TITLE YOUR LINKS IN IE, NETSCAPE 6+ AND OPERA
Could test this for pages with good PR & links to pages want to boost PR of. As it is acceptable for improving accessibility it should not attract any penalties as long as it is not overused or keyword stuffed to excess.
SitePoint : Empowering Web Developers Since 1997: "SitePoint Tribune - Issue 262"
Kailash Balnac, who runs http://rcpl.20m.com [1] , wrote in to
tell me about a useful feature in Internet Explorer: Titles for
Hyperlinks.
The A HREF tag carries a "title" attribute, which is very
similar to the ALT tag for images. When the mouse cursor is
hovered over a link that contains this attribute, a small box
pops up to display the contents of the TITLE link.
This is a great navigation aid. It allows you to provide details
about what can be found beyond the click without cluttering up
the page with lengthy descriptions. To maximize the tag's
usefulness, keep the description to 60 characters of text. Don't
think of the TITLE tag as an excuse to use poor linking text,
either -- this tag only works in Internet Explorer.
Here's what the final code looks like in the context of a
sentence:
The first to break the story was
href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/" title="World News on
CNN">CNN, who interrupted their regularly-scheduled
broadcast to report that fresh donuts had arrived.
Wayne Luke writes: "The title tag is in the HTML 4.01
specification and is a key component in the Web Accessibility
Initiative. It works in Internet Explorer 5+, the Mozilla
Builds, Netscape 6+, and Opera5+. This makes it available to the
majority of Internet users."
Long discussion re PageRank & site linking to preserve & direct PR - I recommend a visit to the site for diagram relating to this quote...
Controlling PageRank proves possible with prudent planning. - SitePoint Community Forums: "Don't concentrate only on building up the PR of your home page, for many sites, like my literature one, the home page doesn't really matter since not very many people search for the general topic.
People search for specifics, so you'll want high, targetted, PR on your subpages.
There is, however, times when you'd want to target a single page.
Lets pretend you have 2 related sites.
One site is a webmaster help site (A), the other is a web host (B). A links to B from every page on the site. B does not link back to A (and has no outgoing links), but only has internal links.
So what will happen? B will have roughly twice the amount of PR as A.
Because of the inter-linking on A, all of the pages on A will have roughly the same PR, and since they all link to B then B has roughly the same PR.
However B then links to B1, and B2, which link back to B. End Result? B almost doubles its PageRank, the only reason it does not is because of the dampening factor.
Of course since you own both of these sites you can be sure to make use of this PageRank. On all links pointing to 'B' you use the term 'web hosting'
This exact situation is how I plan on getting in the top 10 for web hosting at next Google update (Late Nov.) "
Controlling PageRank proves possible with prudent planning. - SitePoint Community Forums:
"That in the final analysis, good PR is a natural consequence of a properly working website."
As noted Feb/March 2003- During the last Google dance a lot of sites experienced a drop in PR. It probably has more to do with a Google calculations then with your efforts to affect your PR.
Sounds like dirty tactics....
BW Online | October 6, 2003 | Web Searches: The Fix Is In: "Just ask Rob Spooner. The 56-year-old runs a travel site called Online Highways with informational pages about various small towns throughout the U.S. Inktomi, a search engine that now belongs to Yahoo, contacted him late last year about becoming a paid-inclusion participant. The proposal: Spooner would pay 10 cents for every visitor Inktomi passed along. Spooner did the math, figured he would lose money on anything more than 3 cents a click, and declined the offer.
Then things went downhill. Spooner's Web pages soon plunged in Inktomi's search rankings and disappeared from key sites like MSN, where Inktomi feeds its listings. After he demanded to know what happened, Spooner learned from Inktomi that his site contained editorial flaws that hurt his ranking. And he would have to become a paid-inclusion customer to learn what these flaws were. All this, while his pages remained well ranked on Google. 'I lost a quarter of my traffic,' says Spooner."
Keyword Counter - Keyword Frequency Analyzer:
http://www.gb.totaltravel.com/
Top 10 words
your - 1.92%
britain - 1.92%
you - 1.92%
travel - 1.92%
london - 1.65%
this - 1.37%
for 1.10%
have 1.10%
deg 1.10%
galleries 1.10%
My obs re Google & PR
Subject: Page Rank
Observations:
1. The AU HP used to have PR6 & all pages 1 level down had PR5. The drop to the current 5 coincided with the addition of multiple links from the HP & a possible revision to Googles PR algorithm – the latter deduced retrospectively by those who obsess about PR. The dynamic links should not “leak 2 PR however.
2. Links direct from the HP generally should have a higher PR than those 2, 3 or 4 clicks away but their PR depends on the HP PR plus any inward links from other sites. If a page 3 or more clicks from the HP has more important inward links (re relevance & PR) it should have a higher PR than one at the same level without such links.
3. If the HP PR were to get back to that level or above, that increase would be passed down the hierarchy.
4. The PR value of links from any page is shared amongst those it links to. NB. The number of outward links should not alter the PR of the page they are on. (Unless they are invisible - but spam is not the issue here.)
5. Individual page’s PageRank’s are calculated from multiple factors - mostly off the page – currently the most influential in increasing PR are considered to be:
§ A) Links from “important sites” – generally PR 7 or above & not located on the same server
§ B) The number of outward links from the page linking in to the individual page.
6. PR is applied to the result of analysis of all the on page components - this calculation determines position in search results. NB. PR is a multiplier not an addition. If all other factors eg phrase match, keyword density etc = zero, PR will be zero.
7. The only time SERPS are presented in PR order is in the Google directory, for the basic “search all of Google” results a site with PR1 or 2 can appear above those with higher PR if they are more relevant to the query & have links from “important sites.”
8. PageRank is under continuous pressure & change. The original academic papers with the algorithm are available but will have been much altered meanwhile. Google say: “We've got serious problems. Like developing efficient implementations for large-scale mathematical problems, such as running Google's Pagerank™ algorithm on a graph of 3 billion nodes and 20 billion edges. Or harnessing the computational resources of more than 10,000 computers to solve large-scale problems.” http://www.google.com/codejam/
Conclusions:
1. If the HP PR were to be increased by an aggressive linking campaign all the site would benefit.
2. It is better to put time into increasing the HP on-page relevancy & inwards links with the resulting overall increase in PR than trying to manipulate PR artificially.
3. Only one new site need feature on the HP & be linked to a “What’s New” page keeping the HP on page elements focused & keyword rich so that any increase in the HP PR is passed down the hierarchy.
4. The main consideration when doing anything to a site is to ask: “is this going to improve user experience or is it designed to artificially influence SERPS.” If the latter, it will most likely be penalized now or some time in the future.
5. PR is only a gauge – not very accurate & it is most definitely against Googles TOS to sell it in any way. So is there any need to monitor every page by hacking the toolbar, unless you want to break Googles TOS & risk exclusion whilst artificially inflating clients PRs & then take the flak when it eventually settles back to its objective PR.
6. Use static links where you want to feed PR to a page, dynamic if you do not want it to leak to a specific page. This concentrates PR on the pages you want it on. Example - static link from HP to site map (cats), dynamic links to affiliates.
References
PageRank Uncovered Chris Ridings
http://www.supportforums.org/PageRank.pdf
Of special note:
§ P2 Definition of PageRank
§ P8 reflexive nature of PR
§ P9 Essential need for on page factors
§ P11 Combining PR off-page factors & on-page non-PR factors
§ P13 - 17 How PR is calculated & convergence
§ P23 Controlling PR & influencing results with links & navigation structure
§ P34 What Google says
§ P36 PR named after Larry Page (joke?)
§ P36 “Mining PR data from the Google Toolbar is against Google’s TOS”
§ P45 example 20 – boosting an entire sites PR
Review of the revised PageRank Uncovered version above:
fantomNews - the ultimate search engine optimization know how on fantomaster.com! Archives - 2003-09-23: "fantomTip 'PageRank Uncovered', New Edition (ver. 3.0)
The Google PageRank Algorithm and How It Works
http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
Critique of Chris Ridings original version of “PageRank Explained: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about PageRank” below
PageRank Explained: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about PageRank
http://web.archive.org/web/20020127121041/http://www.goodlookingcooking.co.uk/PageRank.pdf
Page rank calculator: http://www.markhorrell.com/seo/pagerank.asp
Dynamic linking techniques:
http://www.academywebspecialists.com/newsletters/0603.html#rohde
Start of the debate over the Searchking/ Google lawsuit re selling pagerank: http://www.fantomaster.com/fafnissue0015.html
Extra links if you still want more: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
EXAMPLE GREYED OUT PAGES
http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/sa/kangarooisland/
https://www.totaltravel.com/cardbuy.asp#
Subject: New sites feature
Google spiders our HP once every few days.
When it does, anything that is DIRECTLY linked from the HP gets a
spidering and hence a PR boost. From what I can see, anything that has
(ever) been linked from the HP (top picks, the guides down the right,
etc) instantly gets awarded a minimum PR2. Beauty is, even if they only
get awarded the PR boost once, it'll stick indefinately; Google only
checks its lower scoring pages once every few months.
Lets put a 'new sites' section on the HP, under the picks section,
linking all new sites added in the past week. That'll help.
We also need a guide 'spotlight' too, rotated once a week, directly
linking all those guide writeups that E puts a lot of work into.
I'll have to suss out a way of hacking into the google toolbar so we can
monitor our FP and guide page PR levels in the database. Taken a bit of
a look at it, looks doable. The ones that havent got a PR we
automatically whack up on the HP until they do, bit by bit. Keep working
through that and sooner or later every page on our whole site will get a
decent PR ;-)
Comments re AU homepage & more:
What spider sees:
LynxView: http://www.totaltravel.com/: "Lynx Viewer:"
Home page has 170 links out - max recommended = 100
Homepage keywords:
Keyword Counter - Keyword Frequency Analyzer: http://www.totaltravel.com
Top 10 words
virgin - 2.70%
10% 2.02%
sydney 2.02%
coast 1.80%
melbourne 1.57%
brisbane 1.57%
australia 1.35%
travel 1.35%
adelaide 1.12%
with 0.90%
Total words - 445
Compare to:
http://www.atn.com.au/
Top 10 words
Australia 5.99%
travel 3.70%
australian 2.64%
your 1.76%
car 1.58%
sydney 1.41%
more 1.41%
hotels 1.23%
for 1.23%
accommodation 1.23%
Total words - 568
TITLE YOUR LINKS IN IE, NETSCAPE 6+ AND OPERA
Could test this for pages with good PR & links to pages want to boost PR of. As it is acceptable for improving accessibility it should not attract any penalties as long as it is not overused or keyword stuffed to excess.
SitePoint : Empowering Web Developers Since 1997: "SitePoint Tribune - Issue 262"
Kailash Balnac, who runs http://rcpl.20m.com [1] , wrote in to
tell me about a useful feature in Internet Explorer: Titles for
Hyperlinks.
The A HREF tag carries a "title" attribute, which is very
similar to the ALT tag for images. When the mouse cursor is
hovered over a link that contains this attribute, a small box
pops up to display the contents of the TITLE link.
This is a great navigation aid. It allows you to provide details
about what can be found beyond the click without cluttering up
the page with lengthy descriptions. To maximize the tag's
usefulness, keep the description to 60 characters of text. Don't
think of the TITLE tag as an excuse to use poor linking text,
either -- this tag only works in Internet Explorer.
Here's what the final code looks like in the context of a
sentence:
The first to break the story was
href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/" title="World News on
CNN">CNN, who interrupted their regularly-scheduled
broadcast to report that fresh donuts had arrived.
Wayne Luke writes: "The title tag is in the HTML 4.01
specification and is a key component in the Web Accessibility
Initiative. It works in Internet Explorer 5+, the Mozilla
Builds, Netscape 6+, and Opera5+. This makes it available to the
majority of Internet users."
MSN moves in on search...
Microsoft throwing its weight behind Web search:
"But analysts have interpreted the decision to build as a sign that Microsoft has greater ambitions for search, including plans to make it part of the Windows operating system, the company's main cash cow.
'Any time Microsoft builds something into the operating system, they don't want to get that from anyone else,' said analyst Matt Rosoff of Directions on Microsoft, an independent research group based in Kirkland, Washington.
Moreover, they said Microsoft's real motive is to build search into its various software products and most likely into the next Windows version, which is code-named Longhorn."
GOOGLE'S OWN WORDS - TOS, PAGERANK & MORE...
Google Terms of Service: "
Personal Use Only
The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results pages on your Web site. You may not 'meta-search' Google. If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in advance."
SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS POSITION - SERPS(or pages) depends on:
Google Technology: "Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."
Google Terms of Service: "No Automated Querying "
You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google. Note that "sending automated queries" includes, among other things:
using any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage "ranks" on Google for various queries;
"meta-searching" Google; and
performing "offline" searches on Google.
Please do not write to Google to request permission to "meta-search" Google for a research project, as such requests will not be granted.
Google Toolbar FAQ: "Why doesn't the PageRank button display anything?
If you are behind a proxy web server or a firewall, it may be interfering with the Toolbar's requests to extract PageRank information from Google. Try out one of our experimental features, designed to fix this problem. Click on the Google logo, and from the drop-down menu select (or press the Options button) to access Options. Select the More tab in the Options window then check the box next to the option Fix PageRank through proxies (experimental). Alternatively, you can disable the Advanced Features entirely on the Google Toolbar. To do so, click on the Google logo, and from the drop-down menu select Help > Privacy Information. Uncheck the boxes listed under Advanced Features.
Note that the PageRank display will not automatically fetch information from pages with CGI arguments (that is, pages with a '?' present in the URL)."
BLOGGING:
So what is your site's Google PageRank?: "I didn't realise how much Google really loves blogs until I saw everybody else's non-blog sites' PageRank.
The recent major update pushed many blogs to at least a 5, and many have even more."
Show comments for an entry: "Some people use the Google Toolbar to reverse-engineer PageRank and try to figure out Google's algorithm. Google has been known to respond by changing its algorithm to prevent whatever hack was being used."
Couple of quotes from Emarketer articles - all of which merit a read & in issue dated Fri, 26-Sep-03 :
Easy group interview:
easy(Group) Does It: "Don't forget, the easyGroup comes along in established industries and says, 'You, the consumer, are used to consuming this particular product, and we're going to give it to you at a third of the price.' I think that's a pretty convincing argument to consumers to get them onto your side. "
Also note email marketing & online/offline charges.
More on geo location search:
Google search by location: "The other thing that's not obvious at first is that it's not just matching to categories--it's actually searching web pages with addresses for the words you type."
Google FAQ:
Google search by location: "Google search by location takes a new approach to helping users find geographic information on the web. We analyze the entire content of a page to extract hints or 'signals' that enable us to assign a corresponding physical location, then return results that match the geographic range you specify (e.g., 'near Jacksonville, Florida'). This provides a much broader range of businesses in most cases"
GOOGLE FIGURES
Google hits advertiser milestone | CNET News.com: "Google said that it has signed 150,000 active monthly advertisers in part because of its growing good name in Web search around the world and in part because of the attractive return on investment it offers advertisers....Google's advertiser milestone eclipses the latest number from archrival Overture Services, which Yahoo plans to acquire for $1.7 billion. In its financial report from July, Overture claimed 95,000 advertisers, inching closer to Google's 100,000 figure from July."
HOTWIRE.COM JOINS EXPEDIA, HOTELS.COM UNDER INTERACTIVECORP WING
Hotwire.com joins Expedia, Hotels.com under InterActiveCorp wing - Computerworld:
"IAC expects to complete its purchase of the discount travel Web site in Q4 "
InterActiveCorp is acquiring Hotwire.com, adding the travel site to
its stable of online travel offerings. Hotwire.com will remain a
separate entity after the deal is closed. InterActiveCorp will pay
$665 million in debt and assume an additional $20 million in options
and warrants. (From ComputerWorld.com)
Google, penalties & symptoms....The best indicator of a problem is by reading the log file statistics. Anytime there is a trend showing a significant loss of Web site visitors and search engine referrals, there should be concern, especially when the traffic numbers decline to a fraction of past activity levels.
Have I been kicked out of Google?:
"In the past, the Google PageRank meter in the Google toolbar was a good indicator of a problem with a Web site. On the scale of one to ten, losses of three to four points in one or two months may have been cause for concern. However, as of early 2003 the toolbar has been an extremely unreliable indicator of penalties, and should not be considered as the sole authority for problems.
Other symptoms of search engine penalties include; loss of Web site pages reported in the search engine index, loss of rankings, significant loss of Web site visitors and significant decline in the amount of search engine referrals. As time goes on, the penalized Web site will be harder to find, even when searching for the company name or for the Web site address. If the Web site is not returned in the results when searching for the URL, then there is a definite problem - possibly a search engine ban."....
"The most effective apology emails are ones that give the most information about the spam methods that were removed. Be sure to include:
The specific methods used to trick the search engines
Which pages had to be cleaned, which pages were obviously doorways
Who implemented the methods and who cleaned them up
Who you are, your company name
Promise not to do it again.
Using the free site submit may be a good way to hurry the process of getting spidered by the search engines, but it isn’t really necessary.
The last step is to sit back and BE PATIENT. Some penalties are lifted sooner than others. The severity of the penalty seems to be related to the extent of the offensive tactics. Patience is the key when trying to determine if a site has been penalized. Usually there is a good explanation, and it is best to do a little research up front before assuming the worst.
An Open-Source Search Engine Takes Shape:
"Commercial search-engine providers soon could face a serious competitor if the vision of some open-source developers materializes. A team of open-source programmers recently launched a project called Nutch to provide search-engine software for free...."Right now, Nutch does not have the hardware that it needs to offer a search engine on Google's scale," he noted. "They do have a very impressive board and an extremely talented staff --
not to mention financial backing by Overture. Ironically, according to Winfield, one potential problem with Nutch's approach could be the very element that the organization seems most proud of -- the fact that people will be able to see the exact formula for determining results. "This could lead to some really bad spamming," said Winfield.
"Nutch will be an interesting one to watch," he said, pointing out that an open-source search technology has the capacity to shake things up in the coming months. "If Nutch can figure out a way to keep people honest and still be completely forthcoming with the formulas used for their results," he said, "that will be a site to behold."
Clear article on competition faced by google
BW Online | January 14, 2003 | Google's Gaggle of Problems: "measurements by Web traffic tracker Nielsen NetRatings, AOL and Google.com together get six times the search traffic of Yahoo, the closest competitor....however....the pendulum could swing -- and Google may end up facing a mutiny and a world full of hostile competitors, each seeking a piece of the king of search. "
GOOGLE VERSUS SEARCHKING
Latest:
Judge dismisses suit against Google | CNET News.com: "Judge dismisses suit against Google
U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by SearchKing, an Oklahoma City-based Web hosting and advertising network that claimed Google unfairly removed links to its site and those of its partners from the index, causing financial losses. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that Google's formula for calculating the popularity of a Web page, or "PageRank," constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment.
"PageRanks are opinions--opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query," according to the decision filed in the U.S. Western District Court of Oklahoma.
"The court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given Web site is false," the decision said. "Accordingly, the court concludes Google's PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection."
More:
Judge dismisses suit against Google - Tech News - CNET.com
Rules to Link by
Academy Newsletter on search engine positioning and web site optimization.
Without resorting to any math at all, we can follow just a few simple rules that will almost always give us what we want. Sure, the math can be important,but the basic ideas are intuitive.
Use static links to increase the rankability of the target page. Static links distribute PageRank within your site, to the advantage of the link target. No static links should ever point at pages we don't want to rank. So don't static link to "contact us," but do always static link to your home page.
All static links should be text links. An image link is one of the worst web inventions ever created. Since spiders can't tell what images mean, they view image links just like empty text links. This dilutes the Link Reputation of the target page. However, image links do distribute PageRank, which helps the target page. What a mess! Image links are like being "half pregnant" they increase PageRank while confusing the search engine about the Reputation of the page. They have no place in our toolbox, and should simply be eliminated from use. If you want an image, use Javascript. The text of static links should all be keyword rich the target page's < title> tag is a good start.
Use dynamic links in all cases where your goal is to provide human access and human traffic without diluting the rankability of your other pages. The majority of on-site linking will be dynamic under these rules. It is usual that only a small number of pages on any given site actually have a chance at getting top positioning. Feed them as much PageRank as you can to give them the best chance.
Three simple rules. That's it? Well, no, not quite.
Exceptions to the Rules
There are two places where we should violate our simple linking rules. First, we must be sure that our entire site is reachable by static links from the home page so that the search spiders can find all of our pages. This "spiderability" is already a problem for many large sites that use forms as their primary means of human access to internal pages. Such sites will often have problems getting their internal pages indexed because the spider can not follow the (dynamic) links in the
form tag.
We should always use a site map staticly linked from the home page to ensure that our entire site is spider-friendly. The site map will reference all the pages on our site using static links with keyword rich text.
The other potential exception to our linking rules is reciprocal linking. Webmasters will often exchange links as a means to improve ranking. In these cases, static linking must be used by each of the partners, or no ranking gain is achieved. In fact, as dynamic linking catches on, it will become important to check that your link partner isn't "cheating" by linking to you dynamically.
Google Backlinks and PageRank Should Be Abolished
Webmaster World (subscribers only but abstract gives the general idea of current opinion re PageRank etc)
"I think Google is killing their results by allowing webmasters to inspect the back links of their competitors. What about PageRank? This is just a fantasy that has absolutely no relevance to anything. Why is it displayed, and why are webmasters doing monkey tricks to artificially increase theirs?"
.eu domains - how usefull will they be? should Mike look up and/or buy totaltravel.eu ?
Market Research & Analysis at MindBranch:
"Travel and Tourism - Major Market Profiles"
Contents
Market Size
Market Sectors
Share of Market
Marketing Activity
Corporate Overview
Distribution
Consumer Profile
Market Forecasts
Sector Forecasts
Sources
Definitions
Frazzle - meta search engine with some v interesting features - shows search engine & rank, best picks & an email feature to try out
Reviews:
"
ResearchBuzz News -- September 18 - September 24: "Search results are interestingly formatted. You'll notice that every result has a checkbox next to it. We'll get back to that in a moment. Results include the title of the page, very brief snippet, URL, on which search engines it's ranked and where, and the percentage of popularity. You have the choice of ranking results by popularity, title, URL, description, and domain. "
"Check the items you find most interesting and you'll have the option to e-mail those items to yourself or somebody else (that option is under the query box and above the results list on the results page.) Also check out the "Reports" item which gives you statistics about your search and a grouping of search engines where your results appeared. Very interesting.
Example
Fazzle Search Results:
"Australia Total Travel Preview Close Maximize Open
Australia travel guide covering accommodation and attractions with photos, maps, transport and more. ... guides national parks photos weather discounts totalcard ... Transport Guide. Getting in & around Australia. Events & Public Holidays ... ©2003 totaltravel.com strict privacy disclaimer ...
http://www.totaltravel.com Altavista 1st WiseNut 1st Yahoo 1st MSN 1st Netscape 2nd Best pick"
Will check this out ...Free Adobe Photoshop Basics Course by Email"
Adobe Photoshop Basics: "Adobe Photoshop Basics
http://www.sleepinginairports.net/airports.htm: "For travellers who are REALLY on a budget and are looking for a way to skim a few bucks off their travel expenses, why not consider sleeping in an airport? Many airports are actually better than local lodging. And to top it off - IT'S FREE! Your friends and family may look at you funny when you return with your airport stories, but that's only part of the fun. So now, sit back....get out your travel itinerary and plan which airports you're going to sleep in (or avoid altogether) during your next trip. "
Did I already refer Mike to this? How apt if I did considering the second item....
Ecademy - Connecting Business People: "Welcome to Ecademy - Connecting Business People
Ecademy's cause is 'to build the world's largest Trusted Business Network by connecting people to each other - enabling knowledge, contacts and opportunities to be shared for World Wide Wealth'.
This months regional Networking events. Next London Power Networking Event:
Wednesday 1st October - '. com back!' with guest speaker Julie Meyer, Founder & CEO of Ariadne Capital & First Tuesday."
Memory Protection
As the world’s 450 million baby boomers head towards retirement, they’re confronted with something no generation has ever faced before: a massive collective senior moment. Culprits: faster living, multitasking and less mental exercise.
You can place the blame squarely on MCI — or mild cognitive impairment. That explains why you can’t recall Reese Whitherspoone’s name even though you just watched a movie with her the evening before.
It’s a condition millions suffer from, with many more expected. Scientists have found that memory tests scores steadily decline after age 25. And it’s a process that appears to be accelerating as society engages in more binge drinking and drug use, which is enough to kill a few million brain cells each time.
Trendsetters.com - Trendscape 2004: "We have collected the top 200 hottest trends. And put them in one cool beautiful report that you will be proud to produce on request.
Trendscape 2004. Remember that name.
Read the specs. Then download a chapter. Remember we have 100 other pages like that, packed with the hottest trends...
FINALLY...
Google tests local search | CNET News.com: "Like many Google experiments, the new function may or may not be widely incorporated into the company's well-loved search engine, but Google has hinted at its ambitions for geographically targeted search in the past. Local search and advertising is also pegged in the financial community as a massive opportunity for major portals and search providers"
Google admits to having problems...& a coding competition;
Google Code Jam 2003
About Google: We've got serious problems. Like developing efficient implementations for large-scale mathematical problems, such as running Google's Pagerank™ algorithm on a graph of 3 billion nodes and 20 billion edges. Or harnessing the computational resources of more than 10,000 computers to solve large-scale problems.
The Coming Search Engine War, Part 1: "'Positioning, The Battle For Your Mind.' It offered the radical theory that products are positioned not in a market, but in the minds of customers. He went on to author the classic 'The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,' and most recently, 'Big Brands, Big Trouble.'
Jack says Google is dangerously close to becoming the generic in the space. Should that happen, the company would be open to brand and product positioning attacks on multiple fronts."
Review of the revised PageRank Uncovered version.
a
fantomNews - the ultimate search engine optimization know how on fantomaster.com! Archives - 2003-09-23: "fantomTip
'PageRank Uncovered', New Edition (ver. 3.0)
------------------------------------------------------
(rt) It's a full year of additional research plus two
additional editors which has turned that classic,
'PageRank Explained', into 'PageRank Uncovered'."
Travel information increase public transport usage: "Travel information increase public transport usage
September 17, 2003 | The International Association of Public Transport (UITP) examines how the sector can enhance passenger information during its 3rd Conference on Travel Information, which opend in Gothenburg, Sweden, this week."
THE classic on english usage which I was tring to remember the name of..
Strunk, William, Jr. 1918. The Elements of Style: "The Elements of Style
William Strunk, Jr.
Asserting that one must first know the rules to break them, this classic reference book is a must-have for any student and conscientious writer. Intended for use in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature, it gives in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style and concentrates attention on the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated."
[ Mon Sep 22, 03:34:18 AM | jennie holland | edit ]
Inside Search Engine Strategies, 2003: Danny Sullivan's predictions included:
Sometime in 2004,
Yahoo! will launch a new search engine that combines Inktomi, AltaVista and AllTheWeb technologies.
MSN should also be ready to launch their own crawler in 2004, with the possibility of purchasing any of Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart or even Google, to help speed up the implementation
AOL is likely to continue its partnership with Google as this remains a non-competitive relationship for them
Googles current reach of 76% of all searches would decline in 2004. He predicted that Googles total audience would decrease to around 51%, with Yahoo! at 25%, MSN at 15%, and the other engines making up the remainder.
He believed strongly that search engine optimization
(SEO) would still be a dominant part of the industry as there will need to be a balance between paid ads and organic listings for some time to come
One to watch... NUTCH
Inside Search Engine Strategies, 2003: 'The constant evolution of search engines. Google replaced AltaVista; will Nutch replace Google? '
Clear basic outline PPC, PPP & organic
PromotionData.com - Web promotion and development community: "As you probably figured out, ROI (return on investment) is a must for your website marketing strategies. In order to know what keywords/phrases are working for you, you will need to know the ROI for each word/phrase. In the beginning, PPC is needed to start driving traffic to your site as you wait for the search engines and directories to list your site. Once the search engines and directories have your site listed, it is still advised to have a combination of SEO and PPC strategies. You will always have to keep track of your ROI to determine where your money can be best spent."
I cannot help but think that this result below is the true number of unique pages on the site - up from the previous 140,000 or whatever it was including the number that are mirrored on the au domain
Google Search: inurl:www.totaltravel.com -au www.totaltravel.com: " inurl:www.totaltravel.com -au www.totaltravel.com. Results 1 - 2 of about 208,000."
So this would be the total
MINUS mirrored content
inurl:www.totaltravel.com Results 1 - 4 of about 82,300
When did the com.au go live to the search engines? Did it coincide with drop in page numbers listed?
Does anyone know the true number of unique pages?
Will Google sell out?
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Google the big engine: "And the downside? The biggest is that Google and others will worsen the digital divide by unintentionally expanding an underclass that does not have access to the treasure chest of instant knowledge that search engines offer. It could also start to misuse its own position by allowing monetary considerations to triumph over its current 'quality first' policy. This is quite likely if it becomes a public company - as is probable - and succumbs to Wall Street pressure to improve earnings every quarter. One
way to avoid this would be to turn itself into a mutual company, a living monument to the founding principles of the internet. "
All about blogging & ranking.....
Behind the Scenes at the Daypop Search Engine, Part Two: "rankings available on Daypop? Do you have plans to create others? "
Build pages for press releases alongside the testimonials... great for keywords & as basis of link campaign
Reaching All the Search Engines - High Rankings Advisor: "Press releases very often contain important industry buzzwords, highly
relevant, keyword-rich text and an ideal word count for optimized web
page content. Press releases are tightly focused on single themes and
can be easily plugged into themed sections -- ideal for SEO."....
"The big players will often find ways to make
news with public relations involving smaller partners and will
sometimes use those press releases on their own site for publicity.
With innovative PR professionals working in concert with small
businesses, they may even get the corporate client to use their much
greater resources to distribute those press releases through giant
corporate distribution channels (far beyond the miniscule reach of
small businesses). This will gain them press coverage and help
establish their brand while linking them to the image of larger
corporate clients in the minds of their customers."
Conclusion:
For an excellent tutorial on creating an online pressroom and case
studies on effective online PR strategies, visit
What's Next Online July 26, 2000 Issue 28 - B.L. Ochman's marketing tips newsletter: "putting your company press releases online "
Search engine optimization professionals recognize the value of online
pressrooms as exceptional opportunities to present highly relevant,
keyword-focused content that encourages linking from well-known
corporations while exposing that existing content to the search
engines. If those press releases also gain media coverage for your
business as intended, your linking campaign has struck gold.
Good idea or a backwards step?
Storefronts put eBay on the streets:
" Last month, Kevin and Erin McGinnis opened Picture It Sold, a Berkeley storefront at the corner of College and Ashby avenues at which customers can drop off items for auction on the popular eBay Web site. The store photographs the item, lists it for sale on the site and ships it when a sale is made, all in exchange for a cut of the final purchase price.
The idea is not exactly new; as much as one-fifth of the billions of dollars exchanged through the eBay site each year are estimated to come from so-called trading assistants - folks who sell goods belonging to others, who share the profits with their helpers.
But the McGinnises are part of a small but growing crowd to bring this idea into a retail storefront setting. And they are the first to bring the concept to the tech-savvy East Bay.
'It's definitely the next thing. It hits everybody that eBay is missing now - people who don't know how to use a computer or don't own a digital camera,' said Erin McGinnis, who worked as a reporter for KTVU-2 until last year. 'Plus, a lot of folks are just plain busy now and don't have the time to follow auctions for stuff they might put up.'"
Even Ebay are not too sure....
"Historically, we've recognized that our primary strength is running online marketplaces," Pursglove said, in reference to some past acquisitions that have not panned out for the company. "With that said, I think we'll keep our eyes open. The bottom line is, does an offline venture have the potential to expand the eBay marketplace. It's slightly premature to guess on that at this phase."
Google SERPs "Google's 'official' term for it is host crowding.
Double indented listings:
Host Crowding = If multiple results come from the same Web host, then only the first two are returned"
Example "site initially achieved this double listing accidently by way of our business being travel where the destination is often more important, or as important as the keyword. For instance we rank nowhere the word "Orlando" or the keyword "flights" individually, but together they hit the number one spot. With the first entry being a PR6 page and the second, usually,but not always, the index page PR7"
Or to put it another way...
Inquiry Marketing Fulfills SEM's Promise:
"Inquiry marketing treats SEM as a single tactic in a broader marketing process and context. Inquiry marketing addresses buyers' behavior and individual buying cycles by the exact words used to construct a query. It considers the time of day and where a user queries, as well as any buyer behavior after initial interest and awareness have been generated"
Tracking for meaningful stats & follow up
MarketPosition Monthly - September 2003:
"Tracking exactly where your sales are coming from is essential to any online marketing effort. Unfortunately, most people use only simple tracking tools, such as the log file analyzers included with their Web hosting accounts. Most log file analyzers will provide you with statistics such as how many people came to your site and which search engines or Web sites they came from. While this is valuable information, it is not enough to be 'actionable.' ....need totrack your visitors from the point where they enter your site all the way through to the point of sale. If a customer doesn't buy anything on his first visit, Hitslink will still track the person on later visits and will remember where he or she originally came from.
When you get an order, you'll be able to discover exactly where that sale came from, including the name of the specific search engine and the exact search phrase the customer entered to find your site. You can thereby learn which keywords and search engines are the most profitable....
the companies that enjoy the greatest success in the online world are the ones that have integrated the proven ideas of measurement and refinement into their online marketing approach"
Well, it is friday...
the 2003 demotivators� collection:
"Think about it- what hidden potentials exist within YOU?
Perhaps you're a wholly reasonable person, with the potential to become an irrational fool? Perhaps you're a team player, with a potentially argumentative loner lurking about inside you? Or perhaps you're a dreamer, within whom lives a potentially disillusioned grouse, simply waiting to take flight on the wings of bitterness?
For the first time, one company has stepped forth with tools for unleashing such hidden potentials. No matter who you are, you have the potential to be so very much less. And with the transformative powers of our Demotivators� products, you will be."
Ho hum, could these be the results showing on server 10 which has gone from out of action through ~20,000 to 58,000 for totaltravel. May be useful or may not.....
Google Adds Supplemental Results:
"Unless Google has something more to reveal about these supplemental results, I've got to say that I’m not overly impressed. My mind just can't get beyond wondering why Google even needs two sets of results. If these listings are important enough to show in response to some searches, why aren't they important enough to be shown for all searches? Is Google specifically holding back a section of the Internet from all but those who conduct the most obscure search queries? Only time, and more information from Google will tell. "
The E-commerce for the Travel Industry Forum:
"Building a Destination Web Strategy in Hospitality"
A bit pompous & waffle heavy but I think this article covers some of the main selling points of totaltravel as a destination based site...the chart especially points up the main features to emphasise when featuring a destination....I am sure you know all this already but sometimes a slighty different perspective can help make things a little clearer...especially that totaltravel is streets ahead anyway re what this article is about...
Benefits of a Destination Web Strategy
The Destination Web Strategy allows for a highly informative, content rich website that encourages site references for increased link popularity that boosts search engine positioning. The creative flexibility of this strategy captures key customer segments and shapes the property with a variety of new, varied and exciting insights for the online consumer. It attracts new customers seeking choice, particular in lifestyle categories, plan meetings or weddings, or provide close proximity to a convention center. This strategy can be configured to appeal to any audience where there is relevance to the local destination. "
The virtual arena: "August 30, 2003 | While the travel industry continues to suffer in the real world, in the virtual world the online travel market has seen unprecedented growth. Recently, a PhoCusWright Inc. report revealed that, even as the overall travel market declined by five percent last year, online travel grew 37 percent to over $28 billion."
Elements of top travel sites.
Orbitz ranked best travel site by Forbes.com: "August 29, 2003 | Orbitz has been ranked the No.1 travel site in Forbes.com�s feature �Which Travel Site is Best.� Orbitz topped the list when the 10 most popular travel sites were put to the test and ranked according to ease-of-use, breadth of choice, selection of low fares, flexibility, customer service, technology, design and clarity.
Orbitz was named best in class for offering a comprehensive selection of low fares for air, hotel, car rental and vacation packages. Forbes.com cited the following differentiating factors in Orbitz�s No.1 ranking:
- Orbitz is easy to navigate and easy to use. A trip can be booked in three simple clicks.
- The search engine is quick, showing up to 200 flight options in one click.
- Features such as Flex Search and the upcoming Deal Detector offer more flexible consumers even deeper discounts.
- Customer Service, staffed by a team of travel professionals, is available to Orbitz customers 24/7 by phone or e-mail.
- Travel Watch is the place to go for late breaking travel news that could affect your trip."
If you can get your email past the spam filters - programmes & the mental resistance referred to below you should be able to beat the competition ...
'Spam' label makes companies wary of email marketing: "'Spam' label makes companies wary of email marketing
August 29, 2003 | Even as they boost their budgets for online advertising, major US companies will be wary of email marketing campaigns until the menace of unsolicited 'spam' email has been tamed, top industry officials have said.
'Our marketers are basically saying 'spam is killing (email marketing)',' Bob Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), told Reuters.
Email marketing 'clearly will be muted until they have a greater degree of confidence that their messages will go through in the way that they want them to,'' he added.
But Liodice was quick to point out that he believes using email as a legitimate marketing tool 'will skyrocket'' once spam is under control. "
CAR RENTAL
Car Rental Sites Draw More Than Four Million Travelers in July, According to Nielsen//NetRatings
Nielsen//NetRatings, a research service for Internet audience measurement and analysis, reports that more than 4.5 million consumers logged on to car rental brand Web sites from home and work in July 2003. According to Nielsen//NetRatings July 2003 data, Hertz led car rental brand sites attracting more than 1.7 million surfers from work and home, representing an increase of two percent from a year ago. Avis garnered nearly 1.5 million unique visitors from home and work during the same month. The third most popular site among surfers was Enterprise Rent-A-Car; the rental car company's site attracted more than 1.2 million visitors in July, making it one of the fastest growing during the past year. Rounding out the top five, Budget and Thrifty Car Rental attracted 1.2 million and more than 800,000 surfers from home and work, respectively. Thrifty Car Rental experienced the highest year over year growth, attracting 53 percent more users in July 2003 than July 2002.
Americans' Favorite Countries For Vacation If Cost Not an Issue
For the seventh year in a row, more Americans pick Australia than any other destination as the country where they would most like to go on vacation if cost was not an issue. Italy moves up to second place just ahead of Great Britain. While Americans have cut back their foreign travel this year because of fears of terrorism (or SARS) or the weak dollar, their appetite for foreign travel does not seem to have changed substantially.
The top three ideal vacation countries were each part of President Bush's "coalition of the willing," whose governments supported the invasion of Iraq; the fourth destination preference, France, most emphatically was not. Americans may be consuming less French wine, and France is reporting a decline in U.S. tourists, but the general appeal of a vacation in France is still very strong. Over the last seven years, France has always been placed in the top six, and usually in the top four.
The next five favorite destinations, if cost is not an issue, are: Ireland (#5), Germany (#6), New Zealand (#7), Japan (#8), Spain (#9) and Greece (#10).
Countries, which have moved up the list substantially this year, are: New Zealand (from #13 to #7), Greece (from #14 to #10) and Japan (#8 this year).
Countries, which have slipped more than one or two places down the list, are Canada (from #3 to #12), Switzerland (from #8 to #11), Jamaica and Barbados (have both fallen from a tie for #9 last year but do not make this year's list).
These are the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 2,215 adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between July 14 and 20, 2003.
It must be thursday - seems to be the day to target my main areas of interest - SEO & web writing - a full on deluge of newsletters. So I will post the most relevent seeming for now & maybes delete a few later...
Plain Text: writing for business: "Letters and emails Some thoughts on email newsletters and the art of letter-writing. Or some impassioned ranting about promotional letters and emails."
Want a sense of how savvy travelers are? "
How Travel Sites Can Get Their Groove Back: "How Travel Sites Can Get Their Groove Back"
What we need from stats = benefits & why the AU home page under achieves...
Enter ClickTracks. ClickTracks processes your logs, intelligently, so that you
don't have to study raw text files or decipher fancy bar graphs. ClickTracks
features your Web site in an internal browser and superimposes detailed
information about the activity on the pages you're looking at. The stats include
information like: how many visitors saw each page, how much time people spend on
each page, how they get to the page, and most important, what page they visit
next. Each "link" on your page is shown in a special way within the ClickTracks
viewer so that you can see what percentage of visitors clicked on each link. We
used it to analyze JimWorld and immediately saw that users were bypassing the
links on our home page that we wanted them to follow (the articles), and were
heading down to other links. Because of ClickTracks, I realized that our home
page was really just a bunch of links into the main parts of JimWorld, and was
not set up to make it easy for visitors to find the specific parts of JimWorld
that they were looking for. So, I divided the home page into sections that are
targeted at specific types of visitors (Designers, SEOs, Programmers,
Marketers), and provided each of them with the links that were relevant to them.
Guess what? Our traffic levels haven't changed, but I've found that visitors
to our home page are now seeing an average of 5 to10 additional pages when they
visit JimWorld.
Code for setting up Google API to check ranking.
One of the things essential to any SEO, and really, to anyone who operates a Web
site, is to know where they rank at Google for a given search term or phrase.
Using the GoogleAPI, we can very easily find out where a site ranks, without
having to visit Google.com and going dizzy reading the results. The source code
for "test.php" follows, and is commented so that you can follow the logic.
Happy position checking!
// test.php
// A simple way to check positions for a given domain, for given keywords
// at Google.com. Uses the googleAPI to make things easier
// This application is free for non-commercial use under the GPL
// Please keep this copyright and header intact.
// (c) 2003 John Cokos, JimWorld.com
// This pulls in the SOAP_Google Class file //
require_once 'google.php';
// For Clarity, let's use real variable names //
$terms = $_POST[keyword];
$domain = $_POST[domain];
// Draw a very simple form //
echo "
";
// If the form has been filled out .... get to work.
if ( $terms && $domain ) {
// Create a new oject using the SOAP_Google Class. All you need to
// Do is give it your googleAPI license key
$google = new SOAP_Google('YOUR-GOOGLE-LICENSE-KEY');
// Use that Google object to run a search. In this example, we simply
// pass along the search terms, and ask for the first 10 results. You
// can also specify a higher number of results, where to start from,
// turn on safe searching, etc. For our purposes, we just want the
// basic top 10 results.
$result = $google->search(
array(
'query' => $term,
'maxResults' => 10
)
);
// Now, the results of searching Google are in an object called "$result"
// This is actually an array of objects, that we can iterate through
// to do what we want
// Make sure that we actually got results //
if (false !== $result) {
// Tell the user what we have done //
echo "Checked:
$domain for
$term ....
";
// What we're going to be doing is reporting the position of our domain
// For the given search term, so first, we make sure that we're starting
// at "0", so that the counter works right.
$position = 0;
// Now, Iterate through the result set. Each "$listing" is a PHP Object
// that contains the data for the current search result in the list
foreach ( $result->resultElements as $listing ) {
// Increase the position Counter
$position++;
// If the domain we asked to check ($domain) is contained within the
// URL of the current search result, we have a match, so let's display
// it on screen just like a Google result. Note that for the purposes
// of what we're doing, we really don't need to display the listing, just
// report the position, but I wanted you to see how to manipulate the
// results.
// Note that this will show you every match of the domain that it finds
// so that you can see if you appear multiple times.
if ( eregi( $domain, $url ) ) {
// Create some logical variable names //
$title = $listing->title;
$snippet = $listing->snippet;
$description = $listing->summary;
$url = $listing->URL;
// Dump it out just like a listing //
echo "
Position: $position
$title
$snippet
Description:
$description
$url
";
$found = 1;
}
}
// If we did not appear in the top 10, report it.
if ( ! $found ) { echo "Not found in first 10 positions"; }
}
// This will return a simple error message if we got nothing back from google //
else {
echo 'Query failed.';
}
}
// This will show if the form was not filled out //
else { echo "Please fill in the form above completely"; }
?>
Resources:
Google API Sign up: http://www.google.com/apis/
PHP PEAR::SOAP Extension: http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?pacid=87
SOAP_Google Class for PHP: http://www.sebastian-bergmann.de/?page=google
Perl SOAP Library: http://search.cpan.org/author/KULCHENKO/SOAP-Lite-0.55/
On linking - theory, spam
Links are All About Reputation - High Rankings Advisor: "Link analysis has its roots in citation analysis and social network
analysis concepts. A couple of sharp scientists named Pinski and Narin
found that by using these predictive methods it could be possible to
determine the next winner of the Nobel prize. The guy who had the most
papers citing his work was the guy most likely to get the nod.
You've got to give that other business a reason to link to you. It's a
business proposition, not a link exchange. Both sides must benefit
from the partnership.
The best way to earn those links is through quality content. When a
site links to you, they are staking their reputation on you
SC: Some people try to increase their link popularity by setting up
multiple domains to link to their main site. Does this help?
MG: Absolutely not. Those mini-networks are like spam islands if they
don't have quality links pointing into the satellites as well as the
mother ship. They are easily detected.
SC: What do you think about selecting sites as link partners based on
their Google PageRank?
MG: I've done a lot of research on this. I know exactly what PR7
means: It means you have one more than six but one less than eight.
That's all it means. Stop obsessing about PR; get on with business!"
More light reading? Seriously though, from reviews this book looks worth a read...
Free Pint Bookshelf Homepage: "Web Project Management - Maintaining and Evolving Successful Commercial Web Sites
Review: '... provides us with the tools to tame the beast and to ensure it develops and (hopefully) succeeds as a commercial entity' Richard Eskins "
10 second pitch ..
Mary Ellen Bates - Interview with Annabel Colley, FreePint, 2003
Free Pint Portal - Events: "Building and Running a Successful Research Business. The example is taken from Paul and Sarah Edwards, gurus for home-based business. They describe a useful formula for developing your ten-second introduction. The template they use is:
'You know how [describe typical clients' information problem]? Well, I [solve problem] by [doing this].'
For example, 'You know how frustrating it is when you spend an hour looking for market research on the Web and never do find what you're really looking for? Well, my company helps you solve business problems by finding information that doesn't even appear on the Web.' Or, 'You know how hard it is to find 'soft' information about your industry or your competitors? Well, as a telephone researcher, I can gather the insights of the industry leaders for my clients, and since my clients' names are never associated with the research, I can put my finger on information they couldn't have obtained themselves.' "
For sometime....Adwords copy
How To Write Little Tiny AdWords Ads That Bring Giant-Sized Profits:
"There are two primary factors to succeeding at Google AdWords. The first is getting the right keywords. The second is writing little tiny ads. Neither is all that easy, but they can both be done"
