Daily Internet Marketing News, SEO News

New Google Answering Facts
"Queries return answer at top of page."

WebmasterWorld Classic: Colors, Color-Blindness and the Web
"The quick way to check? Print it out on a black and white printer. If rendering it in black and white like this causes you to lose meaning, then you are certainly losing visitors on the web too."

Attaining Quality Ranks on MSN Search
"We are about 1.5 months old, a store, selling something very common."

Google Related and Alternate Searches Return To SERPs
Google's Related searches return as Alternate searches.

Google Cache Page Size Limit Change
"Google searches are now returning SERPs showing cached page size greater than 101k. It's been 101k for as long as I can remember."

Prices reduced on Google Search Appliance
"Google...said on Wednesday it has cut the price on licenses for its hardware that helps small and medium-sized businesses add search to their internal networks and public Web sites."

New AdSense Channel Features Added, Including Real Time Channel Stats
"Until now, channel data was delayed 2 days before appearing in your reports. We've upgraded our system to provide real-time reporting, allowing you to quickly react to changes in your ad performance on a page-by-page basis."

Google in TV Deal with New Channel "Current"
"The channel also has established a partnership with the Google search engine, which will provide twice-an-hour updates on viewers' top Internet searches.""

Google video hosting.
"Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that [Google] would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google's servers, partly in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data."

PayPerClick Class Action Law Suit
"A group of advertisers quietly filed a lawsuit in February against Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and other Internet companies in a potentially important legal test of those companies' liability for a form of online-advertising fraud, Tuesday's Wall Street Journal reported."

Google Adds Satellite Imagery to maps.google.com
"Google has added satellite imagery to maps.google.com. It's really great data. I've been hunting for property and use terraserver.microsoft.com for satellite imagery, but google's sattelite images are of better resolution, plus you get the killer UI."

How do search engines make money, how do I make a search eng
hey i have got some wuestions about searchengines olease answer them by clicking the link

Lost number 1 at yahoo should I edit my home page
Much to my disappointment I've lost (temporary I hope) my position at Yahoo. I edited my home page about a month ago just to add a newsletter link and some text and I'm wondering of that could have caused a re-index and re-evaluation by Yahoo. Should I leave my home page alone if it is ranking so well. If yes how do I add fresh content and let my visitors know about it? I'd be interested to hear what others do and if they have noticed the same thing. The pages that are now 1 and 2 were previously 2 and 3 and they haven't been changed for years.

Random Text
I know that basing a site on Random Blocks, than good solid expanding text in context is bad. But does anyone have any references ?

Need assistance with newer website.
I have a website that you guys (and gals) have helped me out with a few times on this site http://www.useddialers.com (the only reason I am mentioning the UsedDialers site is for a minium target with the new site) and have partnered with another company to also form http://www.absolutetechnologies.net We have an employee who designed our website for us and feel like she did a great job but now we are needing website promotion. On my website of UsedDialers I am well within the top 10 on every search engine except for google in the search engine postiton checker for the term "predictive dialers". We are wanting the Absolute Technologies website to have more of a web presence than UsedDialers. Can someone look at my UsedDialers.com website and give me an idea on price, terms and length of time estimate to have a higher ranking (visits, hits, etc) with The Absolute Technologies website? About 2 years ago I hired a company that guaranteed me a to 10 position for my keyword and never even came close and I lost $1,500 on the deal. I do not feel comfortable dealing with a larger company on this again so I would like some price ideas from a smaller company or individual.

Jeeves turns 8
almost forgets own birthday When the company was first incorporated in June 1996, the staff consisted of Dave Warthen and Garrett Gruener, the two founders, plus me the software architect - and three content editors, jammed in a couple of rooms in a historic building in downtown Berkeleyaah the good old days huh? :)

Google top execs earn only $1 p.a.
well they do according to Reuters In the second quarter of 2004, Schmidt, Page and Brin requested that their salaries each be slashed to $1 per year. They will continue to be paid $1 in 2005, as per their request, despite a recommendation by the board to boost their pay. But Schmidt, Brin and Page each have sold Class B shares potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars since the Web search leader went public and its stock briefly zoomed above $216 from $85 a share. On Friday, it closed at $192.05 on the Nasdaq. According to regulatory filings, Brin and Page each sold roughly 1.6 million shares of Class B common stock between the IPO in August and the end of March. During that same period, Schmidt sold about 500,000 Class B common shares. it's a hard life isn't it? :P

Google, personal video searches and Al Gore.
Can anyone make any sense of this for me? Have I missed something? Firstly we have a report from CNet about Al Gores new TV station which will feature "the search firms data on the most popular searches"Gore and Google team up In addition to the videos, the new network reached a pact with Google to include the search firm's data on the most popular Web searches. The deal came despite early skepticism from Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, the No. 1 Web search engine that earlier this year stepped into the realm of entertainment by releasing a test video search service that pulls up still shots from such content providers as Fox News, PBS and the NBA. When first approached, "I thought it would be an extraordinarily challenging endeavor," Brin said. "Having seen some of the work they've now put together, I think it's an extraordinary opportunity." Starting Aug. 1, Current will replace News World International, which is available in almost 19 million U.S. homes--12 million from DirecTV and about 5 million on Time Warner's digital-cable service. Current acquired News World International from Vivendi Universal Entertainment for an undisclosed sum last May. Viewers will be able to contribute content and participate in the programming the show lineup through Current's online production studio. earlier, on Monday this article appeared "We're going to start taking video submissions from people" in the next few days, Page told a crowd at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association show here. Later, in response to a reporter's question, he called the move an "experiment in video blogging." Since I found these I've had a quick hunt around and have found other people mentioning it but no-one seems to know exactly what G are planning on doing. I have horrible images of some insane combination of 'worlds funniest animals' and 'video diaries' (imagine the most inane blogs you can find and combine it with reality TV. Nasty huh? ). Strange times at the 'Plex I think....

Search Engine Optimization explained for everyone.
The Below Report I created to help beginners... I thought it would be a good read for people that are new to SEO. Search Engine Optimization explained for everyone. Years ago search engine optimization was as easy as making sure your keyword density was right, your meta-tags were correct, the content on your site is the best it could be. Now the only thing that remains in any huge force is the content, and that is not because the search engines like content, it's because humans do. At one point during the early to mid 1990's Altavista(TM) went as far as listing things alphabetically, this lead to a mass rash of Internet sites with '#' signs and numbers in the meta and title tags, with web masters trying anything to find a character that started before the letter 'A'. The point is that our industry, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) went as far back as the search engines themselves. When Google (TM) introduced Pagerank(TM), it changed the game. All the search engines use the same type of ranking system. Pagerank(TM) is in essence a formula that the search engines use to rank a page. People would be reading a web page, and click on the link saying "Bob's Diner" and would be taken Bob's Diner site. The link's text is called the "anchor text" the part that says "Bob's Diner". The search engines spider the sites, and follow the links to Bob's Diner. When someone searches on the Search Engine, they would say "2000 pages had a link to Bob's Diner with the anchor text saying "Bob's Diner" so if anyone searches for "Bob's Diner" make sure to list his web site #1. The Search Engines view the links as "Votes" for that page with that keyword. Easy Enough, but this is where it becomes complicated. The only problem is that Pagerank(TM) uses between 125 to 400 differing factors in ranking how the votes are cast for a site. If a small site in tiny town, USA links to one page with the keyword "Bob's Diner" because that is the name of the local Diner, and a huge web site based in Big-town, USA links to another site with the keyword "Bob's Diner". The site that Big-town linked to will rank higher in the Search Engines. Why is this so? Because the Big-town site has more links pointing to it and the Search Engines have deemed that site to be more popular and hence it's vote is more powerful. So whoever Big-town links to will have a much greater chance of being ranked higher in the search engines for the anchor text that the link is created with. 90% of Search Engine optimization today is in getting quantity and quality of links to your site with the proper anchor text. That means that 90% of your rankings are pretty much beyond your control. This was implemented to stop people from manipulating the results so their site becomes #1, even if it does not deserve it. The 10% that you can control is your content on your site, because let's face it, who is going to link to a garbage site. So you have to have a good looking, easy to navigate text based site with real content. You also need to make sure that all your sites have the proper links to each area with the proper anchor text. Try not to use flash, or some other type of complex site navigation because the search engines have a very hard time indexing the content on those sites. Though the search engines claim they can spider them... trust us, they have a VERY hard time doing such and your site will suffer in it's rankings using that type of design. Why is this a problem if 90% of the search engine rankings are based on links? Because the search engines will have a hard time finding the links and internal navigation on your site to count the links from page to page inside your side. In essence you are losing links using flash as your navigation. A text based site-map helps in this situation, but it loses a huge part of the value of each individual page. In short you need links to your site, that is really the only way to get good natural rankings on the search engines. We have helped some of our clients go from 1-2 pages indexed in Google(TM) to thousands, just because of the way their site was designed, we have also helped people go from page 100 to page 1. The reason their site was on page 100 was not because it was not a quality site, it was because the site was designed incorrectly for SEO purposes. Search Engine Optimization executed correctly could give you the best ROI of any marketing campaign, but it's also one of the most risky, as the SEO firm you choose does not own Google(TM), Yahoo(TM) or MSN(TM) and cannot promise you rankings because they don't own the search engines to make such promises. As with any marketing campaign I would suggest you research the company you choose, ensure that the SEO firm you choose complies with the Google(TM), Yahoo(TM) and MSN(TM) guidelines. If it is not in their contract with you to comply with those guidelines, you could see your site vanish from the search engines. The Search Engine Optimization industry is filled with all sorts of differing approaches, from Black Hat (Search Engines say Bad) to White Hat.(Search Engines say Good). Any company that does not tell you exactly how they are increasing your rankings you shouldn't trust. Because it's your site, and your company is relying on how they are doing it, and your company should know exactly what is going on. Report created by: Yooter InterActive

question on google ranking
Newbie here...been working on SEO since December, learning lots from this forum; most of it has paid off, except with google (figures). I've added a doctype, as well as fixed all validation errors (thanks for both of those tips). I've also added a robots.txt, which doesn't exclude anything (was hoping it would help). For my keyword, I rank #11 on MSN/Lycos/AltaVista and #12 on MSN. ...so why am I sandboxed on google? I've been checking my logs daily and the googlebot never does a deep crawl. can anyone see a problem with my site (like does it seem spammy?) http://www.finewoodworker.com Thanks you guys. Val

Google only indexed my home page
Google has just indexed the homepage of the my site recently but no other page has been indexed. it has been more than two months no other pages have been added it doesn't even reflect the keywords searching through google I have a poor rankings My site has very less content and mostly images are there. But my site has proper navigation to all the pages in the site. I have also site map in it then why only my home page is indexed.

Google Satellite
Go to Google Maps, type in your address (or the address of a friend in the US) and then hit the 'satellite' link top right. It's incredibly interesting and some areas have better coverage than others (couple of people I know you can't see their actual houses because the highest level of zoom doesn't have pics but others are really quite detailed - at the moment I'm about 50/50 on seeing the actual places I'm looking for with more success around big cities) It's not info that wasn't available in other ways or elsewhere, but I'm not sure of the benefits to anyone of having it available in this way on such high zoom. A basic pic of the road layout and what things look like is definately useful for navigation (eg; big building on the corner with red roof, road layout is like this, lots of trees just before the junction) but this is detail..... I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks :)

Hyperformance: In 'Click Fraud',Web Outfits Have A Costly Problem (Pay-per-click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising)
Project Php - "No offence Hyperformance, but that position does not fit the evidence, and is exactly the sort of baloney that keeps being spit out on this subject. As Ron said, no advertiser will stop an ROI positive source of advertising, no matter how much click fraud there is, and it won't be Click Fraud that kills PPC, it will be the evolution of the Internet, if anything."

It is not baloney IMO - because the ROI you speak of is going away... as the prices climb for keyword phrases and the fraud continues, it becomes "not cost effective" at some point. We (HMI) have already left specific terms for just that reason - when you combine the two, in more and more cases there is less or zero ROI. I believe it's death as I stated above could be a morphing of what exists now. But it is not (IMO) what it once was (already).

Scott "I have to say, I am with Martin on this one."

On the fact that this is nothing like shoplifting... there are many controllable factors in shoplifting.

This is also why I asked who is getting 35% in credits back from these programs? Nobody is... and in my estimation of fraud, it could be higher than that. My issues are in agreement with you in that it is HUGE... and what "aggressive" steps are being taken by theses suppliers? It's not enough - Google does not want you to get a bigger piece of their pie - so on one hand they state the fraud is less than actual, and on the second hand, they do not rush in to repair it... they have had a couple years now...? We got all these other great new product offerings from these guys, how about fixing a HUGE problem in the customers eyes? Google and Overture will not say it is HUGE. Yet, they admit it exists "to some degree".

I agree there is a cost in detecting Click fraud, but one that should have been beared a while ago. It's not like the funds aren't there? :thumbup: And raise the minimum bid to cover the costs? Google has the proven profits here - they want the program, then they should provide the insurance that provides for the program to continue successfully for everyone. My cost should not go up, I am already paying to use the service - it should be covered.

My thoughts... :)

Randy: How To Exclude Pages From A Site In The Link:http (SEM/SEO Resources and Advice)
It used to work, but they've managed to bungle that site exclusion modifier somehow in their tweaking at Google.

FTR, you can still use such an exclusionary command on Yahoo!, which give more complete backlinks data anyway.

Randy: New Member - Be Gentle :o) (The Pub)
:rofl: Jill !

Welcome John. Glad to have you aboard.

We're pretty calm around here most times. Well, cept for Torka. You have to keep an eye on her with that whip she likes to brandish. ;)

fabrizio: How To Exclude Pages From A Site In The Link:http (SEM/SEO Resources and Advice)
Hello,
I'd like to exclude a specific domain from the results of my backward links on Google displayed by the following query:

link:http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/

I tried to add the "-site:www.thesiteIwanttoexclude.com" to the query but it doesn't work.

Any idea is very welcome!

Thank you in advance.

Fabrizio.

systemsnews: Question About Google Descriptions (Optimization Tips & Techniques)
Hello,

Jim Here again. No, My ranking has stayed at 4 under used office furniture. Only the Description has changed.

I do change my front page weekly but not generally the descriptions, only the content as ad's need to be updated.

I did look at Dmoz and yes, that is the description it changes to.

I also observed that out of the 3 domains above me only (1) appears to be listed in Dmoz and that description also changes (not the other 2).

I always felt a Dmoz listing was important (Now I am not so sure).

Anyway to get unlisted in Dmoz :)

Thanks Guys, you are very helpful,

Jim Veritch

Jill: Help With Keyword Popularity (Keyword Research)
Welcome Karl! :aloha:

I'd be sure to use both forms of the phrase on your page as they both are getting searched.

Jill: Increase Pr Without Incoming Links (Optimization Tips & Techniques)

QUOTE

Here is how I thought it works.

1. Let's say your home page had a PR of 5.
2. Then that PR would then be split across all the links on the home page. So if you had 5 links on your home page, then each of those pages would get a PR of 1 boost.
3. So without any incoming links to the internal pages, those internal pages with links on the home page could never get as much PR as the home page unless there was only 1 link on the home page.

Is that right?

Nope.

Jill: Question About Google Descriptions (Optimization Tips & Techniques)
Grrr...I think it's sucks that Google is using DMOZ descriptions at times. Those can often be hugely out of date, not to mention that they're not entirely descriptive of your page/site.

C'mon Google get a brain.

Jill: New Member - Be Gentle :o) (The Pub)

QUOTE

Despite the postings you will see, this is mostly common sense and not rocket science.

Oooo! You just gave out the key to it all! Shhhhhhh....make him read everything! ;)

Jill: 0 Bl On Google Vs 1890 On Yahoo (Optimization Tips & Techniques)
Please see this thread which is all about how Google's backward link command is not accurate nor useful:

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11818

Jill: In 'Click Fraud',Web Outfits Have A Costly Problem (Pay-per-click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising)

QUOTE

if the the cost of stopping the 4 stoppable levels causes a rise in the minimum bid, that is too high a price IMHO.

I would imagine that that's exactly what would happen. If the engines are forced to do better click fraud analysis, they will have to raise the minimum bids to cover the costs.

Still, I think they cannot ignore the problem, nor can the advertisers as the "bullies" will win if they do.

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