Clusty.com : Vivisimo Inc. Search Upstart Launches New Site: Forbes.com:
Associated Press:
Forbes.com: Search Upstart Launches New Site:Quote: "Vivisimo Inc. is setting out to persuade the masses that Google Inc.'s vaunted technology isn't the most efficient way to find things on the Internet.
The little-known Pittsburgh company is taking aim at Google and other industry leaders like Yahoo Inc. with a new search engine called Clusty.com, scheduled to debut Thursday after four years of fine tuning...
Clusty isn't relying solely on its clustering technology to make its mark. The site also is introducing a feature that offers customized index tabs devoted to Web blogs, or "blogs," online gossip and online auction giant eBay.
Supplanting Google as the Internet's search kingpin won't be easy, partly because the company's name - also once ridiculed as a silly - has become synonymous with looking things up online.
Google controls 36 percent of the Internet search market, trailed by Yahoo at 29 percent, according to the latest data from research firm comScore Networks. Software giant Microsoft Corp. hopes to make the market even more competitive with its own search engine at MSN.com.
Clusty also covers a small slice of the Web compared to the better-known search engines. The site will crawl 5 million to 10 million Web pages and draw upon the indexes of other sources to supplement its results. By comparison, Google crawls 4.3 billion Web pages.
"We don't think it matters if you are crawling 5 million or 5 billion pages because no one looks at more than a handful of the results anyway," Valdes-Perez said. "
site59.com: launches the 59th-Minute Dash, a new travel search engine
From Travel Commerce Report: Volume 4; Issue 7:
site59.comQuote: "Site59, a seller of discounted last-minute travel packages online, launches the 59th-Minute Dash, a new search engine and results page that delivers the power of 50 searches in one. The new engine gives consumers maximum choice and flexibility whether they know their exact travel dates and destination or they are open-minded in their planning. When consumers search by date and destination, Site59 works like a personal shopper--not only returning the requested results, but also including relevant alternatives displayed in a new dashboard view. Alternatives include: other dates for the chosen destination, nearby and regional destinations for the chosen dates, and other relevant destinations for the chosen dates based on matching categories such as "Beach," "Big City," and "Golf."
Yahoo! redesign beta
Yahoo!: "Take me to the: Original"
Yahoo! Beta
Study: Fortune 100 and top Etailers Lack SEO
Study: Fortune 100 Lack SEO
Quote: "The study's methodology consisted of an analysis of ethical and unethical SEO methods used on companies' Web sites, as well as current Google positioning for each company's primary keywords. Oneupweb conducted individual searches to determine whether each company appeared in the top 10 or top 30 listings in Google.
Among the ethical methods were unique title tags, unique meta descriptions and meta tags, relevant body text, and anchor text containing primary keywords or phrases.
Oneupweb considered comment tag keyword-stuffing, invisible text or image links, spamming with non-relevant keywords or phrases, and cloaking [define] among the unethical SEO techniques. "
Study: Top E-tailers Neglect SEO:Quote; "The Fortune 100 are not the only companies ignoring search engine optimization (SEO)...very few of the top online retailers had well-optimized sites, resulting in some missed opportunities to generate revenue."
where search engine marketing excels
MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory: " Wolf's comments a step further, she hit on three points where search engine marketing excels:
Exposure - Engagement
First, consider engagement. It's a given that online media are interactive, so some engagement is implicit. Search goes a few steps further. Reading a newspaper article online is still largely a passive activity. Search is 100 percent active. Nothing happens until the user initiates the process, considers the results, and then follows through by interacting with the most relevant listing. Natural and paid listings both hinge on relevance so that the user remains engaged. That's why Google nixes underperforming advertisements.
Interruption - Permission
Then there's permission. Mass media advertising continues to focus on interruption. Any respectable direct mail and e-mail marketing campaign score through the roof on permission (the objective word being 'respectable,' remember). Search still holds its own, though in an interesting way.
Compare search to television, for example. With TV, the user implicitly gives permission, but the advertising interrupts. With search, there's the same level of permission, but there's zero interruption. The ads are seamlessly integrated into the experience. Even other forms of traditional direct marketing require a degree of interruption, and on further thought, search may be the only medium where there is a level of permission without any interruption. With search, the user says, 'I'll accept the advertising, so long as it doesn't interrupt me, and it's relevant to what I'm doing.' Ms. Wolf, search is the embodiment of the future you described.
Broadcasting - Customization
The third part of the trilogy also applies to search. The only ads that display during search are those customized to the u"
"The Conundrum that is Online Advertising" FreePint Newsletter 168
Excellent article
"The Conundrum that is Online Advertising"
by Tim Houghton
FreePint Newsletter 168
Reviews main formats used by online advertisers
Concludes "clickstream targeting also offers a possible solution to the conundrum that is online advertising. Consumers may accept brand-building messages if they are highly relevant to the task that they are currently accomplishing"
Getting Flash Sites Ranked in Search Engines
Getting Flash Sites Ranked in Search Engines: "article explains the various search marketing strategies available for Flash sites."
Linking Out: For and against debate with links, articles multiple domain linking
By Wayne Hurlbert
Linking Out: Finding the Benefits: Quote:
For "While the occasional link to other related sites might not provide much search engine value, to a website owner many outbound links are an entirely different matter. If a site links to the most relevant sites on the theme, including the most important authority sites, the linking out site can gain major importance in Google...
That importance arrives in the form of being regarded as a hub site by Google. Along with the hub site status conferred upon sites that are like train stations for themed links, comes high search rankings. SEO professionals agree that becoming a hub site for a site’s most important keywords is a worthwhile goal. Part of becoming a hub site involves linking out to related sites. Some of those sites might even be competitors"
Not all search engine optimization experts believe that Google PageRank is leaked away through outgoing links. In fact, many SEO people believe that the PageRank that flows out in one area is returned through inbound links from other websites. They argue that the level of Google PageRank, paradoxically, can only really be increased by linking out to other sites.
In that regard, creating a PageRank island with no outgoing links is harmful to a site. Linking out becomes a good thing, resulting in more inflowing than outflowing PageRank. Provided that a solid ratio of somewhat more inbound links than outgoing links is maintained, PageRank will constantly rise. The positive ratio of links will serve a site in good stead in the SERPs as well."
Against: Quote: "Many webmasters are strongly opposed to linking out to competitors, even if the competing site is considered an authority site by Google. An authority site is one that Google rates as among the most important websites in any particular theme area. These webmasters don’t like the possibility of sending potential customers and perhaps their business to other sites."
See also "
WebProWorld :: Linking Psychosis is Treatable. Link Obsession & PageRank" By Mike Banks Valentine
Explanation of relationship to academic citation
Linking is about Reputation : Internet Search Engine Articles: "Link analysis has its roots in citation analysis and social network analysis concepts. A couple of sharp Grehan:Claiborneientists 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.
However, even in the world of science, an early type of spam reared its ugly head. Pinski & Narin were aware that this type of analysis could be skewed or distorted by using methods of manipulation, even to the point of simply bribing someone to mention you in their paper. To combat this, they recognized that the work of some authors/researchers carried more weight than others, i.e., had more influence. Influence weight made it harder to manipulate results, as the community reputation of the author plays a large part in the calculation."
Scottie:: Some people try to increase their link popularity by setting up multiple domains to link to their main site. Does this help?
Mike Grehan: 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.
Scottie: What do you think about selecting sites as link partners based on their Google PageRank?
Mike Grehan: 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!
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - Article and Links webreference.com
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com: "keep in mind if you're considering cloaking: many of the search engines will block your listing if they find out about it. Is it worth taking the chance?"
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - Article and Links webreference.com
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com: "keep in mind if you're considering cloaking: many of the search engines will block your listing if they find out about it. Is it worth taking the chance?"
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - Article and Links webreference.com
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com: "keep in mind if you're considering cloaking: many of the search engines will block your listing if they find out about it. Is it worth taking the chance?"
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - Article and Links webreference.com
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com: "keep in mind if you're considering cloaking: many of the search engines will block your listing if they find out about it. Is it worth taking the chance?"
Australian IT - Destra & Yahoo enter domain deal (, SEPTEMBER 20, 2004)
Australian IT - Destra & Yahoo enter domain deal (, SEPTEMBER 20, 2004)
way to relaunch a whole site Google Groups : SEM2
Google Groups : SEM2: Discussion re "way to relaunch a whole site"
Yahoo Gives Web Site a Facelift : Forbes.com:
Forbes.com: Update 1: Yahoo Gives Web Site a FaceliftAssociated Press: "Yahoo Gives Web Site a Facelift"
The most visible changes include the addition of a "music" button across the top of the home page and the removal of a button that directed traffic to the company's help wanted site, HotJobs.
Other new features include search tab for the site's Web directory and a regularly updated feature that will report on which topics are generating the most search requests.
Airlines ask Sabre Holdings special access and discounts via GetThere eyefortravel.com -
eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis: "Airlines have approached Sabre Holdings about offering special access and discounts to clients of its GetThere corporate self-booking system, regardless of the agency or global distribution system used by clients to support that Sabre now is emphasizing a strategy that 'matches right supplier product with the right consumer in the right channel and at the right price,' said Houser. "
A9 Google compared: E-consultancy.com : E-business Briefing
E-consultancy.com : E-business Briefing
Mike Butcher writes:"The biggest draw with A9 is that you can hold a personal history, notes/diary, and bookmarks. A9.com also lets you know the last time you visited a web site. And you can make notes on any web page.
This is possible by putting a cookie on your PC so the site remembers your preferences when you return. Google also knows everything you search on already via a cookie - they just don't allow you access to that information. A9 does.
You can also get an A9 Toolbar, but, get this, only IF you have an Amazon.com account. So you have to buy something first. It's either pure evil genius or utter cheek depending on how you look at it...
A9 also makes use of the Alexa.com database which gives detailed info about almost any site - popularity, speed, reviews, and related websites.
But at any rate, personalisation appears to be the next phase. " End quote
Ask Jeeves/ Teoma 3.0 and Looksmart/ Furl.net going down similar route...is the future some combination of RSS and/or Trackback or similar?
Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others): A List Apart
Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others): A List Apart: "Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others)
by waferbaby
Setting up a consistent, well-organized website is kind of like building a new house"
LinkCheck - Site
LinkCheck - Site: " LinkCheck > Totaltravel.co.uk
Totaltravel.co.uk
Site: http://www.totaltravel.co.uk/
Last checked: 24-Sep-2004 15:35
Next check: 29-Sep-2004
Check frequency: 5 days
Pages: 30032
Pages with error: 86
Links: 71102
Broken links: 23"
Quality Criteria for Website Excellence - World Best Website Awards
Quality Criteria for Website Excellence - World Best Website Awards: "Quality Criteria for Website Excellence... World Best Website Awards"
Best Travel Sites - World Best Travel Sites: "best travel sites"
Branding and Search....MarketPosition September 2004
MarketPosition September 2004: "studies have shown that search engine listings stimulate brand recall by a 3-to-1 margin over banner advertising and other online marketing methods...
users expect top brands to appear at the top of the search results, and therefore many searchers believe those companies found at the top of search results to be top brands in their categories. This is detrimental to offline category leaders, with little or no search engine visibility, that have worked tirelessly to build a high-quality, recognizable brand, only to have it slowly eroded over time as consumers turn to resellers and smaller companies to find what they are seeking online. "
Gives examples, this underlines why natural search results are totaltravels main weapon against competitors....
Bits and Bytes for September 24, 2004
Bits and Bytes for September 24, 2004: "Hitwise Releases Search Term Tool"
Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise, notes that the Hitwise tool is different from other keyword-identifying applications because it tracks every search engine. "We also categorize what terms are successful versus unsuccessful."
Five Things Most Search Engine Optimization Firms Won�t Tell You But That You Need to Know Before You Spend a Dime
Five Things Most Search Engine Optimization Firms Won�t Tell You But That You Need to Know Before You Spend a Dime: "The greatest factor in SEO has nothing to do with your web site. In my research, I've found that around 80% of the Google ranking factors have nothing to do with the web site itself. The real determining factors are links to your site from other web sites. As long as your site is easily crawled by Google, most of the energy should be focused on getting these outside links. If an SEO firm tries to sell you an expensive package to simply 'optimize' your site for Google, it's probably going to cost you a lot of money for very little result. "
The Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog - yahoo.weblogsinc.com
The Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog - yahoo.weblogsinc.com
A must read on cloaking for Google by Ralph Tegtmeier aka fantomaster
: "Cloaking For Google
------------------------------------------------------
by
Ralph Tegtmeier"
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com
Web Site Cloaking and Search Engines - webreference.com: "cloaking techniques....Associated Links"
Ending The Debate Over Cloaking
" examples of cloaking being argued as commonplace"
here
Ending The Debate Over Cloaking:
and here
Cloaking Gone Mainstream: "simple semantics. Some users refer to all cloaking as cloaking; some users referring to cloaking are actually referring to deceptive cloaking, i.e., SPAM.
I tend to use the term the same way Jill does. If you someone is talking about IP delivery, I feel they should say IP deliver. If they are targeting just the Googlebot, it's SPAM, because I won't see what Google indexed if I do click through to the page. I've seen a lot of cloaking aimed at Google, and so far all of the Google-targeted IP delivery I've seen is SPAM. "
WhenU Banished By Google, Yahoo! web ring aka link farm reported By anti spyware activist
WhenU Banished By Google, Yahoo!: "The alleged scheme was reported to Google and Yahoo! by Ben Edelman, a Harvard PhD student and anti-spyware activist, according to Edelman's Web site. According to Edelman's investigation, some aspects of which were confirmed by ClickZ News, WhenU apparently used cloaking techniques in an effort to drive traffic to media coverage favorable to the company. "
URLs in Yahoo & MSN Are Not Complete Search Engine Roundtable
Search Engine Roundtable: "URLs in Yahoo & MSN Are Not Complete...
While working on a little project that made a site completely database driven, I realized that Yahoo and MSN incorrectly strip off trailing slashes in URLs (because I started seeing 404 page not found errors in my web logs).
For example, the URL http://www.domain.com/directory/ is linked to as http://www.domain.com/directory from both MSN and Yahoo.
This is bad for two reasons... first of all, it's just plain wrong, the two URLs could in theory be separate documents. Second, it's a waste of bandwidth. Most web servers are configured to add a slash to the end of a URL if there is no file that matches the name, and there *is* a directory with that name via a HTTP redirect. So now, the end user's browser needs to make two requests to the server to get one document.
The reason I figured it out is I *had* directories at one point, but moved to dynamic, database driven content. So the web server wasn't redirecting them with the wrong URL because there was not a directory with that name any longer.
Bad MSN, bad Yahoo... Naughty, boys."
Answers from Yahoo!
Answers from Yahoo! Yahoo-Mike
No, Sites are not demoted based upon incoming links. The only exception is if a site is part of a reciprocal link system / link farm that only provide inlinks if the site has corresponding outlinks. So you are not in violation simply because other unrelated sites are linking to you and therefore another site can't sabotage you. However, questionable incoming links can serve as a red flag for our Editorial Team to evaluate a site.
It generally comes down to pretty simple questions to ask yourself. Are sites linking to your site because it creates value for their visitors? Are the sites you are linking to adding value for your visitors? That applies to both the quality and the quantity of links (ie. having 100 good quality links isn't necessarily a better experience than have a smaller number of links). ...
So, a competitor could cause your site to be flagged for editorial review by the Yahoo site review team by placing links to your site on questionable sites without your consent?
But as long as we don't link back to the questionable site(s) we should be safe, right?
>>>>
Yes, you are correct. If there was a lot of questionable links into your site, it might get the attention of our editors. But it would not affect how they judged your site unless you were linking back or it was discovered you were part of a link farm.
Bottom line is someone else can't hurt your site by linking to it without your consent.
WebProWorld :: Link Farm vs Directory
WebProWorld :: Link Farm vs Directory: "Link Farms and Directories
----------------------------
Directories are useful collection of sites , you will never link to bad sites and donot expect a link back. You will always have constant look to eliminate bad links.
Links farm ... reciprocal links and few bad links as well, categories not well defined e.t.c
So its the outgoing links which will get you a ban"
Use.....linked sites which cater to similar targeted customers. Each site had a different focus and purpose. The way that he worked them together to feed off of, and into each other was well worth noting.
Ask Jeeves & Cityseach Partnership goes live
Ask Jeeves & Cityseach Partnership goes live: "Ask Jeeves & Cityseach Partnership goes live"
NEWS.com.au | Sensis patents its search engine (September 23, 2004)
NEWS.com.au | Sensis patents its search engine (September 23, 2004): "TELSTRA'S highly profitable directories business, Sensis, has lodged global patents for part of its new internet search engine in a bid to stymie growing competition from global search giants Yahoo and Google."
Search Engine Lowdown: FyberSearch Challenges Ask Jeeves and Google with Upgrades. au
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: FyberSearch Challenges Ask Jeeves and Google with its own Upgrades.: "FyberSearch Challenges Ask Jeeves and Google with its own Upgrades"
URL Format - with our without trailing slash
URL Format - with our without trailing slash: "URL Format - with our without trailing slash "
Doorway page for a site using Frames
Doorway page for a site using Frames
Jill Whalen - Quote:" that framed sites get ranked easily in the engines just like any other site if you simply follow a few simple rules.
seomike at Search Engine Watch forums post on how to make your framed site search engine friendly. seomike, in this post, gives both the unix and windows method of converting a framed site into something the search engines will eat up and spit out to the searcher.
Ask Jeeves - personalised launched Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Ask Jeeves, the third-biggest U.S. Web search provider, has unveiled MyJeeves, a new product that helps users personalise their Internet searches.
The release comes amid a round of competitive salvos from Web search providers, each of which is working to deliver better search results to consumers, whom they can then target with lucrative advertising."
Search Engine Reverse Engineering Project - online experiments
Search Engine Reverse Engineering Project
Limited because: Unlike many reverse engineering projects, we cannot "take apart" our object of study, the search engines. We will have to limit our research to examining their behavior from afar...
Known Limitations of Reverse Engineering Search Engines
It is very difficult achieve certainty in many desirable answers regarding search engine behavior due to factors such as:
1. Search engine algorithms change constantly.
The technique that worked on Google yesterday may not work today.
2. Off-page factors are uncontrollable.
If you make a change to a web page and wait to see the changes, you test will be contaminated if a single other web page on the Internet links to your web page, or if an existing link to your web page changes in Page Rank. Page Rank is a sliding scale which is constantly in flux.
3. Timing is unknown
If you make a change to one of your web pages right now, it will take some time for each search engine to crawl the page. The search engine will then take an unknown amount of time to include the page in it's database. Different page factors may be included in the database at different times. The page may be placed in a temporary holding area in the database, where it shows up in the SERPs, before eventually being placed in the main database.
Crosslinking ...Yahoo Mike on .. Will a Yahoo penalty naturally go away once a site is fixed?
Will a Yahoo penalty naturally go away once a site is fixed?: "if you've fixed the problem, the free crawl should begin picking up your sites. You can also try resubmitting them to webmasterworldfeedback@yahoo.com. "
Web Development News: Web Spider Traps - robots.txt Traps and Robot Detection
Web Development News: Web Spider Traps - robots.txt Traps and Robot Detection: "On the pages of
Web Spider Traps is one of the most comprehensive studies I have seen in Robot behavior patterns. With the use of craftily constructed robots.txt files, .htaccess files, detection scripts, and a variety of other techniques this page has detected, proven and found guilty numerous spiders that violate the code of robots.txt and the Robot Meta elements of your web pages...
For instance, Googlebot was shown to have followed it's orders in robots.txt except for files of type pdf, tar and zip. This trap has also caught red-handed in the act www.dir.com (Pompos), Gigabot, ia_archiver, and Yahoo! Slurp to name a few.
Spiders that do not follow robots.txt rules or do not limit bandwidth usage include WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, MSNbot/0.1, msnbot/0.11, and several others.
"
Yahoo! USA address and phone
Geek.com Geek News - Yahoo! is on the phone: "Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Phone (408) 349-3300
Fax (408) 349-3301
Office Hours 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST "
Yahoo! UK & Ireland - Information Centre
Yahoo! UK & Ireland - Information Centre: "Yahoo! UK Ltd
10 Ebury Bridge Road
London
SW1W 8PZ
tel 020 7808 4200
fax 020 7808 4203"
Cloaking Gone Mainstream - discussion of definitions of cloaking
Cloaking Gone Mainstream
Inktomi, for example, states: If the purpose is to serve alternate pages to different human users, based on locality, browser, machine type etc., we do not consider that cloaking.
What Inktomi Considers Unwanted cloaking
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Inktomi does not want include:
...
Pages that give the search engine a different page than the public sees (cloaking)
dannysullivan Quote" I spoke to Inktomi yesterday for the articles on this subject that I posted today. They agreed that XML feeds technically are cloaking. They also said that what is cloaking has changed so much because of the new technologies over the year. They are planning to go back and revise their guidelines to try and better explain what type of cloaking they don't like."
Log server analysis tools
WebProWorld :: Yahoo has just done a mega-crawl: "You can use a server log analyzer such as AWstats (OpenSource) or Sawmill (commercial). You can actually get Sawmill free, by doing testing for them. Details here."
Search and branding again...iMedia Connection: Lessons from Jack Trout
iMedia Connection: Lessons from Jack Trout: "how leveraging brand attributes is integral to developing an effective marketing strategy.
He pointed specifically to five attributes:
1) Ownership -- He told marketers that once you take ownership of an idea you have to stick with it. For example, Papa John�s is now the third most popular pizza chain, thanks to a smart positioning statement it has maintained: 'Better ingredients. Better pizza.' And this has led to better results -- sales have grown at twice the industry average rate in the past two years.
2)Leadership psychology --
3)Timing -- A successful brand has to be first to market with a good idea, not just any idea.
4)Heritage --
5)Expertise --
Four-step process to differentiation
Trout laid out a simple process for brand differentiation that involves only four steps:
First, your message has to make sense within the context of the category.
Second, the differentiating idea must be clear. Find the difference and set up a benefit for your customer.
Next, identify the credentials. In order to build a logical argument for your brand, you have to demonstrate proof.
Last, communicate the difference. Truth will not win without communicating it.
Marketing is an exercise in reality
"When you approach a category with a strategy, you have to deal with reality: what you can do and what your competitors will let you do," Trout said.
See article for his use of AT&T’s history as the perfect case study
Search and Branding iMedia Connection: SearchTHIS: There's Search in Them There Hills
iMedia Connection: SearchTHIS: There's Search in Them There Hills: "Mining for search at the Summit finds brands are more search-savvy than some give them credit for. "
Search Engine Inclusion - SEO How-To Guides from Clickthrough Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Inclusion - SEO How-To Guides from Clickthrough Search Engine Marketing: "How to Check Search Engine Inclusion"
Outline of strategy that SHOULD be followedSEO Master Class: 10 Steps To Success : Internet Search Engine Articles
SEO Master Class: 10 Steps To Success : Internet Search Engine Articles: "http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/services/web-traffic-analysis.php"
It is critical that you only adopt safe strategies that are consistent with the guidelines provided by the search engines and SEM industry. As an agency, we have no tolerance of any person or agency that advocates the use of non-ethical techniques and spamming. Remember that best practices will bring long terms lasting results without the risks and short term nature of spamming methods.
Forbes.com: Ask Jeeves Hoping to Outshine Google
Forbes.com: Ask Jeeves Hoping to Outshine Google: "Ask Jeeves Inc. is adding new tools for visitors to save and organize links to Web pages they find through the company's online search engine. "
Ask Jeeves has a long way to go to catch up, though. Through July, Google handled about 36 percent of Internet searches, with Yahoo at 29 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm. Ask Jeeves' various search engines, which include Teoma, Excite and iWon, held a 6 percent share.
The latest features aren't technological breakthroughs. A9.com, an upstart from Internet retail giant Amazon.com Inc., just last week introduced a similar feature for visitors to save Web links inscribed with personal notes. A $29.95 software program called Onfolio also helps collate and classify Web sites.
Ask Jeeves is touting its service as more user-friendly because it doesn't require the installation of any toolbars or software programs.
"The next generation of search isn't going to be about who can build the biggest indexes (of Web pages)," said analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research. "It's going to about finding better ways to personalize search results and modify the way the results are presented."
Double exposure and Branding The Holistic Approach to Search Engine Marketing
SEO News: The Holistic Approach to Search Engine Marketing: "Recent studies have indicated that search engine marketing is an effective brand builder, and this branding effect is amplified through placement in both the natural search results and in the paid results. This makes perfect sense - on most search engines, you have two unique opportunities to present your company and products/services for every search query. By taking advantage of both opportunities, you greatly increase your chances of being first-in-mind from the searcher's perspective, at the time of the search and beyond.
There is a very popular approach from some search engine marketers to only use PPC for keyphrases where the site does not achieve high natural rankings. While this approach can certainly save money, it runs counter to the branding benefit espoused above (since it ensures that a site listing will either be in the paid results or the natural results, but never both). If your company has a high average dollar sale, and you have a chance to favorably impress a visitor with dual exposure before they visit your site, it usually makes sense to take that opportunity."
OJR article: Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win? lEGAL DISCLAIMER
OJR article: Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?Spell out the law.
One Irish blogger, Antoin O Lachtnain, was so upset after spending hours removing comment spam that he decided to post a special disclaimer for anyone who wanted to comment on his blog:
"Relevant comments are very welcome, whether you agree or disagree with what I have to say. However, advertising of goods or services is not permitted on this forum without payment of a fee. The fee per advertisement is 500 Euros, which is payable immediately by bank draft. If you post an ad but do not pay the charge immediately you have corrupted data on this Web site without my permission. As such, you are guilty of criminal damage under the Criminal Damage Act, 1991 and subject to a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to 12,700 Euros...Please note that posting on this forum will have no effect whatsoever on the PageRank of any links that you post."
Unfortunately, on the very blog post where Antoin first discusses his new disclaimer, all nine comments are from spammers promoting pornography, credit reports, online poker and video on demand.
Amazon unveils A9 Internet search engine | CNET News.com
Amazon unveils Internet search engine | CNET News.com: "Amazon.com has officially taken the wraps off its Internet search engine, joining the contest to unseat No. 1 provider Google"
Unlike search rivals, A9 organizes query results into expandable columns, displaying Web pages, images and reference material adjacent on the page. Its branded toolbar also records users' Web browsing history and makes it accessible and searchable to individuals. (Web surfers must register to see their personalized search history.)
"The idea is to take search one level further and organize the information we search for," Udi Manber, A9's chief, said in an interview. "We wanted to build a search engine with memory and help you organize it yourself."
Under the hood, A9 is powered by technology from Google, Amazon's subsidiary Alexa, reference information from GuruNet and the Internet Movie Database, among other sources. It also displays Google-sponsored ad listings.
Amazon's relationship with Google mirrors one Google forged with Yahoo during the late 1990s--a relationship of "coopetition," some industry watchers say. Amazon and Google are cooperating within a technology partnership, but they are also competing for Web surfers' allegiance.
A9.com Home Page
Jeeves the butler disappears from web - silicon.com
Jeeves the butler disappears from web - silicon.com
local search updated Google | Yahoo CNET News.com
Think local, act Google | CNET News.com: "Google polished up its relatively new local search service Tuesday by simplifying the site's layout and enhancing query results with detailed maps. "
"Yahoo recently updated its local-search service with editorial reviews, ratings and detailed information about businesses found using Yahoo Local. The Web portal has also featured local maps that let people view an address and its surrounding businesses, such as hotels, restaurants and parking lots."
Inside the Searcher's Mind: latest research
Delving Deep Inside the Searcher's Mind: "New research offers insights into the workings of the searcher's mind. "
Fredrick Markini, CEO of iProspect, summarized data from the "iProspect Search Engine User Attitudes Report," surveying 1,649 participants on their search engine behavior. Specific results are:
60.5 percent of respondents picked a natural search result as the one they found most relevant to a sample query.
60.8 percent of respondents who use Yahoo! picked a natural search result as "most relevant" to a sample query.
72.3 percent of respondents who use Google picked a natural search result as "most relevant."
15.2 percent more women than men stop at the first page of search results.
Once users enter their search query, they immediately focus on the blue links in the middle of the search engine results page (SERP). Everything else on the SERP is initially ignored -- including sponsored links, tabs at the top of the page and news stories - until the searcher has confirmed that the search results are relevant
Revamped AOL home page to look more like a portal
Revamped AOL home page to look more like a portal: "America Online reportedly is redesigning its welcome page"
budgeting for keywords: primer iMedia Connection: SearchTHIS: Can You Forecast Search?
iMedia Connection: SearchTHIS: Can You Forecast Search?: "budgeting for keywords"
Future of Search - predictions SEO is not going away...
Reported by Jim Hedger at
Internet Search Engine Database:
"search is more important to the Internet today than ever before. As digital media becomes the mainstay of our information and entertainment systems, the search sector will grow enormously. Opportunities for designers, advertisers and SEOs will expand but will also become far more complex and in many cases, more expensive. The Internet is about to enter another revolutionary growth period and the search engines are lining up to provide as many information sources as possible. For those who are interested, these are interesting times."
Google and 301/2 redirects ... Why Business com Was Banned
Why Business com Was Banned: "Concerning what actually happened to Business.com, SEO expert Dan Thies offered these thoughts:
'Google has a problem with handling 302 redirects, period. Business.com isn't banned or penalized, they're just returning the wrong response.'"
How to suss a link farm...
Using Internet Directories as a Link Building Tool: "One way to determine a link farm is it will usually require many return links, and links for other sites. Don't participate in such linking schemes."
Updated 04 All about the Title Tag for Search Engine Optimization
All about the Title Tag for Search Engine Optimization: "All About Title Tags"Title tags are extremely important towards your goal of achieving high search engine rankings. What you write in these tags can indeed
affect how your site ranks in all the major engines. (See the recently updated "All About Title Tags" here:
.) You should always work your major phrases into the Title tags on your pages, and make
sure that each page of your site uses a unique tag.
Meta description will show in the search results only *if* it happens to use the exact phrase that has been queried at the search engine. So use this tag for marketing purposes, i.e., to entice people to click on *your* link as opposed to the other 10 in the search results.
(I) am 100% positive that Google doesn't index the words placed in the Meta keywords tag. Yahoo (and all of its search properties) plus Teoma/Ask
Jeeves, do look at the Meta keywords tag, and do index its contents. BUT, and this is a huge BUT, that doesn't mean that filling this tag the same keywords you've optimized your page for will boost it in the rankings.
Does this mean you shouldn't use the Meta keywords tag? No, not at all. You certainly don't *have to* use it, as it shouldn't affect your rankings for the keyword phrases that matter to you most; however, you could still use it for phrases that are somewhat obscure and just don't belong visibly on your page. I talked about this a couple of years ago in this article: "No Meta Keywords"
. I really think that misspellings and technical synonyms are the best (and possibly only)
use for this tag.
As to the age-old comma/no comma question (and I actually did get this one asked today!), it makes no difference. Commas are seemingly
invisible to search engines, so it's pretty much the same thing to them whether you use them or not!
BEWARE: Traffic Power has changed their name to First Place or 1P.com - High Rankings Advisor
High Rankings Advisor
Jill Whalen announced in today's newsletter that "Traffic Power has changed their name to First Place or 1P.com. So BEWARE if you get a call from a company with either of those names. Hang up withoutlistening to their pitch! They're still the same spammeisters they always were. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see my "
Getting Banned Due to Sp@m
The article referred to By JW states:
It seems that most of those who were banned have the same story to tell. The code and pages that they were asked to upload to their server (or that were uploaded for them) seemed kind of fishy, but the SEO company said it was necessary.
They said that this was what you *had* to do to get high rankings, and that "everyone" did it.Apparently, they even have results from clients with which to back up their sales talk.
What these site owners didn't know was that results obtained through these methods are short-lived and dangerous to the long-term success of a site. Basically, it only lasts until the next round of bannings takes place. When one technique gets banned, they simply find a new way to spam the engines on your behalf. This gives the company a constant supply of short-lived high rankings to show potential clients
in order to convince them to sign up to become their next guinea pig.
10/09/2004
Case studies - sites dropped due to Traffic Power, the article by Kevin Capp, CityLife's newsroom assistant, underlines the near impossibility of getting back in web search by communicating with searh companies...
Las Vegas City Life: "Jason Ohrum, the sole owner and operator of a Vermont-based Website design company, was settling in for a long night's rest before going on vacation. It was then he discovered his business received the Internet world's equivalent to the kiss of death. Two of his most trusted clients' sites had been banned by Google...
The most appealing part of the offer centered on the fact that these would be "natural listings" on Google as opposed to paid listings. Since Traffic Power only charged an initial fee of $3,000 with the anticipation of another $1,600 - a fraction of what Google charges - Ohrum signed the contract.
Less than two months later, his two clients' sites were dropped from Google.
"I almost developed a stomach ulcer because I thought I was going to get sued," Ohrum said. "At that point, there's nothing you can do. Google, you can't talk to them, they're untouchable. Your hands are tied."
Apparently, the "attraction pages" Traffic Power used to link his site with specific search terms violated Google's bylaws. Google has another name for them, "doorway pages," a technique outlawed years ago. Once that happens, any sites associated with those pages are banned. The largest, most popular search engine in the nation will have nothing more to do with companies in violation.
Hedger said Google takes such violations very seriously because it costs them money. The extra Web pages Traffic Power creates to link sites eats up space on databases, which takes big dollars to maintain. Even though each page only costs fractions of a cent, when enough are out there, he said, the fractions add up - potentially in the billions of dollars.
"Search engines don't like being gamed. They don't like it when certain players in the SEO industry create pages solely designed to get attention," Hedger said. "If you're trying to get your company on the public market, you don't want people thinking your product can be manipulated."
Definitions hub and authority sites with Reciprocal Links discussion
Reciprocal Links: Are They Really So Bad?: "When link exchanges are made between sites that share common themes and topics, visitors are helped as well. Providing outgoing links, to other useful and informative sites, raises a Website's value as a resource. Visitors will regard the site as a source of useful links.
The search engines will view the site as remaining entirely within its overall themes. Higher visitor traffic and sales result, on the one hand, and higher Google PageRank and better results in the search engine results pages (SERPs), appear on the other.
As a site develops a more powerful group of theme related incoming and outgoing links, it has the beginnings of a Hub Site or an Authority Site. The important point is relevance of links.
A Hub Site is like a link airport with theme relevant incoming and outgoing links.
An Authority Site is a large site that is considered the most important for its keywords.
A well planned relevant linking strategy can start a site on the road to that status, which is highly rewarded by the search engines."
Keep the needs of your visitors and the theme of your site in mind whenever you make a link exchange. With that thought to guide you, reciprocal links will reward you in the search engines, and with your customers.
Get in that gap! Level of Search Engine Optimization Not Optimal
Pretty sure I have blogged this before but there is always room for a reminder of the gaps to aim for....
Level of Search Engine Optimization Not Optimal: "Level of Search Engine Optimization Not Optimal "
The article concludes "Although Fortune 100 companies often benefit from name recognition and a commanding position in their industry, poor site design can still result in lower search engine rankings. Conversely, competitors have an opportunity to take advantage of this sluggishness by making sure their SEO is top notch so that they can gain a higher profile in search results and thus among online customers at large. "
Google Search: site:www.totaltravel.co.uk -knwo8ebe
This search syntax is now considered to be a more reliable approximation to how many pages a site has listed than the plain allinurl:, the latter shows up all the scrapers using a site. Some consider the scrapers a threat to their serps but they tend to come and go PDQ.
Google Search: site:www.totaltravel.co.uk -knwo8ebe: "about 58,700 from www.totaltravel.co.uk for -knwo8ebe"
The AU site has
this has dropped
The tool on
Search Mechanics which uses the syntax allinurl: www.totaltravel.com site:www.totaltravel.com shows AU as having about 21,100 and about 82,600 for the UK
Corporate travel: ETA Product set to 'shake up' business travel tendering - 07-Sep-04.
Product set to 'shake up' business travel tendering - 07-Sep-04.
There seems to be a bit of a buzz about this product, it's benefits include "saving time and making sure that submissions contain good quality information"
Travel mole says their "first customer in the UK is Siemens, which has a UK travel spend of about £20 million according to ETA. It is using the tool to select its preferred TMC, but soon the ETA will be adapted to help corporate clients to select deals with suppliers such as airlines and hotels."
Tag line
ETA E Travel Advisors - The real-time solution to business travel
Utterly Disillusioned With Seo -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Utterly Disillusioned With Seo -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Cracking discussion re the history of SEO, search engines and the possible next generation of search .. in light of my previous post about the MSN curent R&D, a post by Peter who likes "
to speculate" explores the future of interpretive search ( I use interpretive instead of semantic not to splt semantic hairs but to differentiaite from the aims of AI in other areas. J)
He says "
I think search technology is going to leap forward again like Google did many years ago. I also think that the new Google will be,.... Google. Last November they tried and though things seem to have returned to normal, I think they actually are using new technology that is now pretty good adjusted.
The next real leap will not be links, it will not be anchor texts, it will be something new and that is "understanding text the way humans do". Why is one text that uses a keyword phrase 5 times in all the right places considered very related and another text that uses the same keyword phrase 5 times in all the right places considered a lousy text? A human can tell you right after reading it. A search engine doesn't have a clue and can only try to figure it out based on indirect evidence.
The next step will be interpretation of text.
Of course that is just my opinion, but is based on the tremendous efforts of Google trying to match ads to text. And they´re pretty good at it too, if given enough text. You also see some evidence of this in the link: command."
Jen :There are surely many more shake downs in search to come, like the one which saw AU out of Yahoo, the best practise would be to stick to best practise and not try to game the search algos....I agree with as M when he says to adhere to Jakobs focus on the user....
Find all of Jakob's articles
here on Alertbox .
Seven Gifts Your Search Engine Marketing Company Will Love
Interesting article about working professionally with SEO
Seven Gifts Your Search Engine Marketing Company Will Love: "seven gifts you can give your SEO company to help ensure the campaign they create for you results in more web site traffic and sales without the struggle: "
MSN Research ( future of search) Economist.com | Computing
Economist.com | Computing: "a way of getting answers from the web"
Article states: "But the real prize will surely go to whoever can use the web to deliver a straight answer to a straight question. And
Eric Brill, a researcher at Microsoft, intends that his firm will be the first to do that.
Ask MSR uses information on web pages to respond to questions to which the answer is a single word or phrase—such as “When was Marilyn Monroe born?”
Ask MSR starts by manipulating the question in various ways: by identifying the verb, for example, and then changing its tense or moving it into different positions in the sentence (“Marilyn was Monroe born”, “Marilyn Monroe was born” and so on). The resulting phrases are then fed into a search engine, and documents containing matching strings of words are retrieved. It sounds a promiscuous strategy, but gibberish phrases produce few matches, so, as Dr Brill puts it, “being wrong is very cheap.”
Ask MSR is still a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve it and it
may be launched commercially under the name AnswerBot"
2)
“Beyond the Factoid”. Dr Brill, meanwhile, has moved to a more difficult task. One of his most recent papers, written jointly with Radu Soricut of the University of Southern California, is entitled
“Beyond the Factoid”. It describes his efforts to build
a system capable of providing 50-word answers to questions such as “What are the rules for qualifying for the Academy Awards?” This is harder than finding a single-word answer, but Dr Brill thinks it should be possible using something called a
“noisy channel” model (NCM).
NCM works by modelling the transformation between what a user means (in spell-checking, the word he intended to type) and what he does (the garbled word actually typed). Dr Brill's question-answering system does something similar. Many question-and-answer pairs exist on the web, in the form of “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) pages. Dr Brill trained his system using a million such pairs, to create a model that, given a question, can work out various structures that the answer could take. These structures are then used to generate search queries, and the matching documents found on the web are scanned for things that look like answers.
The current prototype provides appropriate answers about 40% of the time. Not brilliant, but not bad. And it should improve as the web grows. Rather than relying on a traditional “artificial intelligence” approach of parsing sentences and trying to work out what a question actually means, this quick-and-dirty method draws instead on the collective, ever-growing intelligence of the web itself.
re Yahoo How do you determine if you have been penalized? 209.131.* range of Slurp
Interesting observation and theory By kwngian, Junior Member, webmasterworld:
How do you determine if you have been penalized?: "If you have been spidered by Slurp regularly, you should be in the index at least within the time frame you stated unless you are penalised.
If you get visits from the dreaded 209.131.* range of Slurp, it is almost certain that you have incurred a penalty. "
Search Engine Executives asked SEM/SEOs: Friend or Foe? Roundtable, Part 2
Search Engine Executive Roundtable, Part 2: "SEM/SEOs: Friend or Foe?"
Ask Jeeves acknowledges the importance of search marketing firms. "When you look at the good side of SEM, we actually support that," he said. "We very much support people optimizing as long as they're ranking for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons."
Yahoo's Weiner was similarly tactful. "Bad, irrelevant results are the enemy, not [SEMs]," he said, noting that Yahoo still considers feeds and content that can be refreshed regularly via its paid inclusion program as a good thing.
By contrast,
AOL's Campbell was blunt. "I don't think SEM is a bad thing -- I think it's one of the best things that's ever happened because now we don't sit around and figure out who pays who."
Search Engine Executive Roundtable, Part 1 Statements of main focus each engine by CEOs
Search Engine Executive Roundtable, Part 1:
"Yahoo's Weiner said that search provides not just a means to an end but an end in itself. The Yahoo network has considerable depth, and the company is embedding search everywhere, trying to personalize the experience for each user.
In contrast to Campbell, Weiner stressed the importance to Yahoo of controlling its own technology. 'In addition to our user base, we own our own proprietary search technology. This lets us control features, and decide where to invest,' he said...
Weiner said that Yahoo looks at three factors to determine whether to pursue a particular strategy. First, is there consumer demand? Second, can Yahoo differentiate its offering from what currently exists to create more quality? And finally, Yahoo wants a vertical create value, either directly through monetization or indirectly by getting people involved with the experience and wanting more.
Yahoo plans to continue its push in vertical areas. Weiner highlighted travel and music as high demand categories "
AOL "AOL's Campbell. "We don't put efforts into core web search, but partner instead," referring to AOL's partnership with Google to provide both paid and organic search results...Our strategy is to deliver the best content experience," he said. "I think AOL's in a different spot."
Ask Jeeves's Gardi reiterated the importance of delivering a high quality user experience. "It's not about one size fits all," he said. But rather than emphasizing personalization, he said that quality of search results was one of the most important factors to Ask Jeeves.
"Relevance ties all of this together. Relevance is our obsession. We want to make it simple, want to make it fast, want to make it relevant...
Ask Jeeves' Gardi said that local search was a top priority, noting that ten percent of all searches have explicitly local intent. He said that the definition of "local" is also fuzzy. It could mean nearby business or services, or information about people, weather or maps. As far as local search services go, "These things have already existed, but crawling the web doesn't satisfy our need to get the information we're looking for," he said.
To solve this problem, Jeeves' is adding structured data to the content it has found on the web. This will include things like reviews, opinions, and what Gardi calls "eight years of accumulated experience about local search.""
MSN's Payne said the current state of search is very primitive compared to where it will be in ten years. "I think the end user is going to win dramatically. There's so much potential. It's day one in search. It truly is going to change the way that people connect with information."
MSN is pursuing what Payne called "implicit personalization." He hinted that the personalization technology used in its recently launched NewsBot service will migrate over into the mainstream web search service the company plans to launch later this year...
MSN is taking a similar tack to Ask Jeeves, integrating structured information into web search. "It will be our job to integrate that information into web search and then direct people to the good verticals.""
The Inner Workings of Robots, Spiders, and Web Crawlers - WebReference.com
The Inner Workings of Robots, Spiders, and Web Crawlers - WebReference.com
SiteProNews: Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview with Michael Marshall (Part 1)
SiteProNews: Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview with Michael Marshall (Part 1): "Google Can Now Index . . . Flash!"
how do we know that Google is now indexing the contents
of Flash files? Is there a way that we can search the index just
for Flash?
Michael Marshall:
Yes. You can enter your search term in Google, and along with
that search term, use the filetype operator and restrict your
search to the file extension ".swf". This will search for your
search term only in Macromedia Flash files. You should see
[FLASH] just before each listing in the results page that is a
Flash document.
For example, put the following in the search box at Google:
"Best Free Banner Exchange Market" filetype:swf
Question:
How can we extract the text found in a Flash file to see what
Google sees?
Macromedia has a Flash Search Engine SDK
(http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine/)
that will give us just what we need. The SDK (Software
Development Kit) includes an application named 'swf2html'.
Swf2html extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash .SWF
file, and returns the data to stdout or as an HTML document.
Swf2html is provided as a compiled application and as a static
library for linked library implementation. For complete
functionality, see the file Readme.htm included in the SDK.
Site stats? WebLog Expert Lite - Free log analyzer
WebLog Expert Lite - Free log analyzer: "WebLog Expert Lite is a free log analyzer, light-weight version of WebLog Expert. It allows you to quickly and easily analyze your log files and get information about your site's visitors: activity statistics, what files visitors accessed, information about referring pages, search engines, browsers, operating systems, and more"
MediaDailyNews 09-05-04 Four months ago, a video and rich media technology provider named Viewpoint quietly launched a search engine toolbar with a unique twist that has begun performing very well for advertisers.
Powered by Yahoo! search technology, the Search Toolbar leverages Viewpoint's existing visual technology to create a toolbar that displays results with a visual representation that is unlike other toolbars.
Once users perform a search, at the top of the browser window, just above the results page, a series of thumbnail images are displayed that show the landing pages of each of the search results. Eight or so visual results are displayed at the top of the page, and users scroll across to view the rest of the search results appearing in thumbnail format.
As users mouse over the icons, they zoom in and out in the same fashion as the Mac OS X. The search results are also displayed in the normal text style directly below the visual results.
Because the thumbnails contain the actual landing pages of each search result, users can tell immediately if the site they are mousing over is a content-rich site or just a keyword spammed site filled with hundreds of links or ads. However, the generation of thumbnails is done in real time, so the process can be quite painful on a normal dial up connection. Because of this, Viewpoint allows users to disable the thumbnail display and use the toolbar as a regular search toolbar.
From an advertising standpoint, sponsored links on Viewpoint's Search Toolbar have a distinct advantage over other search engines. Viewpoint displays its visual results in a linear fashion, beginning with sponsored results first. So the first half a dozen or so thumbnail pages are advertisers' paid results.
The only characteristic that distinguishes paid from natural results is a gray border that outlines all paid results. Natural results follow in a white outline. The only way the end-user knows this is if he or she read the end-user licensing agreement, which is a "notification" method that is often controversially deployed by ad-supported software companies. It's controversial precisely because most users don't carefully read licensing agreements.
Nevertheless, advertisers, Viewpoint, and Yahoo! all benefit from the practice. According to Viewpoint CEO Jay Amato, Viewpoint's paid listings have a higher click-through rate than the rest of the industry, but he declined to go into specifics. According to Amato, Viewpoint splits paid search profits with Yahoo! subsidiary Overture Services (which powers Yahoo!'s paid search technology) 50-50. Amato said the company made no agreement with Yahoo! about the practice of paid inclusion. However, he noted that Viewpoint's search results are marginally different from those of its search provider.
Other features of the Search Toolbar include the ability to perform comparative searches with Yahoo! results appearing in icon form at the top and the other search engine's search results on the bottom, and the ability to save results as favorites that appear in the bookmarks section as clickable thumbnails. According to Amato, the Search Toolbar will soon allow users to choose skins to decorate their toolbars, which will result in branding and rich media opportunities for advertisers.
In addition to search services, Viewpoint also provides online media technology, which it licenses to several publishers including America Online, rich media ad-serving, and creative services for agencies and advertisers
Subscription only website so as much of story coverage from
Pandia as possible is pasted below:
Planet Ocean Search Engine News - September 2004 Topics: "Did you know that Yahoo is penalizing sites that run AdSense? We'll show you the workaround so your AdSense revenue producing pages don't get dropped from Yahoo's index."
(September 1 2004) The highly recommended Search Engine News newsletter from Planet Ocean has noticed a tendency for Yahoo! to drop web pages with AdSense ads.
"This month, after adding AdSense ads to one of our sites," Planet Ocean says, "we also noticed the complete disappearance of those specific pages. Coincidence? . . . perhaps."
The AdSense program ads allows web site owner to add context sensitive pay-per-click AdWords text ads to their web pages, thus getting some additional revenue.
AdWords is owned by Yahoo's main competitor, Google, and if Yahoo! is truly punishing Google partners by dropping web pages with the AdSense code on it, this is close to a declaration of war.
Pandia finds it hard to believe that Yahoo! would do such a stupid move, as it would undermine the company's credibility and its search engine's trustworthiness in a serious way. We would therefore like to see some more evidence before we accept the theory.
Pandia has AdSense ads on quite a few of its web pages, and these have not been dropped from the Yahoo! index.
This comment posted by soapystar, Senior Member, on a Webmaster World Forum makes a lot of sense...
Help Appealing to Yahoo: "It would be very welcome if Yahoo comes up with a clear process for review of sites and feedback why a site may have been banned and what we can do to correct it.
one might hypothosise that if they actually wanted banned sites or wrongly banned sites back they would have setup a pay-for-appeal system long ago. In fact even if they didnt want them back they could have setup a pay system that simply confirmed the rejection. The implication is clear."
Pole Position News - September 1, 2004 - #33: PageRank Linking Quality
All else being equal....how does your travel site become "the best" over (
Expedia 45,800 links counted by Google)? Certainly you can build a great site with tons of excellent content, as well as compete for your targeted keyword phrases, but the certain truth is that links don't find you until you've found a measure of success...
If linked articles are the "magic" solution to high quality links, why then would I be giving away such a "secret"? Because 1) I don't believe in magic solutions, and 2) I don't think it is in the best interest of Pole Position Web, or the internet at large, for quality solutions to be kept secret.
Many SEO fads come and go, and often times bad information is disseminated more often than good information. Unfortunately many SEOs and web site owners do nothing more than follow the current trends. This isn't always a bad a bad thing. Pole Position Web does the same a great deal, but not enough do any kind of forward thinking to develop new ideas and create positive marketing trends...
Reviews = articles...
about 767 linking to http://www.totaltravel.com/
MediaDailyNews 09-01-04: "Search engine optimization and marketing firm Oneupweb Tuesday released a white paper claiming that less than 10 percent of marketers use search engine optimization (SEO) effectively, and more than 40 percent don't use SEO at all. "
Review article:In 2004 there were 9 well-optimized sites as compared to 3 in 2002. Oneupweb expected that number to have grown at least 10 times to more than 30 companies over the last 2 years. If the optimization of FORTUNE 100 corporate sites had kept pace with the SEO industry growth, then moderately or well-optimized sites should exceed 95 corporations by now.
If Oneupweb updates the study next year, it expects that all the Fortune 100 would use search engine optimization on their corporate sites.
“Not only will big brands begin to notice a decline in market share, they will experience brand erosion. Customers expect to see the names they know as a dominant force in the places they live. More and more, they're living online,” explains Wehr.
Oneupweb
My conclusion: TT needs a coherent content aquisition and maintenance plan.
WEBSITES: EASY TO START; HARD TO MANAGE
One of the biggest problems websites face is that they lack proper planning in the design and development phase. Generally, the design of the website tends to overreach, in that what is built requires more staff to professionally manage than are
available.
A problem with the Web is that it lacks limits. If you have a shop or office then there are only so many things you can put into that shop/office. If you're running a fleet of five trucks, then you'll know that you'll need at least five drivers if you want to keep
things running efficiently.
It's not like that on the Web. I've seen web teams that are supposed to manage websites that are impossible to professionally manage with the number of people they have. This is because many organizations lack a clear understanding of where the value lies in a website.
The value of a website lies in its content, and this content needs to be professionally published and managed on an ongoing basis if it is to be effective. Instead of this professional approach, we often see an approach based on the volume of content. It's like there is a voice inside the heads of people designing websites shouting: "Have gigabytes, must fill!"
I see classifications designed that are much bigger than they should be. I see event calendars that show event information that is six months out-of-date. I see staff directories implemented but there is nobody updating the content and therefore they quickly go out-of-date. I see search engines that are not just ineffective, but are actually broken, and they have been left this way for months, because nobody had
the time to fix them.
If you don't have the resources to professionally manage a search engine, then don't have one. You are much better off with no search engine than with one that doesn't work properly. To keep your events calendar up-to-date may mean that you will
have to stop doing something else, and that's a perfectly good idea.
Stop rushing to publish all that badly written content. (Less is more.) You've only got so many hours in the week and there's no point in wasting time making yourself really busy. Stop developing that new application and make sure that you instead put the processes in place that ensure your staff directory is up-to-date.
The job of content is to communicate knowledge, and to drive action as a result of that knowledge. If the content is badly written or inaccurate then it fails in its objectives. Content can lose its value over time. Let's say you've got 5,000 documents on your website. Let's say that these documents require 30 minutes a year to be read over to ensure that they are still relevant. That's about 62 40-hour weeks.
Very few organizations that I have come across allocate sufficient time for the professional review of their current website content. Many simply keep publishing new content while ignoring the content that is already published on the
website.
It's time to stop ignoring the problem. It's time to start publishing a website we can professionally manage. If you only have two web staff then you should only have a two- staff website.
Gerry McGovern
You are welcome to republish this article once you place the following text and link at the end of the article:
Gerry McGovern is a web content management author and consultant
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
WEBSITE LINK FOR THIS ISSUE:
MediaDailyNews 09-01-04: "Just weeks after settling a patent dispute with Google that yielded it a bigger stake of Google's shares, Yahoo Inc. announced the sale of 2.3 million of shares of Google stock at $82.62 apiece. The sale netted $191 million. Google gave Yahoo 2.7 million shares of its stock to settle the dispute. Google shares began trading on Aug. 19, following its IPO. "
Bechtold: The Link Controversy Page: "The Link Controversy Page is intended to provide an overview of the legal problems of using hyperlinks, inline images and frames on the WWW. Right now, this page covers problems in the area of copyright, trademark, trespass law as well as unfair competition law."
Local Match & Yellow Pages: "So sorry about the confusion. Hopefully this helps explain how the products are related:
Yahoo! Yellow Pages consists of a comprehensive database of listings licensed from InfoUSA plus a section of paid listings in the Sponsored Businesses section. The Sponsored Businesses section consists of paid listings from our reseller partners, self-service, and Overture. The Overture products are geographically targeted Local Match and Precision Match listings.
Yahoo! Local also includes a comprehensive database of listings licensed from InfoUSA, several other data sources, and web content. Yahoo! Local also has a sponsored business section which solely consists of geographically targeted Overture Local Match and Precision Match listings.
Overture Local Match is a product for advertisers that have a physical storefront or service a specific geographic region. Advertisers provide a description and details about their business and do not need a website to participate. The advertiser chooses the relevant keywords and defines the geographic region to target their listing.
Here are a couple of links you can go to for more info:
Yahoo! Local: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/local/index.html
Overture Local Match: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/lm.jhtml "
The Growing Pains of Search: "As search tries to claw it's way onto Fortune 500 marketing budgets, the driving forces of the industry still have to figure out where it is they're driving too. Is search still a cottage industry, a loose amalgam of hundreds of small shops, or is it starting to become big business?
Will search marketing be overseen by internal departments in the biggest companies and advertising agencies? Will the best of the little guys be gobbled up in the next few years, with the rest left to find a niche to survive in, or wither on the vine? ...
I saw in San Jose was the beginning of a chasm developing in our industry. A handful of more sophisticated and forward thinking search marketers are beginning to really explore what can be done in search. They're
beginning to think research and strategy, rather than linking tactics and meta tag optimization. They’ve refocused their vision to look at the large and emerging picture of search. In their wake, they’re leaving the more traditional firms, usually quite small, who are using tactics from 4 or 5 years ago...
The minute we started talking to a potential client, we started spouting works like organic optimization, link building, landing pages, bidding strategies and ROI tracking. All of this is relatively unique to our industry and reflects an exclusively tactical approach.
In San Jose, I noticed a few search marketing companies starting to use a different vocabulary. Not new, different. It's terminology that comes from marketing and is strategy based. We're beginning to talk about
customer profiling, identifying attitudes, the nature of the buying cycles and the role of brand awareness. It's a new way of speaking aimed at marketers, not webmasters...
I believe years from now that the 2004 San Jose show will be a milestone in the industry. I think it will mark the beginning of a year that will dramatically alter the nature of the search marketing industry. We will grow up, and that will mean significant pain for many. Search will become much more sophisticated, and the price of entry to play the game may prove to be too expensive for many smaller providers. Alliances will form and total solutions will begin to emerge. Google and Yahoo will have to address the huge amount of time and effort required to manage a large sponsored search campaign. Real money will start to be invested, and made."
WebProWorld :: Which pages to avoid when linking?: "Also:
1 - Don't link to sites that use Zeus or Linksmanager to create their links directories.
2 - Don't link to sites that spam the search engines.
In short, don't link to bad neighborhoods."
More on Zeus:
By the way, I don't wish to get into a protracted discussion about the value of Zeus, as I have read the threads on it and there is no need to "beat a dead horse", but it seems to me that this "don't link to Zeus or Linkmanager" comment has become a mantra for many people without real factual, scientific data to back it up.
There is a very simple way to prove or disprove this theory. See how many pages with the filename themeindex.html you can find with a Google toolbar Pagerank that is greater than 0. These pages are penalized by Google as a matter of course.
(Hint: Do a Google search on "themeindex.html" and click on the resulting links pages, then take a quick look at the toolbar PageRank display.)...
You are absolutely right in that "ThemeIndex.html" is not a good thing to have, and I can only recall seeing one page with that extension and a PR4. That is why, one of the things they recommend in the the Zeus Help database is for the webmaster to change the "ThemeIndex.html" page, but it can only be done in the PRO version...and that is why I changed mine inmmediately when I installed the program. So granted, I would think twice before linking to a "ThemeIndex.html" zeus directory.
On the other hand, there are many zeus directories out there which have been customized to the point that they could never be identified as a "zeus directory" and they have good PRs.
Just to name a few:
swcreations.net (4/10)
svilaves.com(5/10)
flying-days.co.uk(5/10)
healthsuperstore.com(5/10)
datingmatchmakers.com (5/10)
Bottom line- zeus is whatever you want it to be, but with all due respect to you and everyone else in this forum, I would never make such a blanket, generalized statement as "Don't link to sites that use Zeus or Linksmanager to create their links directories."
I would caveat such a statement with an explanation about the "ThemeIndex.html" issue; but please, don't put all of those in the same room as the the few lazy and unscrupulous zeus webmasters who can afford to buy the PRO version, but who are so eager to start linking to anything that moves, that don't even take the time to read the zeus help database or even get a clue by joining such informative forums as this one.
