Miscellaneous Archives

This morning, I got to the Apple Store at Tice's Corner in New Jersey at about 4:30am. I was about the 20th person in line and now, at about 6:45am (1 hour and 15 minutes until the iPhone goes on sale), there are probably about 60 people at this store.

The iPhone has seriously taken mobile search and browsing to the next level. Many search companies, tools and social applications are already available for the iPhone 2.0 software. In any event, I am very excited to upgrade my iPhone 1.0 to the 2.0 model.

Here are some pictures from the Apple Store at Tice's Corner:

If you are in the area, stop by. :)

More pictures at 2 hours, 30 minutes, 24 seconds to 8am:

1 hour, 22 minutes, 20 seconds until iPhone, the line behind me:

For more see my personal blog.

Forum discussion at Plurk.

Last week there was a lot of buzz generated by the ICANN announcement that they would open up the web to allow for an "unlimited number" of new Top-Level-Domains (aka TLDs such as .com or .org or .info, for example) to be created. The initial information from Wall Street Journal was that these could cost anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000, although another report directly from ICANN states that they would be free, and require the submission of an application for evaluation.

Barry actually wrote a post on his personal blog about the new domain extensions, and specifically called out to the SEM community that it might be worth pooling funds to buy the (.seo) and (.sem) TLDs before spammers or domain speculators got a hold of them. Although the cost isn't there yet, these domains will eventually fetch a decent amount of money on the open market, or will they? In either case, I sure would love to own chrisboggs.seo...

Three different conversations are going on within search-related forums and discussion boards, and all are focused mostly on how both search engines and users would react to an influx of additional TLDs. The Sphinn thread leads to the question of whether a TLD implies more authority or trust related to a particular subject. As Kim Krause Berg points out:

Perception is everything. Just because a site ends with .seo doesn't automatically equate to credibility or expertise.

This is certainly an interesting slant to the topic. If someone saw a site that was .insurance, would they possibly trust it more than an insurancebrand.com site?

WebmasterWorld Forums member Simsi asks:

How do you think Google will approach this? Especially considering they seem to have move a lot more localized with SERPS.

This is also an interesting perspective...will French words forming TLDs do better in France? Doubtful unless other factors are included, but certainly an interesting question.

Lastly, the conversation at High Rankings Forums forecasts havoc brought on by this potential proliferation of TLDs. A UK member states that:

Word on the street here is that certain domain names are going to go for €600,000 (yes, that is not a mistake). There is such terror over cyber squatters that some companies are prepared to pay this. Is it me, or is this just a bit of cyber insanity to entertain me because the summer months are so slow and boring?

These are all great takes on this subject...go share your thoughts and please save the .seos for me!

Malware or spyware is often confused as being something that can only come from opening a bad email attachment. In fact, there are many web pages that contain this kind of additional code, which can cause havoc for your personal computer or even a network you are in. In many cases, sites and pages use tracking software which some would also consider to be spyware or malware. However, in most of these cases there is little damage that the program could do, and it will in fact increase your user experience by customizing your pages to your past behavior.

So what kinds of malware could be bad? Google apparently uses a system that can help you find out. A recent thread at WebmasterWorld forums discusses the following introduction by a member:

While searching for a specific keywords or just typing my domain name in Google and after clicking on my site, it generates a warning named: "Malware Warning". Further they say:
"Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!
You can learn more about harmful web content and how to protect your computer at StopBadware.org."

Although some interesting and valuable discussion follows, one of the best replies came in the form of a post from Google Engineer Matt Cutts, who describes a similar discussion occurring in the Webmaster Central Google Group. Matt explains that people that claim they are seeing this result for a site that does not have any malware should look more closely.

I’ve checked out a quite a few “we don’t have any malware” reports at this point, and I’ve yet to see a false positive

.

To find out more about Google's Malware reports see the thread at WebmasterWorld or the Matt Cutts’ blog post.

Every industry has certain words and acronyms that are considered a part of the basic vocabulary by those in the industry, yet often confused or misunderstood by new entrants or observers. The SEO and SEM industry, along with website design, has quite a few terms that are commonly misunderstood or misused due to common acceptance over time of the improper term. One of the ones that always got me was the use of "ALT tags" instead of ALT Attributes, but once I was corrected I have been careful to use "attributes" since.

An excellent thread at WebMasterWorld forums begins with Moderator Tedster who quotes George Orwell as follows (partially):

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

he goes on to list some commonly made errors when "speaking Google," including ALT Tags, PageRank, Java vs JavaScript, and a list of others. He asks WMW members to share what they feel are other common errors, and the thread has rapidly grown to its second page.

Join in an find out if your use of search engine otpimisation and web design terminology is right or wrong, or share your own "words that make you want to cringe" at WebMasterWorld Forums.

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy New Years! 2007! Here are the forums and logos being sported over at the various search engines and search forums.

Google:

Yahoo:

Ask.com:

DogPile:

The Search Community is celebrating also...

Search Engine Roundtable:

Forum discussion here and here.

Cre8asite Forums:

Forum discussion here.

WebmasterWorld discussion here, DigitalPoint Forums discussion here and HighRankings Forum discussion here.

Just wanted to wish you all a happy thanksgiving! Here is a rundown of the search engine's special logos for the day.

* Google is sporting a home page logo that links to a query for thanksgiving that looks like:

* Yahoo has a home page logo also that links to Yahoo Holidays and it looks like:

* Ask.com went simple, not redoing their whole homepage, like they have done in the past, with a simple icon that links to a thanksgiving query and looks like:

* Dogpile always out does everyone with their cool and fun logos:

* At the Search Engine Roundtable, we have put up a special logo that looks like:

So today, I will be taking it slow, very little reporting on search news, if possible. Happy Thanksgiving!

Forum discussion at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A reporter for BBC News was tipped off today about the sale of AOLs UK based operations - offering dial-up and broadband internet access.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said Carphone Warehouse, owner of the TalkTalk broadband and phone offering, was paying £370m for the operation.

sem4u states on WebmasterWorld:

Yes this is big news for the UK ISP business and Carphone Warehouse.
I am kind of surprised that Vodafone didn't buy AOL UK, as they don't own a UK ISP and Orange and 02 now do.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld

Today is 9/11, most of us will never forget the details of those days. I remember that I was off from school that day, and hearing something happened via the computer. I went to turn on the TV and I saw the first tower on fire, watching home footage of the tragedy happening over and over again. I also remember watching live footage of the second tower getting hit. Then the disaster of the second and then first tower falling. It was on TV, it just didn't look real - but it was.

The Internet slowed to a halt, web sites stalled, news sites didn't load, too much traffic to those sites. I communicated with friends and family via IM, since phones both analog and mobile were not working in NYC. And Google Systems reminds us of the Google Home page that aggregated some of the latest news.

The search community has started some threads on 9/11 today. Here are some threads I found right now.

• Search Engine Watch Forums
• DigitalPoint Forums
• Cre8asite Forums
• V7N Forums

I suspect other forums to start threads soon, Ill update this post as I see them. Also, Wikipedia has a comprehensive page on 9/11.

Update: Ask.com posted a major change to their homepage for the night of 9/11. The screen capture can be seen here, or you can just view the background image here.

What steps should one take to cultivate a popular blog? For some, simply being who you are is enough (although he does a great job and would get traffic even if he wasn't working for Big G), and others have the fortune of being able to gain respect by providing introduction and some analysis of popular topics related to a specific industry. Yet with the thousands of blogs added to the Internet every week, there have to be some best practices to help the not-so-privileged grow their blog into something buzz worthy.

A recent thread at Cre8asite Forums introduces some excellent pointers to those thinking about starting a blog. Titled: Do's and Do NOTs of Blogging member SEOIgloo asks others for "Your 2 Cents." Senior member Joe Dolson lists some very valuables Do's and Don'ts, and then Kim Krause reminds everyone not to forget about Usability. She provides an excellent hint:

A page in blogs that's commonly overlooked is the About Me page. It's often the most obvious difference between a true blog, and a spam blog.

Find the thread at Cre8asite Forums, and forward it along to any blogger-wannabees out there.

Buying domains that include a brand name is not uncommon. Protecting brand identity is becoming more and more important on the Internet, and those "in the know" spend time and resources researching and buying as many brand-inclusive domains as possible. Google and Yahoo! purchase domains on a regular basis (I am sure MSN does too), and some people that keep an eye on these sorts of things can easily start rumors. Some rumors end up turning into reality, which is what makes them fun to discuss.

A recent thread at Digital Point Forums is a good example of a hypothetical discussion based on the Digg of a report of a domain name purchased recently by Google: Googlemastercard.com. The thread reveals some theories that may not be all that far from the truth, including an eventual Google Debit/Credit card. One of the cooler ideas I saw was that G would simply credit your account with funds earned from AdSense, making for easier access to that hard-earned publisher fee.

See the thread at Digital Point Forums.

For more great rumor-fodder, you can see Gary Price's recent posts at Resource Shelf, including three lists of Google buys and a Yahoo! list too (Google Domains, More G domains, more G domains, and Yahoo! Domains). I actually just started a couple threads at Search Engine Watch Forums for the further discussion of these lists posted by Gary. (Google thread - Yahoo! thread)

Many websites use content management or other software that is essentially free, and is known as "Open Source Software." In order to use the software, the creators sometimes ask for a link or donations. Many leave it up to the site owner as to how he or she wants to display the output from the software and if they want to credit the creator. The presence of these links, although seemingly harmless, can in fact cause a security concern.

A recent thread at Cre8asite Forums discusses this in detail. The thread started by member "manager," asks if people usually leave live links to the open source software creators' websites. He lists some possible reasons to or not to, including:

(Positive) more exposure… It’s nice too say thanks..(and) You don’t know how to remove it. (Negative)..hackers can exploit well-known un-patched weaknesses…may give your competition a leg up...(and) You want to re-brand an application...

The discussion yields some varying points of view, including describing ways to limit the placement of links to a thank you page instead of having them site wide in the footers or other areas. Softplus addresses the security concerns directly:

What I like to do is convert the link into a JavaScript link in an external script. That way I reduce the exposure in the search engines. My forums have been hacked too often...I usually also remove the version number, if I can...A "real" hacker will still be able to track signatures of my sites and the software used and they will still be able to recognize the version number and crack the script - but those 99.997% script-kiddies will go find something easier.

Learn more about this subject and join the discussion at Cre8asite Forums titled Do you remove credit links from opensource software?, powered by trev..lol .

Google's crawler constantly scours the Internet for pages to index, which is one of the reasons you should run away if someone offers to "submit your website to Google." On any page you do not want indexed, it is important to disallow the Googlebot (one of the nicknames for their spiders) by using special code. A prime example of pages you may not want indexed would be new pages under construction, especially if they contain content you already have in the index on "live pages."

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums shows us another example of pages you probably don't want in the Index: your FTP logs. The member complains:

My FTP log is cached by Google...and there has never been a link to it, ever!

The first response is fairly obvious, indicating that all FTP log and other pages that you do not want indexed should be password protected, therefore making it impossible for the Googlebot to crawl. So knocking out links and assuming the pages are protected, could it still be possible for the Googlebot to find the URL and "accidentally" index it?

One member astutely reminds readers that

When you use the Google toolbar and have the PageRank bar enabled, it sends url data to Google so.. so Google knows what urls exist out there, even if they are not linked to anywhere. So you have to be careful about what links you pull up when the PageRank bar is enabled.

The original poster comes back and thanks everyone for their responses, but claims it’s not that simple...The discussion continues at WebmasterWorld Forums.

Daron (SEGuru) over at Webmasterradio.fm shows us yet again how fun it must be “working” over there, having started a thread at SEW about a hilarious new promo(?!) featuring Danny Sullivan singing. You really have to hear it to believe it. It has been nicely edited to seem like an American Idol audition, including a few choice and accurately chosen comments from Simon Cowell. You can also choose to vote either for (1)Idol status, (2) immediate removal of vocal cords, or (3) to hear more...

I wonder, since Danny is in England, if he tried out for Pop Idol prior to this effort for Simon, Paula, and Randy. Too bad it didn’t make the cut for TV. Nice linkbait, Daron!

Download the audio clip from webmasterradio.fm
Comment on this at Search Engine Watch Forums. Dont' forget to vote for more!

Yahoo, Google and Ask Jeeves all are sporting customized logos for the holiday season. When you go to Yahoo.com and click on the top center logo it takes you to http://events.yahoo.com/holiday05/. When you go to Google.com and click on the middle center logo it takes you to Google's first of many holiday season doodles at http://www.google.com/doodle10.html (more to come). And if you go to Ask.com and click on the Jeeves logo, it takes you to a search results page (as a search engine should, imo) for http://www.ask.com/web?q=Happy+Holidays. Now Ask was sporting a snowman logo yesterday, so they are changing things up, possibly daily for the holiday season, keep and eye on them and Google for logo changes.

Folks are discussing the Google logo at DigitalPoint Forums. And I started a thread for Ask Jeeves at our forums here.

I was chatting with the other Andy at the networking cocktail thing and I asked him if he likes paintball (I think we were talking about doh hunting, long story...). He said he loves it. Then I thought a bit longer and said, wouldn't it be fun to have an SEO Paintball event, the white-hats versus the black-hats. :) Now of course, there are tons of folks that consider themselves gray hats but, maybe we have a few games. White-hat versus black-hate, and then grayish-white versus grayish-black. And as I am writing this, what about the engines versus the SEOs?

So right now I am thinking, when would be a good time and where would be a good place.

When & Where: Any time there is a big SEM conferences (SESs or PubCons)

So I will be posting links to several forums below where they can discuss this in greater detail. Then, I'll update you guys on the when and where, and more details. Oh, by the way, I purchase SEOPAINTBALL.COM for this event. Oh, if anyone is interested in helping out with the organization of it or even sponsoring a portion of it, I guess let me know. Not sure if I personally want to organize it, so just let me know.

Forums with Topics:

• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• Cre8asite Forums
  
• HighRankings Forum
  
• I Help You Forums
  

Update:
Recommended Venues...
- Bear Creek Paintball in San Jose.

Remember how I proposed? Well, it drove lots of natural links from quality sites all within a few days. Yahoo!'s linkdomain command brings back 223 links, whereas the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool brings back 129 links to the domain name. Point being, I know "yisha" isn't a competitive term, but that has little to do with ranking number one in a matter of months at Google.

• Google # 1: http://www.google.com/search?q=yisha
  
• Yahoo! # 8: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=yisha
  
• Ask # 2: http://www.ask.com/web?q=yisha
  
• MSN # 1: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=yisha

Shows you what a creative idea can do for ones search rankings.

On a related note; the engagement party is this weekend.

Have a good weekend all!

Last year we had creative logos from all Google, Yahoo and Ask - oh lets not forget gmail's logo. We even had a Turkey Day Google Backlink Update! Today, on Thanksgiving 2005, we have some new logos to share with you.

We have a logo from Yahoo! which links to the Yahoo! Holiday Guide 2005.

We have a logo from Ask Jeeves, which links to one of those nice smart answers on Thanksgiving. I also decided to post a thread on Ask's Turkey day logo at SEW Forums.

We do not yet have an official Google Holiday logo for Thanksgiving yet. But Gmail does have a logo for the day.

Update: Google uploaded it's Thanksgiving logo, which links to a search on thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving All!

While this topic is not necessary search related, I still thought it interesting to bring up as domains these days are very profitable and useful for SEO's and webmasters alike. Domains are instrumental in the work I do as an SEO, and they are the basis and starting point for most projects. My friend Jim Boykin is addicted to buying domain names as much as I am. Truth be told I am the owner for several one-word .org domains. Some that are quite nice, and do from time to time attract the attention of potential buyers. Most often 99% of all inquires I get to buy a domain I own are phishing attempt to collect information. It's bargain buyers looking for a cheap domain to flip to another buyer or a broker collecting for massive domain investment firms where domains are absorbed in the black hole of a large corporation portfolio never to see light again for many many years. Then there is the occasional person that is geniune and really would like to buy the domain for legit purposes. If I was to sell it would be to one of these people.

The problem these days is that buying and selling a domain can be a complex process sometimes. Other times money talks and a transaction and occur very quickly. Most of the time it's important to know who your are buying a domain or selling a domain too. Pedigrees are of little importance in domain transactions and valuation. But knowing who you are dealing with can often tell you a lot about the potential risks and benefits about a domain. People have been known to buy domains that were blacklisted in Google for spamming, effectively making them a useless in terms of SEO potential. One of the biggest problems I have run into lately is buyers that are pretending to be Non-Profit Organizations or other agencies in order to acquire a domain name for cheap. They believe that the element of compassion for a good cause might persuade the seller to lower their buy it now price in order to give the domain to a good cause. If you are an very experienced domain connoisseur then this will not work on you, but the argument is so convicing that its really hard to tell. Its tricked me the first time.

I came to the conclusion that these people might be lieing because I received 4 emails to buy one particular domain in a period of 2 months all pretending to be non-profit organizations.

Here are two of there emails:

Hello,

Is your domain still for sale? I see you purchased it a few months ago. Please let me know. I am opening a non-profit and this is the name I hope for it to have.

Thanks very much,
Signed Interested Person

Hi,

I see you've registered the domain DOMAIN.ORG and are using it for
returning related search results. I am starting a non-profit and that
URL is the best fit. Would you consider releasing it? Or sell it for a
modest amount?

Best Regards,
Another interested domain buyer

I got another email this morning from a dude in Germany claiming to start a non-profit and needed this domain as it was the best fit. Forgot it. Everytime I get one of these emails I raise my asking price.

If someone has a better explanation, I would love to hear it, but after getting many of these for several domains I am starting to suspect some dishonest practices here. Seller beware!

I was very pleased to see my good friend and colleague Lucas Morea make the Top 20 finalists for BusinessWeek Online Young Entrepreneurs search.

Many of you may know Lucas from being a SES Conference Speaker for the past 2 years now (wow, time flies). Lucas, Barbara Coll and myself do the Search Engine Marketing to U.S. Hispanics and Latin America session.

I've gotta tell you guys, when it comes to getting SEO traffic, Lucas has done a brilliant job. One of his biggest websites gets somewhere around 8 or 10 million visitors per month... not bad, ehh! And people think there is low volume in Latin America.... Ha! Think again! The story behind his first website, Monografias.com, tought me a great lesson on how to get free content on my sites and making the user be the expert copywriter.

Anyway, BusinessWeek Online is asking you to browse through, cast your vote, and see the results when they report them. I would appreciate to see many you vote in favor of this search engine marketer to help our industry stand out.

Please vote for Lucas Morea! Thanks :-)

It's no secret the Search Engine Marketing and Optimization industry steps up to the plate when one of their own is in trouble. It's a surprisingly interactive group that fights together like siblings do, but also bands together the instant someone needs help. As they send donations to help Aaron Wall and his legal fight, so too, they are scrambling to send support to the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Yesterday I wrote something called Sympathy Is Not Enough For Katrina Survivors, which sparked a thread of discussion behind the scenes of Cre8asiteForums. When I realized that some of the moderators outside the USA, as well as inside, had strong feelings and were trying to deal with their own despair over what's happening, I asked them how they'd feel about opening up a thread to the entire Cre8 community.

They were unanimously for the idea, and so we just launched On Hurricane Katrina: Support, Expression, Communication.

We hope it not only offers refuge for the SEO/SEM/Web Design/Usability community to share feelings, but is also where people can post resources and sites that support rescue and relief efforts.

TNS Media Intelligence just released an important study that shows how "advertising spending is expected to grow a moderate 3.4 percent to $145.3 billion". Other important highlights were:

• Internet expenditures are forecast to increase by 7.6 percent after two years of double digit growth in advertising spend.


• U.S. Hispanic ad spending will grow by 10.5% in 2005, sharply outpacing the overall U.S. ad market spending at just 3.4%.

Seems like we'll continue to enjoy the rollercoaster ride as long as more dollars pour into internet advertising and search marketing in particular.

The results are in! I just got word from MarketingSherpa's site that Search Engine Roundtable was annouced as winner of the Best Blog in Search Marketing category! This is an incredible honor, and I wish Barry was here to find out. He honestly didn't think we would win the honor as there were so many great blogs up this year.

They were some excellent editor notes about this site that I will highlight for you as to why Search Engine Roundtable stuck out as winner this year.

Editor's Notes: We adore the unusual editorial tactic for the winning Blog in this category -- instead of linking to news sites, the authors comment on and link to the very best new threads on search marketing on discussion boards all over the Web. So, it's a true insiders-insider blog, and a reflection of what people are realy talking about (vs what the media thinks.)

Also mentioned is Brad Fallon's blog which got an Honorable Mention for Best Blog on Search Marketing another excellent blog that definately deserved the honor. Congrats Brad!

Barry is unfortunately gone today so if you would like to leave him a comment do so here or send him an email.

Take a look at all of the MarketingSherpa's Best Blog's for 2005.

The new version of vBulletin was released as a public beta a few days ago, so I've been playing with it extensively, and for lack of a better word, it's just flat out awesome.

Plug-In Architecture
Now administrators don't need to install hacks by editing PHP files. Instead there is a full plug-in architecture. This will be painful for heavily modded forums. I spent 10 or so hours converting my customizations to plug-ins, but it was totally worth it IMO.

Data API
You don't have to worry about validating data when custom stuff any longer because you can pass data to the data manager class and it handles all that stuff for you.

Inline Moderation
For moderators, you can now moderate inline, managing multiple things (posts, threads, etc.) at once. For example you could merge 10 threads into a single thread with one click.

AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
Taking a page from some of the cool stuff Google is doing with AJAX (Google Suggest, Gmail, etc.), you can now do some neat stuff with it. Double clicking a post or thread title, will let you edit it "live", sending a private message will give you username suggestions, quick reply automatically inserts your post into the page that's already rendered (no refresh needed). It's some really neat stuff IMO.

Template History
You can save different revisions of templates (sort of like CVS), with the ability to compare them side by side with an easy to use difference tool that shows line by line differences.

rel="nofollow"
Lots of use of rel="nofollow" now, which is a very good thing IMO. Should cut out most of the duplicate content as well as stuff (like reply to thread pages) that anonymous users don't have access to.

Datastore
For frequently accessed data (like the list of forums), you can now throw them into shared memory on the web server, so no need to make queries to the DB server each time. Not only is this really cool, but the way it was all setup (with a class and sub-classes) is cool. I wanted support to use eAccelerator as the shared memory system on my setup, and it took no more than 3 minutes to create a new sub-class for it.

Since most of the big SEO forums use vBulletin, hopefully they are all about to get a whole lot cooler. I've already moved the Digital Point forums to 3.5 beta 1, but it's definitely beta software. I've personally already submitted 7 bugs so far (it would have been more, but some others beats me to it).

Creative logos to celebrate Earth Day by creative search engines. Ask Jeeve's Logo is a link that takes you to Ask Jeeves Search Results for Earth Day. Google, does not link their image, at least not as this point in time.

Forum discussion on the Google Earth Day logo at WebmasterWorld and I started a thread at Cre8asite Forums on the Ask Jeeves Earth Day Logo.

I am surprised Ask Jeeves doesn't have their St. Patrick's Day logo up yet, must be a slow start. Last year, the engines came up with nice logos for the day, even Jeeves. I expect to see one shortly for Jeeves.

Google and Yahoo have, not MSN or Jeeves (at this point).

Update::: Max informs us that Ask has posted their St. Patrick's logo:

Nice touch, but the smart answers are even better.

Our normal round up for the search engines when they commemorate holidays, click on the logos below to take you to where the engines would take you to. Normally they take you to a search "valentine's day" but Ask Jeeves forgot to change the link to a search on valentine's day from the when they mocked Google's ski trip.

I guess it is romantic to take your significant other skiing for Valentines day. :)

Not exactly SEO/SEM related but this is major enough to mention here. ThreadWatch.org reports on a Major Security Breach - WHOIS DB: Passwords Revealed over at Network Solutions. Basically, if you use NetSol as you register you are/were at risk. Nick Wilson confirmed it:

Confirmed - got sent a few whois queries to try and have seen a whole bunch of user passwords on NetSol - You can Try a Query Here - if your site is registered with NetSol then you may see your passord revealed in the results....

Well I was locked in a research lab for 10 years doing usability testing with monkeys. The monkey's were paid, and I wasn't. Apparently bananas are cheaper. The company just couldn't figure out how to qualify the expense of proper user testing. Then I found SEO, and my life has changed ever since. :-)

A really fun thread on SEO Chat asks members what they did before they started to even consider SEO for their websites. Or even those that decided to do it full time. Quite a few responses, and worth a quick peek.

So what did SEO's do before doing SEO? Some of the highlights:

Ballroom Dance Instructor
PhD Scientist
Four Season Funhog (?)
Eagle Scout
Entrepreneur
PC Repair Person
Advisor to International Telephone Monopolies
Student
Farming
Web Designer/Programmer
Oceanographer
Jewel Thief
Devoted Husband and Father
Born Again Christian
Janitor
Worm Farmer
Tasteful Adult Art Films Star
Professional Poker player
Emerald Buyer/Seller

Barry said he did Web Based Application Development, and I was involved in Real Estate and Designing Websites.

I wanted to wish everyone a happy, healthy and successful 2005. Be safe this New Years and enjoy the parties.

I would also like to wish the underdog, Ask Jeeves a successful 05. And thank you for providing a Butler that is all set and ready to go.

Sorry for not posting today more then once, excluding this entry. It has been a busy day in terms of rustybrick work, plus I think the forums were very slow today.

Happy 05!

Ever wonder what SEM's listen to while doing their black magic? There is a thread at Cre8asite that discusses just that. So far the list has; Michael Cretu, Arthea Franklin, Tower of Power, Blues Brothers, Jamiroquai, Dire Straits, The Eagles, Embrace, Counting Crows, Chicane, Melissa Etheridge, Stevie Nicks, Vivaldi to Howlin' Wolf, Professor Longhair to the Ramones, Pavement to the Beach Boys, Sinatra to Sonic Youth. A splash of Mozart, a little Led Zeppelen, some Public Enemy, Jamiroquai, Enigma, Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, David Gray, Starsailor, Kosheen, Placebo, Nickleback, Sterophonics & POD, Meatloaf and Simon & Garfunkle, Phil Collins, Joe Cocker, Chris Rea, Coldplay, Train, Dandy Warhols and Doves, Electric Soft Parade, Six By Seven, The Coral, Nirvana, Our Lady Peace, Coldplay and Leaves, Muse, Garbage, Blur, Minuteman, Supergrass, Stereophonics, My Vitriol, REM, Kula Shaker, X, Dead Kennedy's, Flipper, the Bongos, Tom Verlaine, Ramones, husker du, Nirvana, the Replacements, Debbie Harry, Black Flag, REM, the Beastie Boys, the Sisters of Mercy. Ween, New Order, Cream, Jeff Beck, Yardbirds, Zeppelin, Stones, Skynard, Allman Brothers, Phish, Crosby, Still and Nash, Jethro Tull, Steve Miller, Eric Clapton and my favorite Neil Young.

I actually had a gmail contest once based on a concert I attended.

Besides for Google five holiday logos including the one below, other search engines and search forums have dressed up their logos for the season.

The search engines all are suited up for the special holiday, and most are paying tribute but sporting a special holiday logo. Ask Jeeves takes that ones step further by sporting a balloon type logo, it is the fifth year that Mr. Jeeves will be attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (source). Check out a low quality image of the Jeeves's Balloon.

Now for the search engine logos turkey day themes:

Found a good list over at Highrankings with a multitude of firefox extensions. Install firefox, plugin many of the extensions below and you have yourself a pretty nice browser capable of many things. It also appears Jill has given up her old browser (Clickgarden...what's that?) and decided to make the Firefox her default browser. Thanks Phil for this list:

DOM Inspector - downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/eznav/
Web Developer - www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/
EZ Nav - downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/eznav/
Adblock - adblock.mozdev.org/
Super DragAndGo - morphis.eu.org/
Checky - checky.sourceforge.net/
Bookmark Synchronizer - cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/
Diggler - diggler.mozdev.org
Statusbar Clock - www.cosmicat.com/
Slogger - www.kenschutte.com/firefoxext/
User Agent Switcher - www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/
Google Pagerank - www.tapouillo.com/firefox_extension/
googlebar - googlebar.mozdev.org/
Mozilla Calendar - www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
Search Status - www.quirk.co.za/searchstatus/
SwitchProxy Tool - jgillick.nettripper.com/
ColorZilla - www.iosart.com/firefox/colorzilla/
ConQuery - conquery.mozdev.org/
Prefbar - prefbar.mozdev.org

Most the engines do not have Veterans Day logos up, or not yet at least.

My favorite, Ask Jeeves has one, its not a major difference in the logo but you will notice the little flower added to the jacket:

And one forum that made the effort to recognize Veterans Day is Cre8asite Forums with this logo:

I know this is not search related but there is a ton of buzz going on at all the forums on the latest news by ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). People are think that this new policy states that if someone initiates a transfer for a domain name you own, and you do not respond within 5 days, that the domain name will automatically transfer to the person who initiated the transfer. No questions asked. This seems to be a misunderstanding of the policy ICANN released. I spoke with my registrar this morning, and I spend top dollars to ensure I have a registrar I can call and get through to, and they said that the transfer will not go through if I do not act.

What happens is that I will receive an email from the person requesting the transfer. If I do not respond to that request then nothing will happen. However if I do respond with a yes, then that registrar (the one initiating the transfer) emails my registrar to give up the domain name. Now if my registrar does not respond, then it will go though within 5 days automatically. You see, I (the owner of the domain name) still needs to respond, if I don't then nothing should happen. This information is from my registrar and seems to be accurate.

A thread at WebmasterWorld has an excellent post summarizing this explanation on the 3rd page. I will quote that single post here to save your time:

Woah woah woah woah WOAH! Take it easy, everyone. Look carefully at the document ... here, I'll help:

THE LAYPERSON'S OVERVIEW

The relevant blurb:

If you wish to transfer your domain name from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another, you may initiate the transfer process by contacting the registrar to which you wish to transfer the name. This registrar is required to confirm your intent to transfer your domain name using Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer. If you do not respond or return Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer, your transfer request will not be processed.

THE APPARENTLY CONFLICTING DOCUMENT

Note: The second document predates the first ... but it is of no consequence.

The relevant blurb:

Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default "approval" of the transfer.

THE EXPLANATION

In document #1, we see that "If you do not respond or return Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer, your transfer request will not be processed."

In document #2 it seems to be limited by the relevant blurb. But people ...

this is a two-part process! Yay! :)

In document #1, it says that YOU, as the Administrative Contact of Record must agree to the transfer by responding to an email sent to the Administrative Contact of Record.

Next, FOLLOWING RECEIPT OF AUTHORIZATION TO TRANSFER FROM YOU, document #2 says that if the Registrar of Record does not respond within 5 calendar days, then the transfer will go through, as the default action.

It's a bonus for us!

Now, your transfer won't be crapped on by the failure of your CURRENT registrar to acknowledge the email sent by your FUTURE registrar. Previously, a registrar could "forget" or "miss" an authorization request, and keep your domain. Now, in addition to your permission, which you have always needed to give for a transfer and will continue to need to do, if the registrar "misses" or "forgets" to respond to the transfer request, your transfer will go through just as you intended.

If YOU reply in the negative or don't respond to the initial Administrative Contact of Record email (because you initiated the transfer and then went on vacation or because it's a bogus request), you'll never get to the second step involving the current registrar, and the transfer will NOT go through.

If YOU reply in the positive, by clicking on the link to authorize the transfer, THEN it goes to the current registrar, and if they respond in the affirmative or do not respond at all within 5 calendar days, your request goes through per your instructions.

Do you really think that ICANN would make it easier to hijack a domain?

The automatic locking of all domains by NetSol and others is a move on their part to make it more difficult for us to move to a lower-priced registrar. Don't fall for it.

Get some sleep tonight, folks. :)

Get out there and vote. :)

A Happy Halloween from Search Engine Roundtable too. A collection of some of the fun graphics from the search engines.

Every industry has those that are considered the "bad boys" within their respective industry. Who are our bad boys, the bad boys of search marketing?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

What would it be? What in your mind can a search engine announce to the public and have such a drastic impact on the SEO community? I asked this question in a thread over at Search Engine Watch.

So what did people say?
(1) The announcement by Google of a pay for inclusion service.
(2) Google Desktop now utilizes the contents of your computer to give you customized search results.
(3) Microsoft buys both Yahoo and Google (MicroYahoogle).
(4) Google releases a 64-bit operating system that is backwards compatible with all Windows software.
(5) Google announces new open source algo.

My personal favorite would be number five, "Google announces new open source algo."

So if it was up to the search engines to decide who would win the Presidential election, would you agree? Found an interesting press release today that I thought could provide some insight into how our favorite candidates are doing in the search engines. I reported back in September on some stats regarding the popularity of the Bush and Kerry daughters. A marketer named Matt Williams at Prominent Placement, published some findings today about what the candidates are doing in terms of search. For the most part it appears that both of the candidates never considered search as an effective means in which to reach voters. Given the amount of people that use search on a daily basis and even more so than in 2000, you would think this slip up would have been avoided. The main problem lies in the ability for interested voters to actually FIND information about them. They have most of the other areas covered, but when it comes to a simple natural search. Nada.

The release goes on to provide some research detailing the specifics of Pay Per Click on Google. Who bids on the candidates names, What they are promoting, How many people, and so on. One funny observation appears to be that Democrats are promoting an online dating website for single Democrats for a searches on "John Kerry", but Republicans don't do so for "George W. Bush". Meaningful, not exactly, but somewhat entertaining. Additionally, there are some findings in terms of searches in natural search:

�Searches on the key phrase �John Kerry� outnumber searches done on the key phrase �George Bush� by a 4-to-1 margin. If you also account for those searching on key phrase �George W. Bush,� �John Kerry� is ahead by a 2-to-1 ratio.

�Internet searchterms �Republican Party� and �Democratic Party� are even, but searchterm �RNC� shows up one-and-a-half more times than searchterm �DNC.�

Now I did some research myself to validate the findings. For the first part, John Kerry 20,267.7 /day and Bush W. George 15,388.0 /day, close to the 2 to 1 ratio. However one thing I did note was that while most people searched for "John Kerry" more often, the way they searched for information about him differed than those that searched for George W. Bush. Kerry searches leaned towards more generic information such as "john kerry cartoon", "john kerry douche bag", while those that searched for Bush leaded towards more "issue" related searches such as "george w. bush healthcare" "george w. bush national security", and "george w. bush miserable failure" just to name a few. Results probably indicative of W being President for the last four years, or a number of things you can decide on.

Read about the findings here.

If you are looking for a nice story to read check out Kim's story of some of the people who she met through her online travels. Kim Krause, the founder of Cre8asite Forums, has met many people, she describes some of these encounters over at her blog entry named Discoveries in User Centered Design and Small Business Support. Just shows how closely tied this SEM industry truly is.

I was going to wait to mention this until NickW, the creator of ThreadWatch, gave me the OK, but I see its out already by way of seobook and then SEW Blog.

ThreadWatch is a blog devoted to finding the good threads at the forums, much like this one. NickW, a SEW forum member and old time WMW Mod, PMed me about this a day ago. He said the site is "less of a blog and more of an alert system". I personally feel this is a good thing, because he will be focusing on link drops to forum threads with some dry humor (which I personally love) and this site will continue to focus on locating, summarizing and writing a formal opinion on the best SEM forum threads out there.

I am excited to read ThreadWatch on a daily basis.

Online privacy... yep, we all value it, but do we really know if we have it? For those out there that are really concerned about their privacy or live in a constant state of "anonymity" when doing research. An online privacy thread at SEW by Nick W is one to definately check out. He goes into how he had "an overwhelming desire to protect my online anonymity whilst doing backlink checks, site: checks and scoping out KW's". He list ways he protects his information, and secures his online privacy. Pretty cool.

Search engine marketers that run their own businesses are looking to tap into areas that can increase sales volume. Some SEMs are thinking global. Nacho, a moderator over at SEW forums and also a really nice guy, started a thread named Is anyone doing SEO in Asia?

In this thread, they begin to discuss PPC strategies for Asia, the all so important - translation services, and SEO tactics. Looks like this one is going to be an interesting thread.

Looks like Ask Jeeves wins this contest. Ask is the only large search engine 'smart enough' to give me some information right off the bat when conducting a search on "labor day".

Searches on "Labor Day" at:

• Google
  
• Yahoo
  
• Ask Jeeves
  
• MSN
  

Oh, I probably won't be posting much today. But you can expect at least one more entry here throughout the day.

Just two weeks ago, I heard Scott Rafer the president and CEO of Feedster say that sponsored ads will be coming to RSS soon. According eWeek, it looks like its underway. Currently the only official page on advertising at Feedster can be found here. More supply to come, just what the SEM industry has been asking for - more inventory. Will this prove to return the ROI companies are looking for?

Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch.

Several of the search engines got dressed up to help celebrate July 4th. Let's take a look. Happy July 4th!

How was your Father's Day? Did you get or give presents that were purchased online? If so, was a search engine used to find the product? Anyway, Happy Father's Day from the Search Engines!

LookSmart

MSN Search

Vivisimo

Yahoo! Search

I guess Memorial Day does not warrant a special Google logo or Ask Jeeves logo.

Anyway, I thought it would be appropriate to point out the top 3 results from the major search engines. Most of the results overlap between Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN.

Google on Memorial Day:
US Memorial Day
Memorial Day at David's Virtual Market
jeannepasero.com's Memorial Day page

Yahoo on Memorial Day:
US Memorial Day
jeannepasero.com's Memorial Day page
History Channel on Memorial Day

Ask Jeeves on Memorial Day:
US Memorial Day
jeannepasero.com's Memorial Day page
Roots Web on Memorial Day

MSN on Memorial Day:
US Memorial Day
jeannepasero.com's Memorial Day page
American Experience on Memorial Day

Happy Mother's Day from the Search Engine Community:

That is all so far.

Many of my hours each week revolve around speaking to prospects and giving presentations for my company. Often during these presentations and conversations I get into SEO/SEM topics and explain the fundamentals of SEO (a little presentation). I have given one real seminar that took place over a 3 day span on several topics including SEM, the SEM topic filled up about one full day.

Why do I bring this up? Well, there is a thread over at HighRanking's named Making Speeches and many SEM/SEO professionals who speak publicly discuss the challenges and rewards involved in public speaking. Check out the thread here.

An excellent thread is currently underway at SEO Chat forums on the topic of how to find and manage those cream of the crop affiliates of yours.

People discuss that they like to focus their energy on their 'top affiliates.' The classification of 'top affiliates' range from 95% of your revenue is 5% of your affiliates to 80% of your revenue is 20% of your affiliates. Which one is for you? The 95/5, the 90/10, 85/15 or the 80/20 ratio?

The thread also gets into how some recruit affiliates:

1. Direct emails to top ranking high quality sites
2. Referrals from existing affiliates
3. PPC ads on PPC engines
4. Participation on the forums
5. Recently an Ad in Revenue Magazine
6. Affiliate Dirrectories
7. Partnerships with other non-competing affiliate programs

Over at Peabody's Cre8tive Flow Ammon posted a topic on bookmarklets. I have been dying to mess with them but it wasn't until his post, which followed Dan Thies email to me about how he loves these bookmarklets as well. So after some searching in Google (actually, the first result in Google for "bookmarklets on safari"), I found my answer at a fellow blog.

I was unable to get the default bookmarklets working on Apple's Safari browser. But this blog entry named Fixing the MT bookmarklet for Safari now allows me to post my first blog entry here using the MT Bookmarklet with Safari.

If one is ranking in the number one spot organically, should one also conduct PPC campaigns for that same keyword?

If the ROI is positive, then YES!

I was extremely surprised by some of the answers to this question over at HighRankings forum. Forum member, thebean, asks Worth Bidding If #1 "naturally"?

lizzielu said accurately:

There was a study at the NYC Conference that showed web sites with a natural listing and a paid listing on the same page had 3 times higher click through rates. Also, people look on the left side of Google first before looking on the right side, so they're likely to click on your natural link first. If they miss it, your paid ad will be there as a back up. Also, it's good for branding. I would advise you buy the ad on that page.

I am surprised by some of the answers because I know that those people know better.

Anyway, this thread makes for some good reading.

The GMail topic just is not cooling down, besides for all the forum debate that is still taking place at:

• SEO Chat
  
• Cre8asite
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• JimWorld
  
• HighRankings
  
• IHelpYou
  
• DigitalPoint
  
• SitePoint
  

The debate is still hot amongst some of the most popular blogs. Recently, Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Books, posted in his personal blog an entry named The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus. Where he gives his opinion on why the GMail controversy is really not such a big deal and people should really give Google a break about it.

Jeremy Zawodny, the Yahoo! guy, posted an entry in his blog in response to Tim's post. Jeremy named his blog entry, Blinded by Gmail's Gigabyte?, where he discusses his objections to Tim's view. Tim then later posted a comment at Jeremy Zawodny's blog stating.

Jeremy, maybe you didn't read Rich Skrenta's blog, which captures the reasons for my enthusiasm. Gmail is an example of what you might call a "tipping point innovation." That is, it's been possible for some time, and there are a number of players (your employer, Yahoo! included) who could have pulled it off. But someone finally did it, and it happened to be Google. Giving 100 to 250 times the free storage provided by other services and making it work with Google-level search capabilities means that webmail can be more than a secondary convenience, or the email of choice for home users. More significantly to me (because I'm interested in understanding long term trends and their impact on what becomes possible as time and technology advance), it makes a bold statement about where both storage and the network are going...

For the full comment scroll down to the comments section about 70% down the page, where it reads On or around April 17, 2004 08:47 AM Tim O'Reilly wrote this:.

The debate goes on...So you think Google expected this? You know what they say, no PR is bad PR.

I seem to post once a week on this social networking topic but here is one more. Lisa from Trylon Communications emailed me about this article over at BusinessWeek Online named Tim Koogle's Connection at Friendster. This quote give me confidence in my last posts on this subject, Social Networking is going to be a tough sell financially.

"the business opportunities in social networking appear cloudy, at best. If sites charge visitors to create a profile, it would curtail the number of people joining the network, squelching the potency of these services. Although Friendster has been exploring ways around this, such as including ads on its site, it still lacks a firm business plan. That challenge is right up Koogle's alley. He joined Yahoo in 1995, when it boasted just a handful of employees and no business plan. By 2000, he had helped build the portal to over $1 billion in revenues. Whether from his perch on Friendster's board or as CEO, Koogle is betting he'll match that success.�

From the Search Engines that serve us each day:

And from the only SEM forum to modify their logo for the special day:

I spent the week in NYC for the Search Engine Strategies conference, as a speaker on the "Search Term Research & Targeting" panel on day one, and as a freeloader for the rest of the show.

Internet access at SES was spotty, and I was barely able to read my email all week. I returned to find a number of excellent threads going at IHY:

The pick of the week is Alan Perkins of e-Brand Management posting some excellent information on "Referrer Spam - Why you shouldn't publish your Web logs." Added bonus: instructions on using .htaccess to block access from specific IP addresses.

Yahoo's new paid-inclusion-plus-we-want-to-be-paid-by-the-click program stirred up a lot of criticism. Still to be determined is how Yahoo will manage to label/disclose the paid listings without running afoul of the FTC. Expect Commercial Alert to watch their actions with interest.

One night, back in 1995, a neighbor invited me over to see where he could go with AOL because he knew I had a strong interest in computers and wanted to get on the Internet. Within minutes of dialing up, listening to the familiar high pitched modem scream, there I was standing with the whole world in front of me. All I had to do was click here and there on a keyboard.

From that day on, I knew I wanted to build websites. More than that, I yearned to participate with the planet in a positive way. One of my first online friends lives in Norway. He wanted to learn more about my country (the USA). For several years, I eagerly looked forward to booting up my PC to see what "JM" would send from his home on top of the world. I told some of his stories to my kids. What an amazing opportunity to connect with people! What a glorious opportunity to do my part in creating peace by reaching out to people and talking to them. Even better, I learned to listen.

I like to find other people who feel the Internet can be a tool to bring people together in positive, constructive ways. So, it was such a thrill to find this interview by Dirk Knemeyer of InformationDesign.org on Nathan Shedroff, a pioneer in experience design.

Continue reading "Creating Websites with Passion & Social Values"

From the Best Practices Search Engine Forums, aka "IHelpYou," the following threads caught my eye this week.

An author came in looking for advice on publishing his book online
on "how to search," but the thread goes over a lot of different issues in self-publishing.

Doug Heil's entry into the search engine chart wars represents the most up to date chart currently online.
Finally, someone has made a chart without copying Bruce Clay's mistakes - hopefully this will encourage others to check the facts and realize that Looksmart's secondary search is really powered by Wisenut (not Inktomi), that Overture's ads have been replaced by Lycos Insite in more than one place, etc.

Last but not least, a discussion of click-through rates on organic listings, in which the notion that "any top ten listing will do" is tried, convicted, and sent away for a long time.

This post is going to be a short one; it has been a crazy week - been very busy. I would like to apologize. We will be having some exciting posts shortly by new blog authors and some new guests and you can also expect the current authors to post more often.

There is a post at SEO Chat entitled What's up: -gv and -va OFFLINE, Update coming?, where members are discussing there thoughts on an upcoming dance based on Google datacenter activity or lack there of.

An other thread discusses the use of hyphens and keywords in the URL and can be found at http://forums.seochat.com/t7508/s.html. Another forum, Cre8asiteforums is also discussing this topic actively over this week and can be found at: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5145.

That is all for today from me. Have a great weekend!

A collection of happy holiday headers from the search engines that bring us good news and bad, make us laugh and frown, assist us with purchases and sales, and help us get through each and every day. Happy Holidays and a Health New Year to the Search Engines and You!

Collection of some of the search engine headers that were modified for the holiday season, logos and trademarks remain the rights of the respective parties.