Thu - May 24, 2007Universal Search Will Only Get Better - IMS #124About 10 days ago, Google decided to
try something new in the way they show search results. It's called, "Universal
Search."
All long winded press coverage aside, it means that
in addition to web pages, there will be pictures, videos, and other media
sources mixed into the main search results pages. But it turns out there's way
more than multimedia.
There's Wiki results. Blog and forum posts. Twitter feeds, Geocities pages, newsgroups, news archives, Technorati tags, and get this... even personal ads from dating services. At least that's the way it was on the day I searched for Chewbacca, a fictional character from the Star Wars universe. They've just started doing it, so the results are all over the map. I'm sure it will settle down into some sort of recognizable pattern that we can test and measure. There have been all sorts of reports in the media and blogosphere. Some doom and gloom. Lots of speculation and useless drivel. What's important, is the impact it will have on you. As always, some of you will lose positioning and for others it will increase. If you have other forms of media, in addition to web pages, you'll get increased exposure. Your PDFs, videos, podcasts and photos get a better chance of being found in the mainstream results. What is important is how you name and describe the files. For example, the description of your podcast becomes critical. You must place your most important keywords in the title, file name (if possible) and meta description. Same deal with photos. Name the person or object in the filename, as in firstandlastname.jpg, not pic123.jpg. Link to the photo with keywords when possible. My early tests show keywords appearing in the alt tag, tool tips or file path only occasionally. When Google announced the change, they told us to search for things like Steve Jobs, or Darth Vader and see the new results. There's the new toolbar across the top of all search pages, the potpourri of search results, and "Searches related to" links at the bottom, for drilling down into topics. Something interesting to note, is that all the new features may not be available in your area. Only half the features work when searching Google.ca but all the changes become apparent when using Google.com. Another thing you'll notice, is the dynamic nature of the Google index. It fluctuates almost daily. When I first searched for Steve Jobs, there were three photos at the top of the results. Two days later, the photos were gone and one video from YouTube was there instead. Same deal with Darth Vader. There were image results at the top for the first week. Today when I searched, the same images are at the bottom, under the related searches and news archives. According to Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search Products, who originated the idea, "Over several years, with the help of more than 100 people, we've built the infrastructure, search algorithms, and presentation mechanisms to provide what we see as just the first step in the evolution toward universal search. Today, we're making that first step available on google.com by launching the new architecture and using it to blend content from Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into our web results. With universal search, we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results." Right now it's like a big batch of stew, freshly made. But like any soup or stew, it tastes better the second day, after the flavors have a chance to marry. So we'll need to wait a while and see where it all goes. In the mean time, pay close attention to how you name and describe your videos, photos and audio files. Your chances of showing up in Google's Universal Search results depend on it. To find out more about Universal Search, you can read the rest of Marissa's "The Best Answer" blog post. You can read the CNN "Google Unifies Search" report. And last but not least, Googles official, "Move to Universal Search" press release. Posted at 03:43 PM Tue - May 8, 2007Google Wants YOU!... To Report Paid Links - IMS #123Recently there was a lot of buzz
generated on Matt Cutts blog (the most widely known Google engineer). Three
hotly contested topics were hidden links and text, links in Wordpress themes,
and how to report paid links.
Seems as though many of the Wordpress templates
have back doors in them, that are easily exploited by spammers. They design
great looking templates and then crack them, without the owners knowledge, and
fill them with nefarious links.
Hidden text and links... include like white text on a white background. White text on a white background, and the text is a link. Using CSS to make hyperlinks that are tiny, like one pixel high text. And hiding links in something like the period in the middle of a paragraph of text. Hidden Links ==> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/ The "how to report paid links" post drew the most attention, with over 580 comments at last visit. Report Paid Links ==> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ What Matt was looking for - bottom line - is disclosure of paid links. Here's how Matt started things off, note how he encourages people to report paid links to "augment" their algo: "One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically. I'd like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I'm excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms." "Sign in to Google's webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word "paidlink" (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. As far as the details, something like shadyseo.com is buying links. You can see the paid links on example.com/path/page.html is all you need. That will be enough for Google to start testing out some new techniques we've got - thanks!" Yikes! New techniques? Augmenting the algo? Letting the machine decide? More of Matt's comments included gems like: "This post is to let people know in advance that Google is looking at some new ways to approach paid links that affect search engines. Google wants to hear about paid links that pass PageRank in the same way that we want to hear about things like hidden text or keyword stuffing." ""I'd be most interested in the "I'll pay X for a link that affects search engines" type of stuff right now, whether it be via a link that passes PageRank or a paid post / article that isn't disclosed as paid."" "We're looking to collect data for a new approach or two that we're exploring, so I'm happy to receive pretty clear-cut reports right now." "We've got a lot of data within Google already, but I wanted to put out a call for external reports to widen the set of data that we can test on." "Right now I'm just looking to increase the size of the dataset that we're running some tests on." "I'm most interested in directly paid-for links right now. I'm happy to hear about other types of situations though." "Just to reiterate, I'd be most interested in reports of sites that appear to be trying to game Google's rankings via paid links that flow PageRank." Note that they are targeting not only ads, but blog posts, forums and articles. They've already have collected a vast amount of data. They just want to disclose what they're about to do, and "increase" the size of their data set. In other words... the hammer is about to drop. They want to come clean and yell... FORE! Probably the most disturbing thing were the comments about article directories. Could they be next on the chopping block. Could their backlinks be going the way of blog comments, Wikipedia, having their ability to pass PageRank eliminated? The comment made to Matt was along the lines of, "The logical next step: Weed out those article submission sites. They're mostly irrelevant content, used for targeted link text. Passing PR is the only reason theses sites exist." To which Matt replied, "I'll take that feedback under advisement. I'm always open to feedback on what Google can do to improve results quality." Let's hope it doesn't come to pass. Because other than site directories like Yahoo, (Are they considered paid links too?) press releases and article directories, are two of the last remaining ways to generate links. On a positive note, Matt confirmed that it's ok to buy links, so long as they are nofollow ones. "There's absolutely no problem with selling links for traffic (as opposed to PageRank)." Moral of the story. Don't buy links unless the broker adds the nofollow tag. Disclose your involvement and mark your paid links, ads and posts as "sponsored." That way, you'll sleep better at night, and all your pages will stay in the index. Posted at 08:43 PM The Mysterious Drop in PageRank - IMS #123You probably already figured it out.
And it's easy to put two and two together. There was a big ripple effect. It's
what happens when big PR8 sites suddenly have their Google Juice (PageRank)
turned off, because they were selling links.
Now I don't buy links. Never have. Never will. But
since some of those sites, linked to sites, that eventually linked to me, there
was a cascading drop down the line. Much like when you drop a pebble into water,
the rings spread out to infinity.
But it won't stop there. With the data Google has collected, expect any form of undisclosed advertising to be targeted. That means anywhere you can buy a link or put an ad, including articles, blog posts, web 2.0 sites, forums, press releases, landing pages, even newsletters. So if you're earning anything from the links on your site, or the pages you host, you might consider making them nofollow links, so they don't pass any search engine benefits to the destination. And on top of that, you might want to disclose any earnings and clearly label your advertising. That way, you'll stay out of trouble with Google, the FTC, and everyone else. Posted at 08:42 PM Sat - April 21, 2007Page Strength SEO Metric - IMS #122Wondering how close your page is to
breaking into the top 10 search results. Here's a funky tool that may
help.
"The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of
webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to
quickly assess a site/page's relative importance and
visibility."
"What does this tool tell you? The relative importance and visibility of a web page. The potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search Engines. Data on popularity, links and mentions of the page across the web." Measure Your Page Strength ==> http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength/ Posted at 03:46 PM Thu - March 29, 2007Getting a New Site Indexed - IMS #121Question: How long does it take to get
a new site indexed?
Answer: Yahoo and MSN continue to spider and index
sites within three weeks of getting found. To get found, all you need is a
single link from any other web site that they normally
crawl.
Yahoo is usually the fastest, but because there are so many links from their paid directory in the results pages, it may be hard to find your site in a top 20 position. Take a look in MSN instead, and your site will usually appear there within 20 days, if you've optimized your pages for the MSN algo. Google on the other hand, reserves the top 30 spots for older sites, but it's not a sandbox penalty per se. The sandbox effect is just an artifact of the crawl and filters on top of the PageRank algo. In addition to Trust, which is basically how long your site has been around, along with human assisted or spider approval, Google also has temporal factors at work. These include how long your domain name has been registered for, the age of the incoming links, the age of the sites linking to you, and of course the PR of the linking pages. All these safeguards are in place to prevent the "pump and dump" spam sites, that are machine generated. Most of these templates leave a footprint of one kind or another. Most are easily detected and filtered out. If you want a new site to show up in the Google index faster, I suggest getting a link or 10 from PR4 or higher pages. A couple of paid links in popular directories like Yahoo, or some links from the Article Underground Blog network would do the trick. The higher the PR of the page that links to you, and the longer it's been around, the sooner you'll get found in Google's index. Posted at 01:48 PM Mon - March 19, 2007Beware Fake PR and Trashed Domain Names - IMS #120There's a lot of expired and used
domain names out there. Was it previously banned? Was the PR faked? How can you
be sure it's a good one?
Jerry West wrote and excellent piece on the topic
for his SEO Revolution Newsletter. Unfortunately, you need to be a paid
subscriber to read it. After a little poking and prodding, I convinced Jerry to
release the article publicly.
""Hi Michael, I agree that your subscribers would benefit from this info on domain fraud. So I decided to pull it out of the "members only" section of SEO Revolution because the fraud was getting so bad - it is worthy of a "public service" label."" Prevent Domain Fraud => http://www.webmarketingnow.com/tips/domain-fraud.html If you're in the market for domain names and looking to buy some, be sure to read this article, and do your due diligence before you buy. It has some handy tools and great tips, to be sure the PR assigned to the domain name is real, and not faked. Now to return the favor to Jerry... If you're trying to do SEO for yourself, or your clients, you absolutely need his SEO Revolution Newsletter. It's not cheap, but great advice never is. SEO Revolution ==> http://www.cdzn.com/jwr (And you should see the 45 page PDF he just released to subscribers... "A Comprehensive SEO On-Page Factoring Guide." It's a complete blueprint for mastering web page optimization, including the long tail of the search.) Posted at 07:17 PM Tue - February 20, 2007Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines - IMS #119We've all heard about Google's terms
of service and what they consider spam. We also know what they consider to be
quality content. But what about its little brother Yahoo?
In case you were wondering or forgot, here's
exactly what Yahoo wants, and doesn't want in its index. I found no real
surprises in the tips, but if you're not doing so well in Yahoo... and you're
wondering why, this FAQ will definitely
help.
Yahoo Quality Guidelines ==> http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html Posted at 03:34 PM Tue - February 6, 2007Top Eight Search Providers - IMS #118According to Nielson / NetRatings,
here are the numbers for December 2006.
Google -
50.8%
Yahoo - 23.6% Windows Live - 8.4% AOL Search - 6.1% My Way - 2.4% ASK - 2.1% Earthlink Search 0.5% Dogpile - 0.5% Now you know why people obsess over getting top rankings at Google. Either organic or PPC, will lead to a lot of traffic. Posted at 05:06 PM Fri - December 8, 2006Search Engine Press and SEO News SourcesEvery day I get a flurry of email,
which usually starts with, "Did you hear about? What do you know about? What's
your opinion on? Do you think this will?" Here are 12 good SEO news
sources.
There's lots of reporters hanging around. Lurking
around the blogs, press releases, forums and fax
machines.
The reporters love spreading breaking stories like, Danny Sullivan leaves Search Engine Watch. AOL to be sold. Google purchases dMarc Broadcasting. The new radio AdWords. Apple's new cell phone.... Sure there's lots of cool and interesting ideas out there. But every spring I survey you, my readers, to find out what it is that you want. Only 31% of you wanted news. That's why I focus this newsletter on what 58% of you, said that you want... strategies and tactics that you can use today. Not what may be coming down the pike six months from now. It's easy to spend half a day reading all the blogs and press releases. After which you'll probably have a whole lot of conjecture, speculation and a headache. ;-) So if I hear about something that you can apply to your online marketing efforts, I'll tell you about it right away. But as for the breaking tech news of the day, until there's an actionable strategy, it's just news... info that's not necessarily important to your internet marketing efforts. So for the 31% of you who want the news. Here are a dozen places - in no particular order - that I frequent instead of watching too much TV. 1) Mr. Search, John Battelle ==> http://www.battellemedia.com 2) Google's Official Blog ==> http://googleblog.blogspot.com 3) Matt Cutts Blog ==> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog 4) Sullivan's New Home ==> http://www.searchengineland.com 5) Many SEO Tools & Chat ==> http://www.seochat.com 6) Aaron Wall's SEO Book ==> http://www.seobook.com 7) For Geeks & Nerds ==> http://www.slashdot.org 8) Robert Scoble ==> http://www.scobleizer.com 9) WebProNews eBusiness ==> http://www.webpronews.com 10) Silicon Valley Gossip ==> http://www.valleywag.com 11) New Products & Companies ==> http://www.techcrunch.com 12) Most Popular Blogs List ==> http://technorati.com/pop/blogs Posted at 06:13 PM Quintura... The New One Click Search EngineMany search engines are starting to
employ LSI (latent semantic indexing) as part of their algorithms. Here's one
that not only uses it, but displays it.
Quintura is a visual search engine. You type in a
word and get a cloud of results. You then navigate the cloud and can refine it
as you go. You get to see the semantic relationships among the
words.
Unlike keyword-based search, that returns too many irrelevant results, Quintura often finds what your looking for with one click. It's also great for exploring all related branches of a topic, or if you're not completely sure of what it is that you're looking for. According to the Quintura FAQs, ""The map shows only those words that have close contextual relationships with the keywords in your query. Click a word to change your query and get relevant results that will comply with your new query. The size of a word shows its significance in relation to the query. The larger words have a strong contextual relationship with your query while the smaller words do not."" Quintura is one to watch. They've already found investors in Mangrove Capital. They're the same dudes that invested in Skype in its early days. So the handwriting is on the wall, if you ask me. Yahoo continues to flounder with no clear leadership or direction. Google's becoming a media company and branching out into print and radio. MSN is quietly working on .net and their upcoming "Battle of the Desktop OS." So there's plenty of room for a new search engine on the block. And frankly, it's about time. I'm really tired of the old ones. Quintura the Visual Search Engine ==> http://quintura.com Posted at 06:08 PM Sat - December 2, 2006Google Shows Your Linking NeighborhoodThis visual search tool will allow you
to see your internet neighborhood. You get to see who's linking to you, the
sites that link to them, and the sites that link to them.
You must have Java enabled in your browser for the
tool to work. Just go to the tool and enter a starting
URL.
The colors show the strength of the linking relationships. Click on the info tab to get a snippet about your link partner's site. Double click on any site and be patient while the map redraws, to show a whole new set of maps. Like any tool, it takes a while to get the hang of it. But this one is not only informative, it's very addictive. Overall, it's a very revealing look into the relationship maps, that the search engines use while crawling the web and ranking our sites. Find out who's who in your linking neighborhood. TouchGraph ==> http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html Posted at 10:59 AM Sat - November 11, 2006Google Says... The Good Guy Always WinsQuestion: Michael, can a PR5 page
out-position a cloaked page without PageRank? I notice a pattern in the
competitive keyword niches, that many sites contain no PR, and you are not able
to perform an SEO analysis of their sites. They look like spam generated sites
with keyword search engine results.
Answer: Usually a PR5 site will beat an unranked
site. But PR is not as important as it used to be. We'll often see a mix of PR3
to PR7 in the same search results. There are something like 100 different
calculations that determine
positioning.
Without specific urls to look at, it sounds to me like these may be new sites, that Google has crawled but not yet indexed. They are on what's referred to as the "frontier" of the crawl. Google is aware of the sites because of the incoming links. The site itself however, has yet to be crawled and indexed. If you cannot view their source code, then yes... they could be cloaked. I wouldn't recommend going down that path though, as there are serious consequences if you get caught. Q2: I was planning on outranking my competitors by using a cloaking script, and a throwaway domain, buying a link from a PR5 site, and then linking it to my money site. I plan on using any tool at my disposal for my clients, without looking like a spammy site. A2: I'd be very careful about using cloaking. If you try it and get caught, you'll be banned everywhere, and put on a naughty person list. And don't forget, if people find cloaked pages, they can always complain to Google, as cloaking is against their TOS. But why go to all that trouble? Why not join the Article Underground instead, and get access to all their dozens of announcement blogs. Just a thought anyways... and you wouldn't have to resort to trickery, cloaking or throw away domains. You could focus on building a legitimate white hat business, which is way better in the long run, for both you and your clients. Why keep throwing away domains with black hat tactics, when white hat tools like the Underground exist? With AU, you get content, SEO training, and as many incoming links as you want. Q3: Can I use the Article Underground articles with RSS ? Can I use the content from AU as my own RSS feed? A3: Yes, as far as I know, you can use the AU content however you like. You don't have to give credit or anything. Post it how and where you like. The only real rule, is that you cannot repackage it, or resell the articles. So if you're ready to put away your black hat and start building a legitimate online presence for your customers, Michael Liebner told me that he has a few openings right now if you want to join the Article Underground (AU) and its Blog Network. Join the Article Underground ==> http://www.cdzn.com/au Posted at 03:10 PM Tue - October 3, 2006High Rank Directories Adds SEO ServicesLooking to farm-out your SEO and RSS
directory submissions?
Now the High Rank Directories (HRD) are way more
than just training videos and a list of high PR directories. They've continued
to add SEO tools and whitepapers to their resource library. Plus they've added
SEO and directory submission services.
So if you've been looking to farm-out your SEO to an honest and reliable bunch, then CatDynamics, the people behind HRD, may be just what you're looking for. In addition to SEO service, they also offer directory and RSS submissions for you. The price is certainly right and it's definitely worth a look. CATDynamics High Rank Directories Plus ==> http://www.cdzn.com/cdd CATDynamics SEO & Submission Services ==> http://www.cdzn.com/cds CATDynamics RSS & Blog Submission Service ==> http://www.cdzn.com/cdr Posted at 04:47 PM Thu - September 21, 2006The Leading Mind in SEOWhat have you read about SEO? Has it
been tested and measured? Can it be proven?
Has it been demonstrated by an engineer with 30
years of programming experience? Is it someone who understands computer logic
and builds their own search engine
tools?
Chances are, you've been fed enough BS that your brain could grow flowers. Only the facts can be measured. The rest is just speculation, theories, opinions, conjecture... even hysteria. Only one man I know reads all the W3 technical papers and has the background to understand the math, and know what they're talking about. Only one man I know subscribes to every single SEO newsletter and can confirm or debunk the myths from the truth. There's only one man I know who's trained the best SEOs on the planet. I'm talking about Leslie Rohde. Creator of OptiLink, OptiSpider, Mastering PageRank and a host of other goodies, including his latest project... OptiSmarts. Are you ready for the greatest mind in SEO? If you are... Get OptiSmarts ==> http://www.cdzn.com/os Posted at 02:27 PM Wed - September 20, 2006Granny Dominates Google, Bests eBayYou'll probably hear a lot about Brad
Fallon in the coming weeks and months. He's the guy that
Leslie
Rohde trained, and thanks to
SEO, did over a million in sales his first year.
Brad's wedding favor site grew from a part-time
hobby in a garage, to a huge business, importing shiploads of containers direct
from China. Now, with his partner, conversion specialist Andy Jenkins, they're
soon to launch a mentoring system designed to help the average person achieve
the same success.
Watch the SEO Videos ==> http://www.cdzn.com/gn After giving us three videos, they've released a brand new PDF, loaded with case studies and videos about the people they've helped. They show how average people came to dominate their niche markets on the search engines. And hey... if a 63 year old granny can do it... what's your excuse? If you're interested in getting Brad and Andy's SEO training, download the report and jump to page 21 and sign up to be notified. Then sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the PDF, the case studies, and all the new videos. See Granny Dominate Google PDF ==> http://www.cdzn.com/stp Posted at 07:26 PM |
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