catch the Google logo question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• More Google Advertisers Being Forced into New Interface, Including Me
• Microsoft Claims To Fix Fake Referrals or "Single Word Query" Complaint
• Tools to Compare Google's Caffeine Index To Normal Index
• Google's Caffeine Update Running Off Google's New File System (GFS)
• Bing Search Results In Google
• Google News Now Recrawling & Reindexing Stories For Updates
• Why "SEO Experts" Get a Bad Rep from Newbies
• Video: Google's Matt Cutts Presentation at WordCamp
• Excellent Site Review Panel by Matt Cutts & Other Googlers
• Matt Cutts of Google Now Industry's "Hot Guy"?
• Google's Logo Questioned On Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Show

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 21, 2009"

A WebmasterWorld member thinks it would be a wise idea if Google added a new level of detail to the AdWords listings. I believe his idea is to display a mouse over control which would open up a more detailed box that shows advertiser details. This would allow the searcher to better know if he should click or not.

I decided to draw up a proof of concept, using Bing's search preview option and adding that to Google AdWords ads, here it is:

Do you think this is a good idea or bad idea? Take my quick poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google seems to be indexing Bing search results. Take a look at this query and you will see some of the Google search results leading to Bing search results.

So I decided to check to see if Yahoo, Ask.com or even Bing themselves were doing the same. It seems like Ask.com is also doing this, but Yahoo and Bing are not indexing Bing results.

Google doesn't like to see search results in search results so this is not common to see in Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A/B testing is the process of setting up two or more styles for a page, for the same piece of content. For example, let's say you had a page where you sold blue widgets and you wanted to try using a blue button versus a red button to buy the widget. What you can do is A/B test the two types of buttons against each other.

How would you accomplish this? Well, you can send 50% of your traffic to example.com/widget.html?button=red and the other 50% to example.com/widget.html?button=blue and see which page converts better. But that can lead to duplicate content, i.e. the same URL, example.com/widget.html with three URLs for the same content. Or would it? Google and some search engines are smart enough to pick up on this. There are other ways to test this using JavaScript (potential cloaking issue?) or CSS or use Google Website Optimizer.

How would you handle it? That is the question asked in a WebmasterWorld thread. Honestly, I am not sure what the "best" method to handle this is. So please join the thread or comment here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 20, 2009"

I follow tons and tons of threads on SEO, SEM, Google, etc. I have been doing this for just about six years. One thing I often see is that there are people who want quick answers to why they don't rank well or how they can become rich in days. When they don't get the answer they like, they rant on how unhelpful the "experts" in the field are.

A WebmasterWorld thread member, wheel, was very smart about his post. He initially posted a teaser saying, I built a site five years ago, did SEO for a month on it and it still ranks in the top ten for a competitive keyword with zero additional work. Of course, we all wanted to know how he did it and he strung us along. But that was part of his plan, his plan to get us listening so he can follow up and blast all us newbies. He said:

The secret is, there is no secret. There are two themes that run through this and all the other forums, for years. The first is, everyone's looking for the latest trick or secret to ranking. The second theme is all the experts (at least the ones that I read) tell us to forget the glitter and develop proper backlinks.

And people repeatedly don't like the answers from the experts - to forget the glitter and develop proper backlinks. We want a quick technical answer. We don't want to hear what basically means 'try working hard yourself'. The experts actually aren't holding back some big secret or the latest trick. They ARE telling you directly and specifically what to do. Hard work marketing your website is what gives high long term rankings, not some technical gimmick.

It is true - SEO, money, happiness, etc, doesn't come easy - it requires work. Wheel, did explain how he got the site and his other sites to succeed in the search results, but it wasn't over night and it took work. For more on how he did it, read the thread and get to work.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A couple weeks ago, I asked our readers how feasible it was to rank in the number one spot in Google.com and at the same time rank #1 in a regional flavored Google search space. We have just about a hundred responses, so I wanted to share the results with you.

In short, 86% of the respondents said it was possible. 46% said yes, it is doable, 40% said it depends on the keyword, 11% said it was not possible and the rest didn't really answer the question. Here is the visual breakdown:

Question: Can You Rank #1 In Regional Google & Google.com?

:: Yes said 45 respondents or 46%
:: Depends On Keyword said 39 respondents or 40%
:: No said 11 respondents or 11%
:: Other answer... said 2 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread links to Matt's slides from WordCamp. The slides can be found on Google Docs, but I say, skip those and watch the video below of Matt's presentation.

The one thing I learned from it was that it makes sense to have keywords in your URL and if you want to rank well for alternatives to the title of your page, put that keyword in the URL. Matt's example was for a blog post with the word "Change" in the title, but he wanted to also rank for "changing," so he put that word in the URL and it does work, he said.

In any event, the presentation is extremely fun to watch. Matt has really become an excellent speaker over the years.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Last night, Microsoft Bing representative, Brett Yount, said that they have rolled out a fix for the fake referrals or single word query issues people have been noticing. Brett said:

We released a fix last night that should take care of these issues. If you are still having problems, let me know and I will investigate.

I am just not confident that this is resolved for the long haul. Why? Well, history shows that this has been going on since 2007 and has popping up time and time again since.

Plus, I was hoping for an official explanation on what this issue was, and I have yet to see one.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

Yesterday, I spotted a post in the Google Web Search Help threads from an individual who claims to be representing Rambha, a famous Indian actress. This person is looking for Google to remove a video from the Google search results that depicts Rambha as having sexual relations.

Currently, a search for rambha returns video results in the middle of the page. This is Google Universal Search in action, one of those videos shows a woman depicted to be Rambha as having relations with a man. It is hosted on Google Video, displayed on Google web results.

I reported the video, as did this person, over 24 hours ago. I was hoping it would be removed from the search results. Not because it shows Rambha in a bad light, but because it is adult content and my adult filter (SafeSearch) is set to moderate.

I am sure there are plenty of videos reported to Google every day, but videos that end up on the search results page for a search term that receives hundreds of thousands of searches per month - must have a way of being moved to the front of the line. If not, a blog post about it over here, tends to speed things along.

We do report on Google porn issues from time to time, when the details are public in a thread.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 19, 2009"

Shortly after Google announced the Caffeine preview update The Register published an article named Google File System II. The two are actually mostly unrelated, in that the caffeine update runs off the second Google File System, like Microsoft Word runs off Windows.

But Matt Cutts confirmed in a recent interview with The Register that Google's Caffeine infrastructure, does indeed run off the second Google File System. The article said, "Matt Cutts confirms that the company's new Caffeine search infrastructure is built atop a complete overhaul of the company's custom-built Google File System."

"There are a lot of technologies that are under the hood within Caffeine, and one of the things that Caffeine relies on is next-generation storage," he says. "Caffeine certainly does make use of the so-called GFS2."

How does this impact SEOs? Well, honestly, it doesn't. Caffeine will have an impact, but it running on GFSII really doesn't matter technically to SEOs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, we reported about the issue Indian advertisers were having with Google being able to charge their Reserve Bank of India RBI credit cards. Google was forced to require these advertisers to fax over their credit card authorizations, which slowed the process down to getting campaigns live.

On August 17th, an AdWords representative updated the Google AdWords Help thread saying they are now able to take these cards electronically. Bindu from Google said:

We are now able to charge all such accounts without further declines from the Citibank end. Any credit card that has been declined post August 13, 2009 is a normal decline (the steps outlined over here should assist you with troubleshooting this issue.)

If your credit card is still declined, you may want to re-enter your billing information (outlined over here)

If you have not sent the standing instructions form yet please do so as soon as it is possible.

For all other queries, you will have to contact support.

This was a huge thread with dozens, if not, hundreds of complaints. I hope this is resolved for the most part.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Two months ago or so, we reported that some advertisers were being forced into the new AdWords interface. Well, yesterday, I and many other advertisers received the email that we were being forced into the new AdWords interface.

A WebmasterWorld thread has both old and new reports of advertisers being forced into the interface. One advertiser expressed his dissatisfaction with this move, saying:

Ug I was just forced into the new interface. I hate being forced. I do not have time to relearn the whole stupid thing. Please please awa give it back to us. This is so unfair to force something so unpopular.

An other complaint read:

I just got forced into the new-interface-only bin, not best pleased! Why can't old UI be linked since reports, adwords tools, account management and client centre still on old UI?

We ran a poll a while back, where we saw that 56% disliked the new interface. Now, I wonder if more people dislike it or more people are becoming more vocal about it, since being forced into the new interface?

Note, tomorrow is the last day to take part in the new interface webinar offered by Google. A Google AdWords Help thread has a post from AdWordsPro that contains the details, which I will repeat here:

I know I have pinned any number of threads to the top of the page letting you all know about the live and free 'New AdWords Interface Webinars' that have been available for quite some time now.

Today, however, I am posting about what is planned to be the final webinar. So, if you have thought about participating in a live session of the webinar, please make it this one, as it is almost certainly the last chance.

This final webinar is occuring on Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 9:30 AM PDT

As has been mentioned previously in the other threads on the subject, you may register for this free webinar, and/or watch an archived webinar, and/or access a number of userful 'new UI' resources on this page:

New AdWords Interface Webinars
https://sites.google.com/site/newinterfacewebinars

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google AdWords Help.

Back in 2007, when Bing was named Live Search, Microsoft introduced their flavor of Google PageRank and cleverly named it "Page Score." If you verify your site with Bing Webmaster Tools at bing.com/webmaster, you should be able to see your Page Score value, X out of 5 green bars.

This site has 5 green bars for the domain and our top five pages:

But what does "Page Score" actually mean? A Bing Forum thread asked that question and a Bing representative replies saying:

It is a rough indication of how we view your site pages. Note that this score is only relevent to your site and does not track well in our index.

I looked up what the help section of webmaster tools says and it explains page score as:

Provides a measurement of how authoritative Bing views your webpage to be, with five green boxes being the highest rating and five empty boxes being the lowest. This is based on many of the same factors Bing uses to determine static rank, but isn't directly comparable.

Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

A few weeks ago, the Apple App store for the iPhone gained its first app to manage Google AdWords campaigns. The app was developed by Webdevs.com and enables AdWords advertiser to manage their campaigns on the go. The application can be downloaded in the iTunes store for $16.99 and is named "PPC Editor." If you like to buy it, here is a link which passes through my affiliate account.

This is not an app created by Google. This app uses Google's API to pull data from your AdWords campaign and it was created by a third-party. In my opinion, Google is working on a mobile AdWords interface that will run over the iPhone, Android, Pre, etc but not be application specific. I.e. I think it will be a web based mobile version, to run off the smart phone's web browser.

It seems like the bulk of the features are reporting, but there is management features like changing daily budgets. Here are some of the screen captures from the iTunes store:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 18, 2009"

A couple months back, Google ran an I/O conference. What many people don't know is that Matt Cutts and the search quality team video recorded a session with site reviews and posted it for everyone to see. The video is over an hour long, but it is well worth listening to and in some parts, watching.

Here it is: I would suggest just hitting play and listening to it and flipping back to it when you need to see something:

This video can likely teach most people about SEO in an hour. For more advanced SEOs, Matt did make a comment about using the nofollow attribute for login pages. Watch the video at about 31 minutes and 40 seconds in and listen to it. Matt said:

The only time I use the nofollow on internal links, is maybe a login page.

Now, I doubt this is something Matt wants people to misunderstand, so maybe Matt will comment on this statement? ;-) Why is this statement a big deal? Well, recently, Matt said that the nofollow would waste PageRank flow if used, which got people thinking that blogs are doomed and got people to reconsider using the nofollow.

Forum discussion about that comment at WebmasterWorld.

A Google AdWords Help thread reports from several advertisers that even though they have completed and passed the Google AdWords Professional exam, they are not able to retrieve the logo to place on their web sites.

This is not a wide spread issue, as far as I can tell. It seems like there might be a bug with certain accounts. Only some are reporting the issue as taking longer than 2 weeks. Typically, you pass the exam and two weeks later you should be able to place the logo or seal on your web site. But some seem to have been in the queue for months.

One advertiser said he finally got through to a Googler who confirmed his issue and hopes to resolve it for him in the upcoming days. He said:

So I finally made contact with a real person at Google via the Live Chat in the Help Section. She agreed that 4 weeks was too long and took my exam information and has promised to look into the problem and email me as soon as she has an answer.

I was actually amazed that the chat connected to someone in less than 30 seconds! Some of my faith has been restored...

Like I said, I am not sure how widespread the issue is, but it does seem to be an issue for some.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

In the past, once you published a story and Google News indexed it, that was it - Google News would keep the story as is. That caused issues in the past for stories that needed to be updated, but yet reflected the wrong information in Google News. So what you would have are stories that are incorrect on Google News and corrected on the publication source.

Yes, even I have made typos in headlines and such, and Google News had the embarrassing typos forever, even though I updated the story minutes later in my publishing system.

This seems to have now changed.

A Google News Help thread has confirmed reports from Google's Inbal that Google News now reindexes and crawls news sources for the latest version if those updates are posted within a "short period of time." So if you make a mistake in your publication, you now have a short window of opportunity to update the article, in order to make sure Google News updates your mistake in their index.

How long exactly? One member said he thinks it is within 12 hours, but Google has not confirmed that number.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Oliver Fisher from the Google Anti-Malware team has posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help announcing that the team is now fielding questions. This team specifically works on making sure the Google search results are safe from malware and viruses and often impacts many webmasters.

To ask your questions, you need to use Google Moderator and either submit questions and/or vote on other questions. The Google Anti-Malware team will typically pick the most voted for questions to answer first.

Oliver from Google said:

The Google Anti-Malware engineering team knows you have many questions related to our scanning and flagging of infected sites, some with short and simple answers and some with more complex answers. The short-answer questions are already -- we hope -- adequately handled on the Webmaster Forums; now we want to do a better job at answering the more complex questions.

To this end, we have created a Google Moderator page for you to submit your questions, and to vote on other webmasters' questions. In two weeks (on Friday the 28th of August), we will close the page and select a few of the top-rated questions. Over the course of the next several weeks, we will do our best to answer each of these in a write-up, to be published here and to the Webmaster Malware Forum.

We hope to repeat this exercise (with a fresh Moderator page) in the fall to give you the opportunity to ask more questions.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about Google's anti-malware process and have your questions answered.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A short WebmasterWorld thread has a post from a member that I know, knows his stuff. In short, Google's display ads, the images ads you see typically through the AdSense product on content sites, have a much higher mouse over rate, when compared to the click through rate (CTR).

This advertiser said:

But I've noticed something interesting. The Mouseover Rate is 10X or even 20X my CTR. So, folks are mousing over my ads like crazy, but of course getting no action.

The advertiser wants clickable mouseover actions to help increase the click through rate. I doubt that will happen, but it is interesting to know that people are hovering their mouse over the ads and not often clicking.

Of course this is just one case.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Tutor listed five tools that help you compare the Google Caffeine index to the current Google index. I figured I would list six here:

• facesaerch.com/caffeine/
• Google Caffeine Bookmarklet
• Plug Caffeine into FireFox Search Bar
• Caffeine Ranking Checker
• cartercole.com/googlevsgoogle.html
• comparecaffeine.com/

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 17, 2009"

A few weeks ago, I noticed a blog post from the Cuil blog (Cuil is that new search engine) named So how is Bing doing? I found it very interesting that Cuil did a blog post on how good Bing is. In any event, I decided not to cover it, probably due to a lack of time.

Now that Tedster mentioned it in a WebmasterWorld thread and pulled out four main points from the blog post, I figured I brief on this. The four main points are:

• Bing had 2.9% spam, Google had 2.56% spam, while Yahoo had 4.9%
• Bing prefers URL matches more
• Bing seems to prefer pages where the term occurs with its first letter capitalized
• Bing does less term-rewriting than Google.

What I found interesting was Tedster's comments on the last point. Tedster said:

If Google is going to lose ground to Bing/Yahoo it will be in this area -- too much giving you what they THINK you mean instead of what you actually typed.

Now, I won't argue with that statement, but it is interesting in that this was most people's number on complaint about Microsoft's products. Everyone joked and still jokes that Bill Gates or Windows knows better with auto complete features. And yes, I see more and more complaints that Google is changing the searchers search query, even though the searcher does not want to search for what Google thinks they should search for.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you were watching the show, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire last night, you may have noticed a question about the Google logo. Here is a picture of the question on the show:

The question was, "Which of the following is a true statement about the letters in the standard Google logo?"

The available answers were:

A. Both "O"s are yellow
B. Both "G"s are blue
C. The "L" is red
D. The "E" is green

I spotted this picture via a Google Web Search Help thread, where that member snapped the picture for us all to see.

I am not sure if this was the first time a question about Google or any search engine was asked on the show, but it is the first time I have heard about it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A couple months back, Google quietly dropped the feature to comment on Google News. Yes, Google allowed those cited or mentioned in articles to comment on the stories, here is a look at how that worked.

For the first time, I have seen a thread in Google News Help forum asking why Google removed it. Inbal from Google responded with the official PR statement from Google:

Google has long believed that experimentation and iteration is the best way to build our products, and we're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users. We have phased out support for an experimental mechanism that allowed people quoted in news articles to offer comments on those stories. We are no longer soliciting comments, and comments that participants have provided naturally expired along with their clusters.

We're committed to continuing our efforts to help readers discover new perspectives on the news, while helping publishers find and reach new audiences online.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of this feature, simply because it just seemed out of the norm and hard for Google to maintain.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Google Maps Guide, Brianna, announced in a Google Maps Help thread that there is a brand new verification form for those who use the bulk upload process, to upload their business listings to Google Maps. Google has struggled with spam issues in the bulk upload process, so the verification process is hopefully going to solve much of those issues.

Brianna said, "we're excited to announce that verification for bulk uploads is now available to business owners who have already provided a bulk upload in the Local Business Center account."

The form can be accessed by clicking here but before you fill out the form, make sure you read these three points:

1. You must have a bulk upload of at least 10 listings in your account to qualify.
2. Bulk upload verification does not affect individually added listings
3. You must be the business owner of the businesses provided in your bulk upload.

For more information or if you have questions, make sure to check out the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

I am sure Matt will get a kick out of this... Matt Cutts of Google showed up at SES San Jose last week with his head shaved. In short, he lost a bet with a Google team about a deadline, so he had to shave his head. Here is a video of him explaining the story (well, there are tons of videos of him explaining the story):

Here is another video on that and Caffeine:

In any event, it seems like the SEO women out there are finding the new hair cut appealing.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has several SEO women commenting that they like it. Here are some of the comments:

Oooh, Matt's kinda hot. Hot computer nerds are yummy.

He sucks for being married, though.

that video made me drool a bit.

Matt, you have risen to a new level.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

In this week's recap, I first discuss the 30 sessions we covered at the SES San Jose show this past week. I then get into the Google Caffeine update and what it is all about, including some religious debate. I discuss how Microsoft is clicking on their own Bing search ads. They also still have this single query word issue, maybe a cloaking test again? I ran a poll on nofollow links, where 38% said they would keep the nofollow on their links. AdWords tests a new product ad spot. AdSense bug prevents changing the channel names. There is a Webmaster Tools bug with PageRank distribution charts. Google's help forum gets redesigned. Google Doodles this week features the Perseids meteor shower and Hans Christian Ørsted's 232nd birthday. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Roundtable Covers 30 Sessions at SES San Jose 2009
• Google Releases First Public Search Update Preview: "Caffeine" Update
• Do Mormon SEOs Dislike "Caffeine" Name For Google Update?
• Microsoft Admits To Clicking On Their Own Search Ads
• Bing Classifies Cloaking Detection as "Single Word Query" Issue
• Poll: 38% Will Keep NoFollows On Their Links
• Google AdWords Tests New Form of Product Ads
• Google AdSense Bug Prevents Changing Channel Names
• Google PageRank Distribution Data Not Available For Many in Webmaster Tools
• Google Help Forums Get A Redesign
• Perseids Meteor Shower Coming: Google Got a Doodle For That
• A Google Bomb Logo? Nope. Hans Christian Ørsted Birthday

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 14, 2009"

The SES San Jose conference is now complete and it was great going back to San Jose to see everyone. It has been a several months since I personally went to a conference, so it is nice to get back in the swing of things. I will be at SMX East in October and PubCon Vegas in November and potentially SES Chicago in December.

In any event, as promised in our schedule, we covered 30 sessions at SES San Jose. I hope you enjoyed the live blogging tool we used and interacted with us when we live blogged the sessions. If not, the session coverage is archived over here.

I wanted to thank our volunteer live bloggers again. Including Chris Boggs from Rosetta, Keri Morgret of Strike Models, Patty Adams from Vertical Measures and Gaurav Sharma of Think Mantra. I also want to give a big thank you to all the speakers and moderators we covered - the knowledge and data they share at these conferences is a true testimony of how much they love this industry and how much they give back to it. Finally, I want to thank the readers for consuming this coverage and being polite about any typos you have found.

If you missed the live coverage, here are the archives:

1. Keynote: Clay Shirky, Author of Here Comes Everybody
2. How to Optimize for Search and Engage the Community
3. Always be Testing: Marketing Optimization in Challenging Times
4. The View From the CMO's Office
5. Creating a Web Analytics Culture
6. The Next Wave for Online Video
7. Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy
8. Turning the Social Web Into Real ROI
9. How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine
10. Don't Call it a Comeback: Semantic Technology and Search
11. SEO Tools of the Trade: What's in YOUR Toolbox?
12. Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
13. Keeping it Local: The Convergence of Smart Phones & Local Search
14. Launching a Global Website
15. Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations
16. Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy
17. Search on a Dime
18. Bing Toolbox: Your One-Stop Shop for Better ROI
19. Keynote: Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google
20. Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics
21. Google Analytics and Website Optimizer, Secrets Revealed!
22. Turning Simple Change into Big Profit
23. Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat
24. Keynote: Charlene Li, How to Prepare for the Future of Search
25. SEO Through Blogs & Feeds
26. Advanced Paid Search Techniques
27. News Search SEO
28. Brand, Trademark & Reputation Management
29. Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going?
30. Independent SEMs/SEOs - Issues & Answers

Thanks again everyone and see you at SMX East!

I am a big fan of Microsoft's Cashback program, as a consumer. As a searcher, I find it a bit hard to use - although it is getting better. But I have been watching the Bing forums and it just seems like this Cashback program is not only very expensive (giving cash to customers for purchases, up to 50% of those purchases) but it a big headache.

Looking at just one section of the Bing forums, I see 35% of the 20 threads there are about the Cashback program. 7 of 20 of those threads are people complaining about it. Why? Well, sometimes it is just the consumer doing it wrong (like I said, it isn't easy). Other times, it is a merchant bug and sometimes it is a Microsoft issue.

In my case, Microsoft is giving me the second half of my Cashback earnings. But not only is this costing money, in regards to the rewards, they have to deal with bugs and customers who don't even qualify for the rewards. Is all this worth the effort in order to promote Bing? That is up for them to decide, but overall, I think they have really stepped up the communication and awareness about this offering.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

Update: On August 19th, Microsoft sent me a check for the difference missing in my Cashback rewards. Microsoft actually used FedEx priority overnight services to send me that check, which was nice, but not necessary.

Today, if you visit Google you might notice a whacky logo that might appear to you as a bomb of some sort. In reality, it is Google celebrating the birthday of Hans Christian Ørsted. Who? Well, he was a Danish physicist born in 1777. He is best known for the observation of electric currents, which can induce magnetic fields. In other words, the logo, which you see below, shows how wires are passing an electric current to help the compass work.

He died in 1851 and was buried in Copenhagen. A man, most of Google searchers had no clue about, is now well-known due to Google.

So when someone asks you, what is that bomb on Google's home page, tell them the importance of the logo and Ørsted's work.

Forum discussion at Google Help Forums.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: August 13, 2009"

Below is live coverage of the Independent SEMs/SEOs - Issues & Answers from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models & Gaurav Sharma of Think Mantra.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Independent SEMs/SEOs - Issues & Answers

(08/12/2009)

  

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2:14

Keri Morgret:  Independent SEM/SEOs: Issues & Answers While building their businesses, many SEMs and SEOs fly by the seat of their pants. While many issues they deal with are identical to any other type of business, there are issues unique to running/growing a search business. For instance, many small to medium sized independent SEO and SEM agencies may not be able to get the errors and omissions insurance offered to larger agencies. Is your business protected against significant Google overspends? And how has the current economic climate affected smaller agencies? How have the valuations of independent SEM/SEOs been impacted? And what about competitive positioning - how can you enhance your company's value for a transaction in 2009? Hear the answers to these questions and more from our panel of experts. Moderator: David Hoffman, Founder, Search Smart Marketing Click to close Speaker Profile Speakers: Kathleen Fealy, President, KF Multimedia & Web, Inc. Frank Watson, CEO, Kangamurra Media Heather Rogers-Symon, Asst Director Business Development, HUB International, Northeast Yuval Marcus, Partner, Leason Ellis LLP Paul Forster, CEO, Indeed

2:17	Keri Morgret:  We're waiting a couple more minutes for people to wander in.

2:19	Keri Morgret:  Independents are often so busy with trying to get success for clients that we forget to work on our own company.

2:19	Keri Morgret:  Kathleen Fealy is the first to speak.

2:19

2:21	Keri Morgret:  We're having a couple of technical issues.

2:22	Keri Morgret:  Kathleen works with her clients to help them understand SEO and how it can improve their websites, using social media to help people, and is a certified usability analyst.

2:22	Keri Morgret:  After coming from a Fortune 100 company, she realized as an independent she had to be responsible for all aspects of her business.

2:23

Keri Morgret:  First issue: Insurance Property and Liability Insurance - Falls or injuries on property - Theft of computers and equipment - Losses due to fire or water Errors and Omissions Insurance - Allowed for work with larger companies - Reduced risks to business if somoene claimed work was done incorrectly / harmed business.

2:25	Keri Morgret:  Last year, she had a problem getting her E&O insurance renewed. The insurance company said SEO was dangerous and didn't want to cover her.

2:26	Keri Morgret:  Answer: Need contract - preferably written or reviewed by attorney - Warranties - Limitations - Indemnification clause Need to educate insurance broker - Similarity to traditional marketing - No guarantees

2:27	Keri Morgret:  One reason insurance agency was reluctant was that she was small. A bigger SEO firm was insurance by the same agency, but wasn't as much of a problem because they were larger.

2:27	Keri Morgret:  Issue: Copyright infringement When designing sites, content, logos, videos are potential areas of copyright infringement.

2:28	Keri Morgret:  She was served with a subpoena, she was a third party of a lawsuit. One of her clients was accused of using a copyrighted image.

2:29	Keri Morgret:  She contacted her insurance company. Was good that she wasn't being directly sued.

2:29	Keri Morgret:  Answer: Have E&O Insurance before you need it Know or have an attorney Indemnification clause in your contract Copyright clause in contract - Client's responsibility to obtain copyright - All content provided to you must be free and clear to use

2:30	Keri Morgret:  Educate your people Search and SEO is still new, as are the implications. Even though most people use search engines, they really don't understand how search works. Costs can be higher if you don't find those advisors and you have to try to do it all yourself.

2:30	Gaurav Sharma:  Up next is Paul Foster, CEO Indeed

2:30

2:32	Gaurav Sharma:  He is going to provide 5 tips for search marketing

2:32	Gaurav Sharma:  1. Differentiate & Focus

2:33	Gaurav Sharma:  Find a niche, pick one thing that you are good at. It can be an industry or something specific like vertical search.

2:33	Gaurav Sharma:  Are you SEO or paid search? The broader you are, it is difficult to stand out.

2:34	Gaurav Sharma:  Choose your position and then focus.

2:34	Gaurav Sharma:   Showing an example of HRSEO - specialized for HR.

2:35	Gaurav Sharma:  HirePPC focuses on HR and SEM

2:35	Gaurav Sharma:  2. Keep it simple and transparent - It's easy to confuse.

2:36	Gaurav Sharma:  Try to make your pricing transparent. Make your offering modular - get success early on.

2:36	Gaurav Sharma:  Find a clear message for your product/service.

2:37	Gaurav Sharma:  3. Market with metrics - Decide the metrics, measure client results and create case studies.

2:38	Gaurav Sharma:  Cost for 55 hires was $275/hire for PitnyBoes using Indeed.

2:38	Gaurav Sharma:  4. Outsource - What can you outsource?HR, payroll, acocunting, etc. Example: Administaff - co-employment arrangement.

2:40	Gaurav Sharma:  5. Bootstrap - Self-fund, use cashflow from your business, only spend money when necessary., watch your cash flow, you can delay payments without hurting your relationship.

2:42	Keri Morgret:  Heather Rogers-Symon is up next.

2:42

2:45	Keri Morgret:  A pause while we find the correct presentation file.

2:45	Keri Morgret:  She's an insurance broker. She says to make sure that you get advice from someone with a PNC. You need to make sure you're getting advice from someone who is licensed.

2:46	Keri Morgret:  There are all types of insurance and lots of crazy acronyms. She's going to look at what we need.

2:47

Keri Morgret:  Risk management strategy: Protecting your business from risks is the foundation for success. Take he time to investigate your business needs with your broker, your industry association, and your peers. The way she explained agents vs. brokers to her 10 year old is Gap vs. Bloomingdales. An agent is like Gap -- means you can only go with Gap clothes. A broker is like Bloomingaldes -- you can go there and get clothes from any manufacturer.

2:47	Keri Morgret:  Claims scenarios: Is your business prepared for an interruption? Many other things.

2:49

Keri Morgret:  Where to start: Business Owner's Policy - Offers building ,property, and general liability coverage under one policy. - Protects your company's computers, network, valuable papers, and office furniture. - Provides coverage for damage from fires, electrical surges, business interruption, water damage, and even embezzlement by an employee. Great thing -- based on revenues. If you don't make a lot of money, you don't pay a lot of money.

2:49	Keri Morgret:  Liability Coverage: - Coverage under a BOP policy also meets a landlord's requirement for a tenant to carry business premises liability insurance. Your Umbrella will defend you in the event that your company is sued or named in a lawsuit.

2:50	Keri Morgret:  Never guarantee anything over which you lack complete control. You want the big contract and to promise the moon, but accidents happen.

2:52

Keri Morgret:  Enhanced Coverage: Professional Liability. - Errors and Omissions are not covered under a general liability or a BOP policy. - As clients expectations of performance increase, lawsuits against professionals do as well. - Not all insurance brokers are alike, and many may not be able to offer your firm this coverage. Again, you need to make sure that the insurance brokers know what you do and that you have the correct coverage with your policy.

2:54	Keri Morgret:  Insurance also helps you to make a mistake good. You don't screw up a client relationship as bad if you can go back and do something about it.

2:54	Keri Morgret:  One size doesn't fit all. Do make sure your policy fits you. There are all kinds of things you can do to the policy.

2:55	Gaurav Sharma:   Up next is Yuval Marcus

2:55

2:57	Gaurav Sharma:   Going to share how to avoid litigation for SEO and SEM companies.

2:58	Keri Morgret:  What is intellectual property law? Trademarks, copyrights, and patents.

2:58	Gaurav Sharma:  If a company starts using a similar name, domain name and/or logo what can you do? -

2:58	Keri Morgret:  Copyrights (Creative Expression): Give the owner the right to prevent the copying by others of original works of authorships.

2:59	Gaurav Sharma:  Providing example of trademarks - Yahoo, Google, etc.

3:00	Keri Morgret:  Patents (Inventions/Ideas): Give the owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or offering to sell an invention that is new and useful.

3:00	Keri Morgret:  He won't go into much detail about patents in this session.

3:00	Keri Morgret:  Benefits of trademarks:

3:01	Keri Morgret:  I didn't know you could use a strong trademark as an asset that could be used as collateral for funding.

3:01	Gaurav Sharma:   Registration of trademarks affords additional rights.

3:01	Keri Morgret:  Some trademarks are better than others.

3:03

Keri Morgret:  Arbitrary (word with a meaning but not related to the goods such as Apple for computers and fanciful (coined term such as Kodak) Suggestive: suggests the nature of the goods but does not describe them such as coppertone for sunscreen Descriptive: Not really capable for protection unless you associate that with your company. protectable upon a showing of acquired distinctiveness or secondary meaning (describes the good such as Fish Fri for fish batter mix) Generic trademark: not capable of source identification (the common name for the product such as deodorant)

3:03	Keri Morgret:  There are few people here in the session, and I think they're missing some good information. Makes me realize how much protection a regular employer can provide.

3:04	Gaurav Sharma:   Why should you apply for a trademark? - Common law rights, state registrations, US wide registration.

3:04	Keri Morgret:  What if you want to rebrand and come up with a new name?

3:04	Keri Morgret:  The availability of a domain doesn't mean you have a right to use it.

3:04	Gaurav Sharma:  A Google search is not a trademark clearance search.

3:06	Gaurav Sharma:   Copyright protects creative works.

3:06	Gaurav Sharma:  promotional material logos software training manual

3:06	Keri Morgret:  Big issue is who owns copyright.

3:06	Keri Morgret:  General rule: copyright ownership vesets in the author at the moment of creation of the work in a fixed medium. Copyright protection is automatic when work is fixed.

3:07	Gaurav Sharma:   If you hire a consultant to write or create something, he/she will own the copyright, unless he/she transfers it to you.

3:07	Keri Morgret:  Create strong trademark, always conduct trademark clearance search, and make sure you own the rights to what non-employees create.

3:08	Keri Morgret:  Frank Watson is up next.

3:08

3:09	Keri Morgret:  He's got great cartoons in his presentation!

3:09	Keri Morgret:  How to work with your customers, things you don't want to do.

3:10	Keri Morgret:  He's had a lot of problems with clients that expect way too much. you have to manage these expectations when doing your contract, proposal.

3:10	Gaurav Sharma:   Make the proposals less detailed and generic.

3:10	Keri Morgret:  His biggest problem is he'd do a proposal that was really detailed. The client wouldn't take the contract, but would take the proposal and do everything he said..pretty much a free analysis.

3:11	Gaurav Sharma:   Enthusism is the key - Instill into the client.

3:12	Keri Morgret:  Make sure you let clients know you can do so much, but you are still at mercy of engines.

3:12	Gaurav Sharma:  Set the expectations with clients.

3:13	Keri Morgret:  He's not a big fan of Google, and is showing some neat cartoons about them.

3:14	Keri Morgret:  He feels like he's a doctor at a party. People find out what he do, start off with "I have this website..."

3:14	Keri Morgret:  If you're new into this space, he recommends to pick a niche.

3:15	Keri Morgret:  Get to know that specific area really well.

3:16	Keri Morgret:  Go to the conferences of the niche industry to find clients. CPA conferences, medical conferences, etc.

3:16	Keri Morgret:  It's now Q&A time.

3:17	Keri Morgret:  Do you have to file copyright and trademark on every domain name you own? Don't need to file on a domain name, but before you use the domain name, make sure that it's clear and not going to cause you a problem.

3:18	Keri Morgret:  Question about trade secrets. They're within what is considered intellectual property. Different between patent is that the patent expires, but trade secrets doesn't.

3:19	Keri Morgret:  Trade secret: doesn't have to be exposed. Coca-cola formula is an example. If they had a patent, it would have expired a long time ago and everyone could now do it.

3:20	Keri Morgret:  Whatever you want to keep as a trade secret you need to make sure that it is always well-labeled, NDA if exposed, etc. [I am not a lawyer, please consult one for precise information]

3:21	Keri Morgret:  Talking about what to do about employee branding with a twitter account, is it in scope of their employment. Get things written in a contract.

3:23	Keri Morgret:  When choosing a lawyer, you do want one that has some experience in your area. Problem is that there a few that do understand SEO and they needed to be educated.

3:25	Keri Morgret:  Look at having your contracts reviewed, as your business may change over time. Insurance people can also help tell you things.

3:25	Keri Morgret:  Contracts can be reviewed before getting quotes on insurance to see what liability is exposed.

3:31	Keri Morgret:  Discussion about employee vs. contractor and the distinction. Complicated area.

3:31	Keri Morgret:  Session is now over.

3:31

Below is live coverage of the Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going? from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Chris Boggs of Rosetta.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going?

(08/12/2009)

  

Close

2:19	Barry Schwartz:  this is Chris Boggs from Rosetta covering live starting now

2:20	Barry Schwartz:  Richard Zwicky is moderating a panel of the "who's who" in Search:

2:20	Barry Schwartz:  Matt Bailey; Todd Malicoat, Todd Friesen; mike Gr

2:21	Barry Schwartz:   Mike Grehan; Bruce Clay; and Matt McGowan in the crowd passing the mike around

2:21	Barry Schwartz:  panelists are on first topic, covering sites that have been banned

2:21	Barry Schwartz:  talking about BMW Germany

2:22	Barry Schwartz:  Todd jokes that they got a lot of good links out of the situation, so if you are a big enough brand and can afford to go down for a day or 2, you may get some great links about it. (laughs)

2:22	Barry Schwartz:   Matt talks about the "stupid" things like hidden text etc that doesnt work and that shouldnt have been done in the first place

2:24	Barry Schwartz:  next question comes from someone who asks how to keep his ranking about BMW germany... Todd suggests coming up afetr the session to get his card (more laughs)

2:24	Barry Schwartz:  next: please discuss Buying Links

2:24	Barry Schwartz:  "oh the link buying"

2:24	Barry Schwartz:  Todd says go direct is the first thing, dont use a broker

2:25	Barry Schwartz:  he quotes Mike Grehan who said that "asking for a link is like asking to do business"

2:25	Barry Schwartz:  make sure you get the most

2:25	Barry Schwartz:  out of the link if you are going to create a partnership and spend the time

2:26	Barry Schwartz:  Todd says get professional help

2:26	Barry Schwartz:  (to buy links)

2:27	Barry Schwartz:  technical difficulties...not sure if posting

2:28	Barry Schwartz:  k we are back

2:29	Barry Schwartz:   panel is addressing campaigns with huge numbers of keywords

2:30	Barry Schwartz:  although important to use analytics to understand them all, Todd F recommends focusing only on the top 1000 or so

2:31	Barry Schwartz:  btw the first Todd above who said dont use a broker to by links was Malicoat...Friesen advocates having someone help you

2:31	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F talks about asking the people that are your partners or charitable benefactors for links

2:32	Barry Schwartz:  question: what about purchasing links on a site that doesnt relate topically?

2:33	Barry Schwartz:  Mike saysthat there are lots of people you could be doing business with, and that great links are a bi-product of doing good business

2:33	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F says that Google is very good at blocking links...the obvious ones are probably not working anyways

2:34	Barry Schwartz:  Matt says that the better link builders that are out there come up wiht a good value proposition to give you a link

2:34	Barry Schwartz:  as opposed to sending a message that says hey I built a link to your site now please link to me

2:36	Barry Schwartz:  Mike says that often when people lose rankings, they dont realise that was the day that they lost a really good link from Wall Street Journal or something

2:36	Barry Schwartz:  people automatically think that their site went down because of an algo update or because of competitors, when in fact you have to do some temporal analysis and determine when you lost a link and then try to get it back

2:37	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M talks about how you can "strech relevancy really far" (laughs)

2:37	Barry Schwartz:  you have to be careful how you strech that, says todd F, because Google will start ranking you for random phrases, and this can change the relevancy of your site in the eyes of Go

2:37	Barry Schwartz:   Google

2:38	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M says true, but you have to also control the anchor text out there to ensure that you still have good relevancy pointed at you

2:39	Barry Schwartz:  question: what about Bing and Yahoo

2:39	Barry Schwartz:  this is like asking who are the next beatles...there wont be one

2:40	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F - says that subdomains on Bing "rock and roll"

2:40	Barry Schwartz:  he says that what worked in 2002 is working right now

2:40	Barry Schwartz:  Mike is frustrtaed that people always look for a "Google killer"

2:40	Barry Schwartz:  Matt talks about all the propoerties that Yahoo and Bing nevere integrated, and is hoping to see even more cool results

2:42	Barry Schwartz:  Mike, (finishing above thought) says that Bing and Yhaoo have their own thing, just like there will never be another Beatles

2:42	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M talks about the differences between the users that are on Yahoo and Bing is great

2:43	Barry Schwartz:  even though there may be less traffic, there are more conversions

2:43	Barry Schwartz:  Bruce says that one of the things that they believe is that the combined marketshare of Y/Bing will actually help garner more advertising technology

2:44	Barry Schwartz:  alkta vista, inktomi, and other tools purchased by Yahoo are still valuable

2:45	Barry Schwartz:  talks about networks of sites reciprocally linking.. Todd F says dont do it, take it down, it looks like crap

2:46	Barry Schwartz:  Mike says he would rather have one big "mother" site and focus on it

2:46	Barry Schwartz:  you cant put enouhg unique good stuff on 10-20 web sites if they are all about the same topic (Todd F)

2:47	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M says that is one of the reasons Todd F got out of spamming and jamming...he never thought he would be up there talking about how writing good content is the key (crowd laughs)

2:48	Barry Schwartz:  Mike Grehan honest;y believes that a lot of tool bar data is in use

2:49	Barry Schwartz:  Matt talks about a company that wanted to rank for UPS, which wasnt UPS

2:49	Barry Schwartz:  it was actually an acronym for a product... in terms of relevan

2:50	Barry Schwartz:  cy, the company was relevant, but most people would back out of the site if they enetered it afetr a search for UPS

2:50	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F says that the engines look at 100s of signals, and this would just be one

2:50	Barry Schwartz:  he would not be too worried about having a hihg bounce rate

2:51	Barry Schwartz:  Bruce remids you that your competitors could hire the country of India to click on your listings and then back click, if that was a concern

2:52	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M has definetley seen that if you work on getting "the second click" on new sites, the bounce rate will not only drop but the rankings will rise

2:52	Barry Schwartz:  he says that it is a factor that is important,

2:53	Barry Schwartz:  talks about search suggest, and some of the "mean" or "angry" things that come up as suggestions

2:53	Barry Schwartz:  Matt says this is definitely a problem

2:54	Barry Schwartz:  he talks about a cool example... if you start with a search by typing in to the box: "how 2"

2:54	Barry Schwartz:  and you get suggestions like "how 2 buy drugs" "how to get pregnant" etc

2:54	Barry Schwartz:  but if you type in "how does one..." the suggests are much more academic

2:55	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F is toying with an idea that involves Chinese proxy servers, etc to help influence search suggest (half jokingly I believe)

2:55	Barry Schwartz:  Q: does siloing still work?

2:56	Barry Schwartz:  Bruce says they do theme-alligned content structure within web site, to ensure that the content doesnt "bleed" across from some pages to the other

2:57	Barry Schwartz:  he says that it still works very well. he talks about when they silo that the rankings go up

2:57	Barry Schwartz:  Bruce also says that the issue doesnt really work the way it was/is supposed to

2:57	Barry Schwartz:  Mike G says

2:58	Barry Schwartz:  that he always felt the was a complete load of bumpkin

2:58	Barry Schwartz:  sorry nofollow was in above post but I used the code so it disappeared

2:59	Barry Schwartz:  btw once again this is Chris Boggs from Rosetta covering this session while Barry flies home. he got an early flight WTG Barry!

3:04	Barry Schwartz:  talking about duplicated content, Bruce says that you have to be careful with how much content you reuse, even if you change the locations, for example.

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  Mike sayss some things are legit even though they may appear to be duplicate content

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  also says lets be clear that not all duplicate content is subject to penalties

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  unless you are trying to do something deceptive

3:06	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M says you are still hurting your quality score to some dgree, so you need to try and ensure to not have dupe content

3:08	Barry Schwartz:  what about co-brands...do you filter the IPs from search egnines so as to avoid them seeing one or the other?

3:13	Barry Schwartz:  the general consensus is that you should block one or more and only keep one in the index

3:14	Barry Schwartz:  talking about Local listings "getting in the way," Todd M suggests reading David Mihm's Local Ranking facto

3:14	Barry Schwartz:  rs at getlisted.org

3:15	Barry Schwartz:  btw the getlisted.org clarification of what Todd M was talkign about was from Todd F who admits that David buys him beer for the URL mention...kind of like a paid link

3:16	Barry Schwartz:  talking briefly aout "caffeine update" no one has really had a chance to study it yet

3:17	Barry Schwartz:  Todd M says that it is purely speculation until at least a few months, when people try to talk about algo updates

3:17	Barry Schwartz:  should you do press releases and articles, and should you host it on your site?

3:18	Barry Schwartz:   ToddF says you should host on your site, since it is good content

3:18	Barry Schwartz:  he feels article sites are mostly pools of garbage, and would focus

3:18	Barry Schwartz:  on the press releases instead

3:19	Barry Schwartz:  another gentleman in the room says that he has seen zero benefit to press releases in the experiecne they have had over the year

3:20	Barry Schwartz:  Mike G says that you shouldnt be worried about 30-40 links from crap sites, rather that you should look for the one WSJ writer who will pick it up and write an article about it

3:21	Barry Schwartz:  Matt Bailey says to ensure you are targeting publications that keep links indexed for a long period of time rather than dropping them in a matter of days

3:22	Barry Schwartz:  question:

3:22	Barry Schwartz:  about nofollow and removing it, why hasnt google removed all their's?

3:23	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F says it doesnt matter either way since the nofollow doesnt work

3:27	Barry Schwartz:  what happens if you have a bunch of competitors using spammy/black hat strategies? shoudl you keep reporting them and will it eventually work?

3:27	Barry Schwartz:  Todd F says Tim Mayer from Yahoo once said during such a discussion that you "cannot bring a sword to a gunfight."

3:28	Barry Schwartz:  bottom linbe is some industries are so competitive that you simply have to buy links or do other such tactics in order to compete

3:28	Barry Schwartz:  in answering a comment from Jim Pond:

3:29	Barry Schwartz:  that refers to w=once someone clicks through to the site from the search engine, if they clikc on another link on that site and start navigating, they have taken the next step to the "second click"

3:30	Barry Schwartz:  this is supposed to indicate, according to some, that Google and other toolbars would then know that the person didnt back-click back to the search results page, and that the page is therefore leggitimate or worthy or ranking for the term

3:30	Barry Schwartz:  if they click right back to the SERP, and this happens lots of times, some people feel that the algo will then penalize the page and rank it lower

3:31	Barry Schwartz:  hopefully that answers your question Jim thanks for asking

3:32	Barry Schwartz:  Matt says back to the industry competitiveness thing, that you simply have to be prepared to spend more money for a more comptititve sapce, bottom line

3:33	Barry Schwartz:  OK that's it take care folks as I am off to moderate the in house SEO panel. once again, this has been Chris Boggs from Rosetta. Thanks Barry for the opportunity to blog for SER as always! :)

5:36

Below is live coverage of the Brand, Trademark & Reputation Management from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Chris Boggs of Rosetta & Keri Morgret of Strike Models.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Brand, Trademark & Reputation Management

(08/13/2009)

  

Close

12:44

Keri Morgret:  Now that Google has lifted the ban on trademark terms in search ads, should we expect an immediate influx of brand names in Google keyword ads? Should you use a competitor's trademark in your own search advertising? Or what if a competitor has an ad running on your trademarked brand name? Is it worth engaging professional legal help or are there other options? What if bloggers are posting negative or false claims about your brands, and these are spreading with viral speed through other blogs? Are there ways to get these damaging messages out of the search engines? This session will provide an exploration of these and other brand protection issues. Moderator: Sage Lewis, President, SageRock.com Click to close Speaker Profile Speakers: Lori Weiman, CEO, The Search Monitor Brian Kaminski, EVP, Managing Director, iProspect Simon Heseltine, Senior Marketing Manager, AOL, LLC Paul Elliott, Partner - Search & Media / Analytics & Optimization, Rosetta Mark Rosenberg, Of Counsel, Sills Cummis & Gross P.C.

12:45

Keri Morgret:  Paul Elliott is starthing things off for this session.

12:46

Keri Morgret:  For online reputation management, you need to monitor and protect your prand.

12:47

Keri Morgret:  He'll be sharing case studies with us today.

12:47

Keri Morgret:  Understanding the impact that search results can have on the brand. Looking at Diet Coke and SERPs.

12:48

Keri Morgret:  They haven't done a good job understanding and/or impacting their results.

12:48

Keri Morgret:  User generated content and PPC increases amount of negative results.

12:50

Keri Morgret:  Negative Brand Impact Does Not Always Require the Acts of Others.

12:52

Keri Morgret:  Poorly managed SERPs provide substantial opportunity for manipulation. Paul had a bad experience with a construction contractor, able to directly impact SERPs and their business in about 24 hours by using ripoffreport, yahoo local, etc. Company hadn't been proactive in their SERPs.

12:52

Keri Morgret:  National City Bank is not the official name of the company, and they were reluctant to use that phrase in their meta tags, content. Google instead chose what to show in description, so they showed "not bank guaranteed" .

1:01	Keri Morgret:  Wifi in the room has died so I'm covering from my phone until it returns.

1:02	Keri Morgret:  Kaminski is talking about peoples' responses to google trademark changes.

1:03	Keri Morgret:  He's going over googles guidelines.

1:04	Keri Morgret:  Advertises were excited. Trademark owners were worried.

1:05	Keri Morgret:  Compared two pre and post six week periods to see what impact this had.

1:06	Keri Morgret:  Performance impact on branded keywords was negligible

1:06	Keri Morgret:  Little to no change in position

1:07	Keri Morgret:  No sig increase in competitors incorporating trademarked terms into their copy

1:08	Keri Morgret:  Cautions that this is small data set and will be interesting to see what happens as time goes on

1:09	Keri Morgret:  Still need to have game plane, monitor brand. Focus on ad differentiation. Set rules for your affiliates and enforce them.

1:10	Keri Morgret:  Advertisers: get into the game.

1:11	Keri Morgret:  He can get you white papers and data.

1:12	Keri Morgret:  Simon from aol is now up. And I'm still on the phone.

1:13	Keri Morgret:  Need to worry about more than just SERPS.

1:14	Keri Morgret:  Forums are one example, and they're often not index esp for private forums.

1:15	Keri Morgret:  Might miss mentions because of abbrevations.

1:17	Keri Morgret:  Gives example of united and breaking guitars.

1:18	Keri Morgret:  Review site can show good in SERPS but could be bad reviews that don't show in SERPS.

1:18	Keri Morgret:  You need to work on your listening abilities

1:20	Keri Morgret:  Need to also focus on employees. Example of dominoes pizza.

1:22	Keri Morgret:  Examples of sports stars behaving badly on twitter

1:22	Keri Morgret:  Respond as posiively as you can.

1:23	Keri Morgret:  If you respond with a lawsuit it will likely go live online.

1:24	Keri Morgret:  Doing it right can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

1:25	Keri Morgret:  Know when to walk away. Flame wars and trolls. Don't post fake reviews.

1:27	Keri Morgret:  Laurie weiman upnow. Talking about affiliates.

1:28	Keri Morgret:  Her company monitors search results and looks at advertisers. See if affs are dollowing toc.

1:28	Keri Morgret:  STILL no Internet on desktop for me

1:29	Keri Morgret:  Direct linking is a problem

1:29	Keri Morgret:  This can drive up CPC

1:30	Keri Morgret:  Can drive down roi

1:32	Keri Morgret:  How to find these direct linkers. Manually is one option. Can be thwarted by geotargeting and dayparting.

1:32	Keri Morgret:  Quantify impact by charting ad frequenxy

1:35	Keri Morgret:  Other problems. Expired offers. You and competitor on same landing page. Affiliate not part of network anymore still advertises and goes to bad landing page (they forget to take ad down)

1:35	Keri Morgret:  Not all bad. Affs can help block out competiton.

1:36	Keri Morgret:  Brand hijacking.

1:38	Keri Morgret:  What to do. Go to search engines. Legal actions.

1:40	Keri Morgret:  Attorney is up now.

1:41	Keri Morgret:  When to call lawyer. Nonlegal mesures don't work. Time is of the essence. You need to go nuclear.

1:42	Keri Morgret:  And I'm back on the laptop! Let's hope this works for a while.

1:42	Keri Morgret:  Before you get a lawyer involved: Not all unauthrized trademark use is illegal.

1:43	Keri Morgret:  Sales of genuine trademarked product. Sales of generic version of trademarked product Legimitate comparision between trademarked product and a competitor's product. Statement needs to be true.

1:43	Keri Morgret:  Can be used in truthful opinion and commentary. Emphasis on truthful.

1:44	Keri Morgret:  Use of the trademark must be limited to what is necessary to identify the trademarked product. Can't cause undue attention to the trademark.

1:44	Keri Morgret:  Google's new trademark policy pretty much tracks what is permitted by the law.

1:46

Keri Morgret:  There are problems with Google's policy. - Finding it! Didn't find it on Google's site, then did a search for the trademark policy, then had to do three clicks in for link. - Allows purchase of trademark as a keyword. Means you can be bidding against competitors. - Relies on honor system Rosetta Stone filed a lawsuit against Google.Rosetta Stone does radio ads with well-known taglines. Competitors bid on these taglines (taglines all registered trademarks).

1:48

Keri Morgret:  Articles and commentary: Applies to lots of places: mainstream media, blogs, forums, etc. First Amendment protects opinion. Truth is an absolute defense. If there's a roach in the soup and you can prove it, there's nothing you can do from a legal standpoint. But if it's materially false, that is not a protected opinion but defamation. Parody is protected. United can't do anything about the guitar video because it's parody. There is a fine line with parody, can become defamation.

1:50	Keri Morgret:  When it's time for an attorney. - Your rights are being violated. - Non-legal measures are not working. - You know in advance that non-legal measures are pointless.

1:50	Keri Morgret:  - violation needs to stop immediately.

1:51

Keri Morgret:  Why go to an attorney? - Gets the bad guy's attention. Lets them know that people are serious. Once the attorney is involved things are one step closer to litigation. - ISP's, registrars and host often more willing to cooperate with an attorney's request than just regular person. - You can't wait to see if hte non-legal measures are going to work.

1:52	Keri Morgret:  Example of Saturday Night Live, City of New York got Saturday Night Live for a parody.

1:52	Keri Morgret:  What can an attorney do for you? - Ability to go to court - Preliminary injunction (can get some action before formal court date)

1:52	Keri Morgret:  Examples of McNeil Labs v. Pfizer, Bose Corp. v. Silsonnic

1:53	Keri Morgret:  - Attorney can do discovery, help figure out who other person is (like with ISP).

1:53	Keri Morgret:  Q&A time. If my internet connection fails, I'm not going to be able to cover this via the iPhone.

1:56	Keri Morgret:  Discussing what you can do about reviews. Sometimes if there's just a couple of negative reviews and a whole bunch of positive, it may not be bad. There is some research saying a bad/neutral review might not hurt things much.

1:57	Keri Morgret:  In the UK it's illegal to do a review with a false name.

1:58	Keri Morgret:  And the session is now over.

1:58

Below is live coverage of the News Search SEO from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Patty Adams of Vertical Measures & Gaurav Sharma of Think Mantra.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

News Search SEO

(08/13/2009)

  

Close

12:40

PattyAdams:   Speakers: Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce Allison Fabella, SEO Manager, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR Lisa Buyer, President & CEO, The Buyer Group David Radicke, Consultant, SEO, SEM, Web Analytics, Radicke eCommerce Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google Summary of session: In this session, we look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search.

12:48

PattyAdams:  We have 6 speakers today so let's get started.....

12:49

PattyAdams:  Alot of what we've learned this week would be nice to be able to leverage in PR. I want to give you something simple to take away.

12:49

12:50

PattyAdams:  One item, I would suggest a keyword calendar. Take time to do this.

12:50

PattyAdams:  I started life as a journalist, then became a PR person.

12:51

PattyAdams:  In terms of PR, wouldn't you like to know in advance what was going to be happening around the corner? Wouldn't it be nice to be proactive? You do! It's Google!

12:51

PattyAdams:  DANA: Congrats to all for making it to the LAST day of SES!

12:51

PattyAdams:  Before you start researching your next strategy, research your news search future.

12:52

PattyAdams:  We have two software products.

12:53

PattyAdams:  Start "old school". Look at editorial calendars. Assemble print pubs that your audience reads. Look online for alignments, topics and other interesting stuff. This is stuff that could help you peek a search query.

12:56

Gaurav Sharma:   Talk to the SEO team and get their top keyword priorities.

12:56

Gaurav Sharma:  Include 1-2 baseline targets in every release.

12:56

Gaurav Sharma:  Include hyperlinks in your releases and articles.

12:57

PattyAdams:  So for example, look at a publication site, and look at their editorial calendar, and leverage what is going to be talked about.

12:57

Gaurav Sharma:  Plan your stories - Write for people, but include your Keywords, use keywords exactly and variations.

12:57

Gaurav Sharma:  Optimize title, abstract, body of releases, photos, videos

12:58

Gaurav Sharma:   Allison Fabella is up next

12:58

12:59

Gaurav Sharma:  Atlanta Journal is one of the largest newspapers.

1:00	Gaurav Sharma:  How to find the next big story? Google Zeigeist, Twist, Facebook Lexicon, mediaCloud.org

1:01	Gaurav Sharma:  Headline Writing Don'ts - Don't use clever, cheeky headlines, don't abbreviate, don't bury the lead - tell the story in the first paragraph.

1:03	Gaurav Sharma:  Headline Do's - Pick search phrase first, when relevant go geo, train early and often, show successes.

1:04	Gaurav Sharma:  Use SEO Blogger Tool

1:05	Gaurav Sharma:  Use XML Sitemaps - For homepage - use changefreq = always For News sitemap add pub date, timestamp, article id, include only last 72 hours of stories. Follow sitemap protocols. Don't use sitemap generators - They are not robust.

1:06	Gaurav Sharma:  CMS Gotta Haves - Auto populate title/description/slug

1:06	Gaurav Sharma:  Short URL's consistent/persistent despite access point.

1:07	Gaurav Sharma:  Use 301 redirects not 302s.

1:07	Gaurav Sharma:  Use Article ID in URL - for news sitemap.

1:09

1:17	Gaurav Sharma:   David showing how Google News can effect your traffic if you solely depend on them - Any change in algorithm can drop/increase traffic.

1:19	Gaurav Sharma:  Follow the Google rules for Google News, no black hat action seen so far, meet the technical requirements, publish content regularly everyday

1:19	Gaurav Sharma:  Do not rely on Google News only

1:19	Gaurav Sharma:  Up next is Lisa Buyer

1:19

1:20	Gaurav Sharma:  Talking about tweeting for News!

1:21	Gaurav Sharma:  Tweeting news into the PR strategy - Twitter effects Google News.

1:21	Gaurav Sharma:  Keywords count in Twitter - Username, bios and tweets. Look at your SEO and SEM campaigns and leverage it for Twitter.

1:22	Gaurav Sharma:  Del Jones did interview over Twitter. He had just a couple hundred followers that day, now he has more than 5,000 followers.

1:24	Gaurav Sharma:  He welcomes CEOs and promotes USA Today and other news stories.

1:25	Gaurav Sharma:  Media relationships on Twitter - Good/bad news travel faster on Twitter.

1:27	Gaurav Sharma:  Follow related media Use alerts to find out who's talking about you.

1:28	Gaurav Sharma:  Next up - Greg Jarboe

1:28

1:29	Gaurav Sharma:  Case Study for Parents magazine got them from 4,000 entries to 85,000 in a baby photo contest.

1:32	Gaurav Sharma:  They found "baby photo contest" was popular than "kids photo contest"

1:33	Gaurav Sharma:  1. Annouced the blog 2. Offered tips from the judge 3. Thanked bloggers which blogged about 1st release. 4. Mentioned contest is going to end soon.

1:33	Gaurav Sharma:  Have pictures in your news.

1:35	Gaurav Sharma:  News Search transfers information, but it is just the first phase, social media spreads is the second phase.

1:36	Gaurav Sharma:  They got 446 in links for 6 pages

1:38	Gaurav Sharma:  At the end of the contest in 2009 they generated more than 129,000 entries.

1:39	Gaurav Sharma:  Maile Ohye from Google is next.

1:39

1:39	Gaurav Sharma:  Talking about News Search SEO

1:40	Gaurav Sharma:  Covering: Ranking Factors FAQs BestPractices

1:41	Gaurav Sharma:  Talking about Google News crawling

1:42	Gaurav Sharma:  1. Discovery crawl - finds news like web crawler. They have a whitelist sources. 2. Check sitemap.

1:43	Gaurav Sharma:  You can exclude pages/sections using robots tag.

1:43	Gaurav Sharma:  They categorize data using news text.

1:44	Gaurav Sharma:   Story ranking is done by aggregate, editorial interest.

1:45	Gaurav Sharma:  Next part of ranking is Article ranking

1:46	Gaurav Sharma:  1. Fresh and New 2. Duplication and Novelty Detection 3. Local/Personal relevancy 4. Trusted Sources and many more...

1:47	Gaurav Sharma:   Trusted Sources is determined algorithmically - based on clicks and user behavior.

1:49	Gaurav Sharma:  Trusted Sources are also determined based on categories.

1:49	Gaurav Sharma:  Benefits of News Sitemaps - Greater control over your articles to appear on Google News, publication date, keywords.

1:50	Gaurav Sharma:  Google News re-crawls your pages and discover in a few minutes and come to re-crawl.

1:51	Gaurav Sharma:  How can I optimize videos? - Create a youtube channel.

1:51	Gaurav Sharma:  You can use transcription with videos.

1:52	Gaurav Sharma:   How can I optimize images? - Large sizes, good aspect ratio, descriptive captions and alt tex, near title, inline, non-clickable and jpgs

1:52	Gaurav Sharma:  Is pagerank used in Google News - Yes, but it is a minor factor.

1:54

Gaurav Sharma:  Best Practices - 1. Unique, permanent URLs with 3 digits 2. Don't break up article body 3. Put dates between title and body 4. Titles matter (HTML title and heading) 5. Separate your original content from your press releases (directory structure) 6. Publish informative, unique content.

1:54	Gaurav Sharma:  Q&A started.

1:54

Below is live coverage of the Advanced Paid Search Techniques from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Advanced Paid Search Techniques

(08/13/2009)

  

Close

10:40

Keri Morgret:  How can you best tap into long tail terms? Are there targeting techniques you're overlooking? This session examines these and other techniques to help you get more out of paid search. Moderator: Chris Boggs, Director, SEO, Rosetta Click to close Speaker Profile Speakers: Thomas Bindl, Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH Bill Lan, Vice President of Account Development, Efficient Frontier Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & Principal, Page Zero Media Sage Lewis, President, SageRock.com Ari Levenfeld, Manager Client Services, Ask Sponsored Listings

10:41

Keri Morgret:  A few technical problems here, apologies for the late start. We're in the middle of Thomas Bindl's presentation right now.

10:41

Keri Morgret:  He's talked about how we can't just look at the last paid click for conversion information.

10:41

Keri Morgret:  You need to measure all of your data (ad text performance, placement performance, etc.)

10:42

Keri Morgret:  Look at revenue per impression. Download the data from your AdWords account, then add some of your own columns to get the data you need.

10:42

Keri Morgret:  Use filter functionalities on a regular basis. This has been improved a lot in the latest redesign.

10:43

Keri Morgret:  There's a lot of information to help you measure exactly. Missed the points on his slide.

10:44

Keri Morgret:  Looking at how to cut the long tail shorter, and optimizing your account with better tracking. Use negative keywords, helps with better targeting and spending less. Example if you're trying to advertise for the Paris Hilton hotel, do exact match, exclude things like videos, include things like reservation.

10:44

Keri Morgret:  Video paris hilton will NOT get you videos of what the room looks like. ;)

10:45

Keri Morgret:  Bill Lan is up next.

10:46

Keri Morgret:  Their company manages $750 million of paid search.

10:46

Keri Morgret:  Techniques they use: utilizing search query reports, mining the long tail, and how to use seasonal data.

10:47

Keri Morgret:  He shows the broad keyword of bid management. Broad match search terms are including construction bid management, vendor management, procurement target. Looking at this report helps you figure out exact keywords to use, and what to use for negative keywords.

10:48

Keri Morgret:  Google search query report isn't as granular as most web analytics packages.

10:48

Keri Morgret:  There is still good data, you can add negatives based on incorrect query intent, and add keywords and exact match based on your ROI.

10:49

Keri Morgret:  Mining the long tail -- you're getting away from dependence on head terms.

10:50

Keri Morgret:  Systematically expose under-explored keywords, uncovering each keyword's full ROI characteristicxs.

10:50

Keri Morgret:  You need to look at are you getting more keywords with clicks, impressions, conversions.

10:50

Keri Morgret:  How to bid long tail keywords with convidence. You need to cluster similar keywords to maximize exposure efforts.

10:51

Keri Morgret:  Talks about putting some math behind keywords, see how closely they match. Shows diagram.

10:52

Keri Morgret:  Look at seasonality for your keywords. "cape cod hotels" has a definite seasonal search volume.

10:52

Keri Morgret:  Use your historical data to help with exposure and bidding decisions. Know when to start pushing some keywords, and when to stop pushing them.

10:53

Keri Morgret:  Match your search query reports to conversions to help determine your next direction.

10:54

Keri Morgret:  Tool used to generate the semantic relevance / math that he talked about. They use an in-house modeling, but that data is available through the search engine APIs. You can also go to Google and type in keywords into their keyword generator, they do show some of the similarities.

10:54

Keri Morgret:  Andrew Goodman is now speaking.

10:55

Keri Morgret:  His presentation is titled "Greedy Ad Testing? & 'Quality Score Hygiene'"

10:56

Keri Morgret:  He's explaining academic papers talking about bidding strategies.

10:57

Keri Morgret:  Both you and Google want to make money. Quality score is how Google wants to make money. CTR is a big factor in quality score.

10:58

Keri Morgret:  Ad testing: think about your objectives. If you use their default settings, they favor the highest CTR, don't care about your CPA. But your goals are often CPA and stuff is opposite of what they want.

11:00

Keri Morgret:  "double winner" is the rare ad with both a high CTR that doesn't hurt your investment (has high ROI).

11:00

Keri Morgret:  Do landing page testing, do lots of variations to try to get this. Also do for ad copy.

11:02

Keri Morgret:  He's showing example of a variety of ads - the best CPA had the lowest CTR. A bad CPA has a good CTR.

11:03

Keri Morgret:  How to give yourself a chance for the "double winner". Keep more ads "in play", don't turn off too soon. Multivariate testing. Don't make mistakes with latency or date ranges. External factors can affect your ads, may not be just the ads themselves.

11:04

Keri Morgret:  http://adcomparator.com/ is recommended.

11:04

Keri Morgret:  Consider attributes of winning ad creative "account wide". Look in Google Analytics for some of this information.

11:05

Keri Morgret:  Think harder about why some ads can do both high CTR and high ROI. - Information scent and relevancy. You've got better copy in your ads. - several other bullet points.

11:06

Keri Morgret:  With new accounts, you really need to think about quality score and CTR.

11:06

Keri Morgret:  Don't let keyword tools run your marketing. Build a tight campaign to start with, broaden keyword list later.

11:08

Keri Morgret:  Sage Lewis is now up.

11:09

Keri Morgret:  He watches this industry like other people watch baseball scores.

11:09

Keri Morgret:  Most recent news: Digg rolls out a new ad platform, it's currently in beta. The more the ad is voted up, the lower CPC. Ads probably won't show right now, as it's in a light beta.

11:09

Keri Morgret:  Click fraud declines, according to click forensics.

11:10

Keri Morgret:  BrightRoll launches performance pricing models for online video advertising. They have cost per engagement, cost per completed video, and cost per click.

11:10

Keri Morgret:  Google adwords is now dynamically adding addresses to the ads. Shows up the example of local pizza places.

11:11

Keri Morgret:  You can manually add the address.

11:11

Keri Morgret:  Search marketing spends double and take 59% share of online marketing budget according to a forrester report.

11:12

Keri Morgret:  Lawsuits with trademarks in PPC (Rosetta Stone)

11:12

Keri Morgret:  Search ads less helpful than TV, Newspapers from Harris Interactive.

11:13

Keri Morgret:  Still on headlines of news.

11:13

Keri Morgret:  YouTube Launches Call-to-Action overlay.

11:14

Keri Morgret:  Hulu commands as much as TV and 10% of online video ads. "You know you have eyes on your screen"

11:15

Keri Morgret:  Microsoft, NBC Universal to sell addressable TV Ads. Admira aggregates viewer data from multiple satellite and cable TV systems, then overlays that with geo and demographic data to determine which ads to serve.

11:15

Keri Morgret:  Five more newspapers join the Yahoo Newspaper consortium. Started in November 2006 with 176 newspapers, now at 814.

11:15

Keri Morgret:  Search Plus Display still hottest online ad combo in Q1 2009.

11:17

Keri Morgret:  Search Giants Encounter Challenges in Mobile Ad Markets.

11:18

Keri Morgret:  Wow, lots of news that has happened, and didn't get it all down here.

11:19

Keri Morgret:  Re Bing/Yahoo, Lewis feels we need more innovation, is "feeling the excitement" is Bing. Yahoo is asking questions about what people wants to see. He thinks it's going to be good.

11:19

Keri Morgret:  Goodman: With two players, it's going to be "easier to buy more" advertising once you have your advertising optimized.

11:20

Keri Morgret:  Ask reminds us that they are still a player out there, and Chris Boggs relates that he had a report about good conversions from Ask.

11:21

Keri Morgret:  Ari Levenfeld from Ask is now up. Thanks Yahoo and Microsoft for helping them to now be number three (chuckles from audience).

11:22

Keri Morgret:  Ari comes to search from a writing background. He has an MFA in poetry, which doesn't have a lot of job options. He found search marketing, and thought it'd be great because it was all about words and haiku. Found out that it was a lot more about data. He's now going to talk about data.

11:22

Keri Morgret:  Data falls into either having too much data and not going what to do with it..or not having enough data.

11:23

Keri Morgret:  In either case, use existing keyword data, maybe from old campaigns, and put it to new campaigns. Helps you to make educated guesses. Remove underperforming refers.

11:24

Keri Morgret:  He's going to use CPA as the metric for the follow sample company of Federal Auto Company. Company bidding on: - hybrid car - cheap auto - new car deal Problem: not enough data to make informed optimization.

11:25

Keri Morgret:  Take existing data from other (older) accounts. Looks at CPA on referrers. Need to know what target CPA is before making decision.

11:26

Keri Morgret:  tips for success: - increase budget/coverage of keywords with good CPAs - maintain list of referrers that do not work in certain verticals Ask Sponsored Listing's Results - Ask sponsored listings tested this method last six month - Results - 3x increase in LTV (I think it was LTV - slide moved on too quickly)

11:28

Keri Morgret:  Q&A time.

11:33

Keri Morgret:  I suddenly have a bad headache, and have missed the Q&A so far.

11:36

Keri Morgret:  q: say one thing other than CTR that weighs in on quality score. ad text is important (helps CTR) some of Google's predictive measures factor in, but factor in to CTR. landing pages

11:37

Keri Morgret:  money! have enough of a budget, be willing to spend.

11:38

Keri Morgret:  ask rep: yes there is a "secret sauce" in quality score, but CTR is by far the biggest factor, and focus on this.

11:38

Keri Morgret:  Andrew Goodman says he wants to reinforce the CTR factor.

11:38

Keri Morgret:  Testing landing pages is for business reasons, not quality score reasons.

11:46

Keri Morgret:  Last question before session ends, closing down coverage.

11:48

Below is live coverage of the SEO Through Blogs & Feeds from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Patty Adams of Vertical Measures & Barry Schwartz of the Search Engine Roundtable .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.