SEO Firm Blog

Will Yahoo Y!OU Be Enough to Entice You

2009-09-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

On September 28, 2009, Y!OU And Yahoo will be officially unveiled to the public. The theme of the new worldwide marketing campaign is to put you, the web surfer in the middle of Yahoo’s new offering.

Simplification and personal relevance are the keywords that Yahoo is using to describe its new offering. More relevant search, simpler photo sharing, high quality video calling for Yahoo Messenger and a new mobile Yahoo homepage are what will be leading the marketing campaign.

According to comScore Yahoo properties took second place behind Google properties in regard to unique visitors in August 2009. But, Yahoo search has dropped dramatically and Microsoft Bing has come on strong since the end of July to surpass it as the number 2 search engine.

One wonders whether Y!OU And Yahoo will be enough to keep the company growing and keep another Microsoft deal at bay? You or Y!ou’ll find out in just a few days whether the hype is all about you or not.

Bing Rising in Search and Shopping

2009-08-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Since Microsoft’s revamped MSN search, now named Bing, was launched in June 2009, the search engine has slowly gained market share in search and shopping. For several years now, MSN search has hung around the 5-percent market share point, with Yahoo over 20-percent and Google between 60 – 70 percent.

After the two month honeymoon phase is over, Bing search has gained a percentage point in the market from 8.23 in June to 9.41 this month. Now, this may not sound like a lot but it makes a Bing / Yahoo partnership more understandable.

Consider that last year Yahoo search was over 20-percent in market share and now its numbers are half of that. Also, consider that Google is around 77.5, so with Bing and Yahoo combining forces, there will once again be some semblance of competition.

Bing has also made significant strides in another area as well. Bing Shopping has increased 169-percent since its debut in June. Bing Shopping is now the 4th largest shopping comparison site (with Yahoo Shopping in 1st place).

And, just this week, Microsoft has announced Bing Shopping’s Double Cashback promotion. By purchasing from merchants enrolled in the Cashback promotion, Microsoft will send you a direct check.

In the Bing interface, you sign up under the Extras pull down in the top right corner and then any store that displays the Cashback logo will qualify you for a Microsoft check. Now, for years Microsoft has been lackadaisical about search.

Bill Gates a couple of years ago even commented about how Microsoft underestimated the value of search from the very beginning. But, in 2 months time, Bing has made some serious headway as a tool to search for both information and products.

It may take a while before Bing takes a ding out of Google and gives us a bang for our buck. Google followers are a loyal bunch. But, building a better mousetrap will always turn people in your direction and so let’s see in the weeks and months to come if Bing becomes such a mousetrap.

Beat the Heat with a Twittering Tweet

2009-05-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

As things heat up this Spring heading into Summer so its these tweeting season courtesy Twitter.com. As you know, Myspace and Facebook have their loyal following but there is something about Twitter with its 150 character limit and drive-by, drive-thru mentality that is quite an attraction to many.

It’s so attractive in fact that Larry King is a tweeting fool as well as Barbara Wa-Wa (Walters to you and me). In fact, Twitter is now so popular that neither could get their own names on the social media site and had to opt for something less brandable.

But, the big news perhaps is that AOL is rumored to have an interest in acquiring Twitter. Now the Wall Street Journal has pooh-poohed this idea but its really not that far-fetched. Right now Twitter doesn’t monetize itself through ads, so it makes sense that someone will want a payday with this large Internet property.

Google, where are you? If anything one would think the Big G would want to spread its domination to one of the hottest social media sites for now and sometime to come.

Powerset Semantic Search of Interest to Microsoft

2008-05-10T08:01:00.001-07:00

There is an article on CNET that speculates that Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Powerset, which is close to publicly rolling out its semantic search engine. The early reviews of the Powerset semantic search have been favorable.

Instead of basing its search results on keyword as Google does, Powerset uses word relationships, concepts and meanings plus other linguistic aids in order to deliver more meaningful results. For instance, if a user types in a phrase or question, they may be directed to part of page where the answer appears and not just the page itself.

During user testing of Powerset, the Powerlabs testers will be able to give search results a thumbs up or down, which will help the developers in refining their algorithms. Google has also experimented with this feature on a limited scale.

But, Powerset may change more than how a search engine delivers results. It may change user behavior in those searches. When Ask.com was AskJeeves.com users were encouraged to type in questions that affable butler would try to answer.

Powerset semantic search may be similar in that it may urge users to type in longer search strings, sentences or questions in order to achieve optimal results. Perhaps if Microsoft passes on this technology, then Ask.com would then be interested since it would take them back to their roots in search.

If user behavior does change in this new semantic world of search, then this will also affect the SEO community. Will SEO’s optimize pages based upon keywords or semantics? Ten years from now, keyword searches may be a thing of the past.

Powerset may not be a Google Killer, but it may start changing the tide as to how searches are performed and results delivered on the Web. And, this changing tide may help Web surfers get their information more quickly and more accurately than ever before.

Google Has New Search Within a Search

2008-03-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

Every Spring I dream about a nice, exotic vacation somewhere so I was doing a search for “Amazon Peacock Bass Fishing” to check out a nice little trip to Brazil. When doing a search for just “Amazon” I noticed that Google now has a search box embedded with the results for Amazon.com in which a person directly upon the website.

The search button says, “Search Amazon.com” and the results that are displayed are upon the Google site of different keywords results for the Amazon.com website. The same holds true when doing a search for DMOZ.

But, you’ll notice that when searching for DMOZ, Google has an additional feature. Not only is there a handy-dandy site specific search box for DMOZ, but there are also sitelinks listed as well. Google Sitelinks is another feature that is rolling out more broadly for older authority websites that several specific popular pages.

Generally, a website has to be online for more than 2 years, be in the number one position in the SERPs and have many back links to it before Google will generate Sitelinks for a website. By offering two methods of searching an authority website, Google is doing both searchers and authority sites a favor.

Well, have to wait and see, though how those in the number two through 10 positions feel about this extra real estate devoted to the website in the number one position. Chances are there will be a lot of squawking in the message board over these new developments.

Optimizing a Web Page for Too Many Keyword Phrases

2008-01-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

When a client comes to me complaining of low rankings, one of the first items I check is to see if their homepage or any other page is optimized for too many keyword phrases. The client may have tried to optimize the page themselves, had a friend do it, had an SEO do it that was working under outdated rules, or had an SEO do it who thought they could make it work through sheer force of will.

But, optimizing a web page for too many keyword phrases such as the website’s homepage is an exercise in dilution. For instance, if you try to optimize a web page for the keyword phrases green apples, yellow lemons, red cherries and purple grapes you could, at one time, rank well for all of these phrases. But, as time marches on, competition encroaches and more web pages are optimized for each of these singular keyword phrases, your fruit basket of a page will also drop in the rankings.

The solution is to set up a separate page for green apples, another for yellow lemons, etc. so that each page is well-defined and only optimized for one keyword phrase apiece. This will also making it easier to gain targeted back links to these pages with the appropriate keyword text.

Some clients think that because their homepage is optimized for several variations of the same keyword phrase that this dilution does not occur. But, this is a mistaken assumption. A page needs to a have a certain keyword density, otherwise it is diluted. It also needs to have back links with that same specific keyword phrase in it, otherwise it, too is diluted.

The trick is to be as targeted as possible on a page with the same keyword phrase emphasized on that page and on the links pointing to this page. When these elements are in alignment then the rankings most often fall into place.

Yahoo Testing Images with PPC Ads

2008-01-11T18:26:00.001-08:00

On the Sponsored Results part of their Finance pages, Yahoo is now testing images with their PPC ads. According to Search Engine Journal, these images are being supplied by ImageAdvantage. By putting these test ads inside the Yahoo Directory, they will be able to run live tests before rolling this feature out to the entire network.

At this point it is unclear whether or not this is part of the Yahoo Publisher program, which is still in beta or part of Panama, which is available to advertisers. Yahoo acquired an ad serving company called Blue Lithium in the Fall.

Blue Lithium serves image-oriented graphical and Flash banner ads. As of the beginning of this year, Blue Lithium has been offline due to their integration with the Yahoo system, which leads one to speculate, whether the Yahoo image PPC ads are part of this integration?

No matter, as perhaps Yahoo has learned from Widgetbucks, Chitika and a few others who have proven that having product images next to text ads generate clicks. And, clicks mean revenue for publishers and sales for advertisers and that’s what this lucrative game is all about.

How Not To Be Cheated in Link Trades

2008-01-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

Every day I get a dozen or so email offers for reciprocal link trades, which mostly offer me the short end of the stick. These emails are quickly deleted. But, there generally are a couple during the week that will pass the test of being truly reciprocal. So, I’m letting you know what I look for in a quality reciprocal link trade by telling you what to look out for first.

Let me say, upfront, that I have never been offered a quality 3-way link trade. I’m sure some people have and they are out there, but I’ve only been offered a link in some third rate directory in exchange for a link from my site to someone’s prime homepage. These I delete quickly.

Second, a link page doesn’t have to have PR in order for my site’s link to be upon it, but it has to have the potential for Page Rank. Some webmasters will do all they can to hide this page from the search engines.

Some of the things to look out for are orphaned link pages, links with a nofollow tag upon them or links (or pages) with redirects upon them that mean that PR will never be passed from their web page to mine.

There are some webmasters who will conduct a linking campaign and a month later orphan the links page, put on nofollow or redirects or use other methods to taint the reciprocal link. So, it’s important to check on these links on a regular schedule to see that they are still intact.

Some software will check to see that links are still on the links page, but may miss orphaned pages. This is true if the software only checks to see if the link is at the specific URL.

Now, since I’ve just stated what to look out for in link exchanges, here’s what I look for when trading links. Is the web page relevant to my site? I only trade links with relevant sites. Does the page have PR or the potential for PR? Is the site itself well indexed and will it bring in direct traffic? If the search engines did not exist, would this be a good trade?

Be picky about whom you link to and who links to you. Remember, your link is a vote for another site. If you trade links with a few relevant sites, you have the potential to trade targeted traffic for years. And, this is a good situation to be in.

SEO in 4 Simple Steps

2008-01-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

SEO has always been composed of four simple steps, so simple that anyone can do it. Over the past 10 or so years, many SEO techniques have come and gone. Some white hat techniques have changed into gray or black hat over time because of the changes in direction of the search engine algorithms.

But, the basics of search engine optimization have not changed. The four tried and true methods of any SEO campaign include:

1. Keyword phrase research
2. On-page Optimization
3. Link building
4. Results tracking

Picking the correct keyword phrase for a web page is the heart and soul of SEO. If one picks the incorrect phrase, then no visitor or the wrong visitors will come to the site. If a too competitive keyword phrase is picked, then the page will be buried in the search engine rankings in favor of older, more authority pages.

On-page optimization simply means writing a web page around a certain keyword phrase and making sure that phrase is in the body text, headline, title, keyword and description meta tags and even image names and tags.

Link building involves getting links placed on other websites pointing to your website. The link also needs to have the correct keyword phrase in the title of the link. In addition, the link needs to be free of the nofollow tag or redirects that obscure Page Rank from being passed from one site to the next.

Results tracking basically means just what it says. Once the SEO has been completed, it is important to use software to track new visitors coming to the website so the effectiveness of the SEO campaign can be determined and adjusted if necessary.

Of course, although SEO is simple, it is not always easy. What I’ve just listed is a primer in search engine optimization. Anyone can do it. Not everyone can do it well, however, or has the time to devote to it and that is why SEO professionals are most often enlisted.

SEO Guarantees

2008-01-06T13:39:00.001-08:00

Customers often ask their search engine optimization professionals for guarantees before signing up. This is understandable since the customer is spending a considerable amount of money in order to improve their rankings and bring more targeted traffic to their website.

What customers who are new to SEO, don’t often understand, though is that SEO professionals don’t have any control over the search engine rankings as a person might have when they sign up for a Google Adwords or Yahoo PPC account. Customers, in fact, have more control with Google or Yahoo PPC, but they end up paying a lot of money for that control, compared to SEO in the long run.

This myth of SEO control is perpetuated by companies seemingly offering SEO in their ads that say, “Get your site to the top of the search engines in 48 hours.” What these companies fail to say upfront is that they are not talking about SEO but rather sponsored listings from pay-per-click (PPC) programs.

Some customers are also confused as to how the search engine results pages (SERPs) are divided one area for the organic listings and other areas for the PPC sponsored results. It is the duty of the SEO to educate the customer on the differences.

Now, what guarantees can an SEO give? Search engine optimizers run the gamut from giving no guarantees whatsoever to guaranteeing the number one result on all search engines. Neither of these extremes is realistic. Why would a customer pay money to an SEO when a guarantee of no results is offered?

On the other hand, some fly-by-night SEOs will try to lure customers in with guaranteed number one results that no SEO can deliver. The most logical guarantee that an SEO can give a customer is something along the lines of letting the customer know that their results will be better off than before the SEO was hired and that the SEO and customer can track the results and make adjustments if necessary somewhere down the line.

Though customers who start with a PPC program may find this SEO guarantee vague as this does not give the same control that paying Google or Yahoo for sponsored results does, this will satisfy most people. SEOs have to contend with proprietary algorithms, competition from other websites and other SEOs and even their own customers unknowing hurting the SEO of their own sites.

When working under these conditions, the organic listings are just as the name implies: a growing, changing and moving target that can fluctuate in unexpected ways. The most any SEO can guarantee is giving the customer better results than the customer can achieve by themselves and that SEO is indeed cheaper than paying for PPC over the long haul.

Google WWW Vs. Non-WWW Issue

2008-01-05T08:02:00.000-08:00

The Google www versus non-www versions of the same domain names issue has plagued many websites much to the chagrin of the webmasters and Internet business owners. In a nutshell, this means that Google sees www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com as two different websites with different pages that don’t perfectly match and penalizes the site for having duplicate content.

If you are familiar with the duplicate content penalty in regard to unrelated websites, this www versus non-www issue is a duplicate content penalty within the same website. So, how do you tell if this is happening to your website?

The first indication is usually that a website is fully indexed by the search engines but is buried in the rankings and fails to be unburied within a reasonable amount of time. If you have a website that has been around long enough to escape the Google Sandbox, but still languishes at the depths of the rankings wormhole, then it is worth checking to see if your website may have this problem.

The easiest way to check is to go to Google and type in site:www.yoursite.com and check the number of results listed. Next, type in site:yoursite.com (and of course substitute the name of your actual site for “yoursite”) and see if the number of results match.

If the number of results do not match, you site most likely has this www issue going on. If the results match, you may or may not have the www issue as well. Conventional SEO wisdom has stated that if the numbers match, then you do not have the www problem. But, through my own experience, I have tested a number of sites and found that some will have the number of results match, but the pages in the results are not identical, and thus the www issue is present.

So, if you do have the www issue, how do you fix this problem? Typically, you can fix this issue through the htaccess file, which works most of the time. The simplest fix is a 301 redirect from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com and that may work fine for you. This simple fix, however, does not work in all cases.

Another fix to use in the htaccess file is to use a mod rewrite that interacts with your webhost’s server.

Here are three versions that I’ve used with success of different occasions.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.yourdomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.yourdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Experiment to see which one will work for you. If you page won’t load after using one of these, simply remove the htaccess file and try another one. If none of these works, and interferes with the functioning of your website, remove the new htaccess file and reinstall the old one if you were using one.

Some people have gone to the extreme of moving their website to a new domain name and doing a site wide 301 redirect from one domain to the next. This should be done only as a last resort. If this is the route you choose, then put a moratorium on changes for several weeks while making this transition.

The best case scenario is moving one identical website that the search engines have already indexed to a new domain, do the 301 redirects and give the search engines a couple of weeks to fully index this identical website sitting upon the new domain name.

If you make changes during this time, it may affect your search engine results and Page Rank. If you do everything right, however, your site still may suffer in the rankings so patience will be needed.

These are the basics of the Google www versus non-www issue. Whether you are working with your own sites or client sites, this is one issue that will need to be checked especially for sites that are fully indexed but not ranking well.

Search Engines Enjoying April Fool's Day

2006-04-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

Ask.com has decided to roll out RhymeRank saying this new technology will help out rappers and poets and lead Ask into head-to-head competition with the major search engines.

According to Ask, "Aspiring rappers and poets are a huge, untapped market," said lead engineer Keith Hogan. "Someone will win a Grammy one day using this product. Or, at the very least, an Open Mic Night."

Google, not to be outdone, has rolled out Google Romance featuring Soulmate Search, and Contextual Date, which is the ultimate search for singles wanting to make a connection. When one tries to post their Romance profile, however, he or she receives this error message, "Profile Upload Rejected : You gave it your best shot, but things don't always turn out how you expected."

When one tries to bulk upload multiple profiles they receive this error, "Data Capacity Exceeded (Again): That's just great - once again, the sheer volume of our users' thirst for our products has exceeded our capacity to quench it, therefore, deja vu, this service is not available at this time (at least not to you)."

Last year Google unveiled the Google Gulp drink and a few years ago they let slip their cutting edge PigeonRank technology.

Yahoo has also decided to get in the game and buy Web 2.0. All of it, that is.

Its good to see big companies who still retain their sense of humor.

Ask and You Shall Receive

2006-03-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

Ask has changed its image lately and added some new tools. The butler was killed off in favor of a new, clean interface (as stated in my last post) with only a Search Tools panel on the right side separating it from Google's clean interface.

Also, now when you do a search there is a pair of binoculars next to the search results so that you can take a snapshot look at the homepage of a website with out actually going there. This will be helpful for those who don't wish to be trapped on slow loading sites.

Anyway, its worth checking out. All you had to do was Ask.

Ask Kills Butler with Candlestick in the Boardroom

2006-02-27T14:38:00.000-08:00

Well, the butler did it, or apparently didn't do it according to Ask. Formerly, AskJeeves.com is now just Ask. Well, just ask, Ask. The butler couldn't cut the mustard (or Colonel Mustard), so he finally got the ax. Ask, has a whole new cleaner interface now with a fresh new look and a Search Tools sidebar, which introduces their main offerings.

In addition, Ask is axing Teoma as well and will redirect traffic to their ask.com website in the near future. Why is Ask axing for such trouble? Well, it's a re-branding effort in order to regarded as a serious search contender along with Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Will it work? One has only to ask Ask because Jeeves is no longer available for questioning. But if you ask Ask, you'll also find it is offering new Maps and Driving Directions, Encyclopedia Search and Web-based Desktop Search.

Will this new re-branding effort actually succeed? If you believe in the "Do Ask Do Tell" philosophy, it most certainly will. The butler didn't do it. Likely story.

Search Engine T-shirt Competition Heating Up

2006-02-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

On the lighter side of things, Search Engine Journal is holding a t-shirt competition with many humorous entries. So far, many of the t-shirt ideas revolve around Google and PageRank as can be expected, but some wander off into other areas as well.

You can also check out my entries, number 56 on the list. This contest is a good example of link bait as many sites like mine will be linking to this contest. This winners will receive a free limited edition t-shirt. If you have a few good ideas, why not join in?

The Great Firewall of China According to Sergey Brin

2006-01-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

In order to be a part of the Chinese search market, Google will need to censor certain results from the eyes of the searchers. This is according to Google co-founder, Sergey Brin. At the World Economic Forum in DAVOS, Switzerland, Brin said that Google has had a change of heart and will now censor some politically sensitive words from its search results.

According to Brin about the government imposed censorship, "Essentially the great firewall is sophisticated enough that it would block connections based on sensitive queries. The end result was that we weren't available to about 50 percent of the users. Universities can't afford the international bandwidth, so for example students at Tsinghua University - and I saw this myself - had to pay in order to use Google, and I mean pay a lot, even 25 cents a megabyte, which would be unaffordable even by American standards."

Brin goes onto say, "The practical matter is that over the last couple of years Google in China was censored - not by us but by the government, via the 'Great Firewall,'" said Brin. "It's not something I enjoy but I think it was a reasonable decision."

According to Brin, this type of censorship is already going on in the U. S. and Germany as well. In the U. S., Google is obligated to filter out child porn sites and in Germany, Nazi-related sites are also filtered out. Each market has its 'culturally sensitive' words that need to taken into account when delivering results. Google has decided to use self-censorship in China rather than have the government involved.

Concerning Google's compromise to the Chinese government, Brin said, "I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take."

One of the real issues, I suspect, is will Google be of value to searchers or simply frustrate them with an overly strict filtering system that blocks all of their attempts to find what is important to them? The real success of Google in China will revolve around answering this question.

Google versus the U. S. Attorney General

2006-01-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

U. S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has sent a subpoena to Google to compel Google to turn over data in the form of search queries conducted on the Google search engine. So far, Yahoo and MSN have complied with their own separate subpoenas, but Google has refused.

The U. S. Attorney General's office has issued the subpoena s as part of an investigation involving the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). Google's main objections have to do with resources required to fulfill the subpoena, privacy issues of searchers and compromising proprietary technology that will be mandatory if the subpoena is to be honored.

This brings to mind whether the U. S. Attorney General's office presumes the responsibility for filtering adult material from children lie with the search engines or whether the responsibility lay with the parents and guardians (who can also install software to do such filtering)? Or both? The question of the necessity of protecting children is a given and one would have a hard time finding a person who would argue the opposite position.

The bigger questions are the ones of responsibility. Who is responsible are what are the consequences in acting in an irresponsible manner? Google may be balking at these implications along with their previously mentioned objections.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out as this issue will not be going away any time soon. For the full text, see Google Subpoena

On the Lookout For Next Google PR Update

2006-01-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the beginning of the new year and the beginning of the next quarter. So, this typically means that a Google PR update is imminent. By all accounts, right now, though, all looks quite on the Google-front.

On a separate note, it appears that the Big Daddy update at Google / AOL has also not taken place yet, though there are some indications that the AOL SERP's have been bouncing around lately, so this may just be a minor update. Also, Matt Cutts from Google has mentioned that his company is testing out a new datacenter, which is actually the Big Daddy update (Big Daddy is not an algorithm change but a foundational change).

The Big Daddy datacenter is supposed to address canonicalization of URL's and 302 redirects, which have caused numerous headaches to webmasters over the years.

For those who like to test, you can find the Big Daddy datacenter here: http://66.249.93.104/

Good luck on high rankings.

New SEO Contest A Brewin'

2005-12-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't usually report on this sort of thing, but there has just been announced a new SEO contest in the works similar to the "nigritude ultramarine" contest a few years back. The new keyword phrase will be announced on January 15, 2005 at noon, PST.

This new SEO contest targets Google and the winner will receive $1000 in cash, with those in second, third, fourth and fifth places also receiving lesser amounts of cash.

The Nigritude Ultramarine contest proved back in 2003 that the website with the most back links won. At this time, it showed skeptics that off-page optimization for Google was more important than on-page optimization.

Since, 2006 is a new year, and many changes have taken place Google's algorithm since back in 2003, it will be interesting to see if the "one with the most toys wins" maxim still holds true in regards to back links being the most important part of SEO.

The contest ends May 15, 2006 with the website with the highest Google rankings, for the announced keyword phrase, winning. Anyway, it should be a fun contest, worth following and there are bound to be many SEO lessons learned along the way.

Happy Holidays & Happy SEO and Internet Marketing for the New Year

2005-12-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah and a most Merry Kwanza! I hope it has been a good year for everyone from an SEO and Internet marketing perspective. My wishes are that for 2006 we all find the prosperity we are all looking for online and continue to build upon what we've learned in 2005. Perhaps this will have been the best gift we could have received this Holiday season!

Yahoo Undercuts Skype In Voip Market

2005-12-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

When Yahoo lost the bid to acquire Voice Over IP service provider Skype to online auctioneer, eBay, it decided to taken on Skype head on.

Yahoo has decided to add on some Skype-like services to its Yahoo Messenger service. Like Skype, Yahoo Messenger already offers free worldwide PC-to-PC calling.

Yahoo has decided to add a new paid service to its offerings. According to a Yahoo press release, "Yahoo's new 'Phone Out' option enables users to call regular and mobile phones for one cent per minute in the United States and two cents a minute to about 30 other countries, including calls to Argentina, Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea." Users can also sign up to receive unlimited calls from anywhere for about $30 per year.

By comparison, Skype is offering PC-to-phone calls for 2.3 cents per minute and a SkypeIn phone number costs about $35 per year. By not acquiring Skype in the bidding war with eBay, Yahoo saved itself $2.6 billion last October.

One has to think that this savings has been passed along to the Yahoo customers, in turn, saving them a pretty penny. And a penny saved, is, uh, well you know the rest.

Duplicate Content Penalty Fact or Myth?

2005-12-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

I've heard a lot of discussion recently on whether there is indeed a duplicate content penalty within the search engines, particularly Google. The short answer for me is yes, under some circumstances.

Some critics have pointed out that the duplicate content penalty is merely a myth and that a search engine such as Google wouldn't have the horse power or inclination to check every page in its index against every other page for duplications.

However, if you try out a free service like CopyScape.com you'll certainly see that the technology exists to scan for duplicate content within the Google index. Also, if you've followed the search engines for the past several years you'll know that the search engines have employed penalties for mirrored sites and redirects (outside of the 301 redirects), which in my mind shows that the inclination to penalize duplicate content pages is there.

What is more convincing to me, however is my own personal experience resurrecting several customer web pages from search engine rankings oblivion over the past year. Simply by changing the text on a single web page that I knew was duplicated elsewhere would be enough to see dramatic results within days. These web pages I knew to be duplicated elsewhere either from my own searches or from the customer.

Earlier I stated that this duplicate content penalty applies only in some circumstances. The circumstances I am referring to are two web pages that are nearly identical textually. What I do know is that, for instance, my own homepage for my website has been pilfered by someone else (see CopyScape) but because there is other text on this pilfered page besides the entirety of my homepage it doesn't seem to affect my rankings. So, it seems that a certain percentage (that I haven't come up with yet) of duplicate to non-duplicate text is the threshold for the penalty.

Anyway, my conclusion is that a duplicate content penalty does apply for identical or nearly identical pages. However, its anyone's guess as to what the threshold percentage is for duplicate versus non-duplicate text in order to avoid a duplicate content penalty between web pages.

Google, Yahoo / Overture and Miva PPC for Publishers

2005-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

Most people who have businesses on the Internet know about Google and Yahoo / Overture PPC programs. These are considered first tier advertising programs for those who need to receive targeted traffic to their website. Google and Yahoo / Overture also have publisher programs so that web publishers can place ads on their websites and earn revenue from the clicks on the ads.

Google's AdSense program accounted for record profits in the third quarter of 2005 ($957 million total for all programs). The Yahoo / Overture publisher program is still in beta but has been a welcomed alternative to many who would like to diversify off from Google, are disenchanted with Google or who have been dropped by Google for various reasons.

As a second tier publisher program, Miva (formerly FindWhat.com) also offers an alternative for the same reasons and there is a shorter wait in the application process than for Yahoo / Overture. Miva offers higher click rates than the third tier programs like Searchfeed or Kanoodle and features something quite unique that Google AdSense refugees will appreciate.

It's been well circulated on the message boards that Google will ban many publishers for 'invalid clicks' whether they were the source for these clicks or not. This arbitrary banning of publishers have led many to look for alternatives that are much more publisher-friendly.

In Miva's Partner Center, invalid clicks are accounted for and integrated with the click results pages. Clicks are categorized as 'clicks' and 'screened' and neither the publisher or Miva gets paid for the screened clicks. Miva will work with publishers by giving out the IP addresses of click robots that need to be banned through the Webmaster's host. This matter-of-fact, "Yeah, we know invalid clicks happen and this is just part of business on the web" approach will be refreshing for those who cower in fear of being dropped by their current programs for clicks that they cannot control. With this publisher-friendly approach, Miva cannot help but succeed when it comes to courting publishers who want more alternatives for their web properties.

Search Engine Algorithms Keep Evolving - Spam Mass

2005-11-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

First there was PageRank, then TrustRank and now there is Spam Mass. Because today's algorithms rely more upon off-page factors such as back linking, spammers have taken advantage of this by putting up tens, hundreds and even thousands of spam site all aimed at delivering links back to a host site, improving its PageRank and its rankings in the SERP's.

A paper out of Stanford University, authored by Zoltan Gyongyi, Pavel Berkhin, Hector Garcia-Molina, and Jan Pedersen suggest that a unique method called "Spam Mass" can help weed out websites that are profiting from having a large amount of spam sites link to them.

Spam Mass can identify a major case of spamming by using two kinds of PageRank, regular PageRank and a biased version of PageRank based on reputable pages that link to a webpage (TrustRank). Where TrustRank tries to calculate the reputation of a particular webpage or website such as governmental pages and makes the assumption that reputable websites only link to other reputable websites, Spam Mass focuses on the untrustworthy sites and how these contribute to a designated host site or the recipient of the PageRank that is being passed along to increase that site's rankings.

Spam Mass is another method that may be employed in future algorithm updates that will be useful in thwarting spammers who build bogus websites for the sole purpose of boosting their main website's rankings. The combination of PageRank, TrustRank (which may have just been deployed with the last Jagger updates) and future Spam Mass update will undoubtedly bury many spammers websites in the rankings, which in turn will mean more relevant results for visitors to the search engines.

Here will be the new search engine tag line when this occurs: Better search with less than half the spam. Then again perhaps you can think of a better one?

Is Reciprocal Linking Dead? Not Yet.

2005-11-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

With the latest Google and Yahoo updates I've heard many people say they think reciprocal linking is dead and it's a waste of time to trade links now. I've even heard that it may be unsafe to trade links. I think differently.

Reciprocal linking may now have been devalued somewhat but that does not mean it is no longer valuable. When site A links to site B which has valuable content for site A's visitors, how can this be a waste of time or unsafe? This has been a tried and true method for years for putting your visitor first.

Now for those who are trying to pander to the search engines first instead of their visitors, then, yes this may be trouble. There have been many linking schemes afloat for sometime that are intended to offer nothing to a website's visitor and are intended to trick the search engines into inflating a websites SERP's only. These, I believe are now being targeted.

Link farms, redirects to remote servers that carry false linking information, paid text links and a few other methods are most likely being targeted with the latest update. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water on this one and say that reciprocal linking is bad or has lost all value or is even unsafe.

Reciprocal linking is valuable and safe, if you just keep your visitors in mind every time you make a trade. Will you visitor find the site and the content on the site that you are linking to valuable? If you can answer yes, then link to it. One should never be afraid to put their visitors first.

AskJeeves Upgrades Desktop Search - Gets Personal

2005-11-03T07:06:00.000-08:00

The Little Engine That Could, AskJeeves has upgraded their desktop search application. One of the most interesting aspects of this upgrade is not the upgrade itself but how they define search on the desktop versus search on the web.

According to Jeeves, search on the web involves some sort of "social relevance" to put results in perspective. Search on the desktop can be a much harder task for the search engine companies since it usually involves some sort of "personal relevance" to the user. What this means is that on the web, results are refined due to a feedback loop and input from many users who form a social group.

For desktop search, there is not this kind of social group as it may be only one person and the feedback loop is limited. Delivering results on a desktop search can be quite a task considering a search application and algorithm has to guess at what is personally relevant to you.

Time is also a consideration in desktop search. Are you searching for a recent document, or the same document over and over or one from sometime in the past? It will be interesting if one day the search engines (if they're not already doing this) use some sort of behavior profiling on the desktop, where users search behaviors are stored, mapped and over time, the search appliance reacts to a user's standard set of behaviors in order to deliver personally relevant results.

Anyway, it looks like AskJeeves is on the right track with this upgrade, especially with the Folder Indexing Preferences feature where the user gets to choose what to index. They have a few other enhancements that Jeeves fans will enjoy as well.

Yahoo Sets Sail On Building Online Book Archive

2005-10-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has announced plans to build a vast archive of copyrighted books, something no other search engine so far has succeeded in doing. Yahoo is partnering with the Open Content Alliance to provide public access to digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Yahoo will provide the search capabilities to the Open Content Alliance website.

According to the OCA website, "The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!"

Much of the material for the website will be submitted directly by publishers and authors. Only copyrighted material that has the express written consent of the publishers and authors will be indexed, however, which means initially the archive will be lacking much of what brick and mortar libraries can offer. But the intent is a rather novel one favored by writers, authors and publishers in that it is permission driven.

Other participants in the Alliance include the University of California and the University of Toronto, Adobe Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co., the Internet Archive, and O'Reilly Media Inc.

Google Pilots Quality Guidelines Program

2005-09-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

Google has started to pilot a new quality program aimed at alerting webmasters when their websites are outside of Google's guidelines. Matt Cutts, unofficial spokesman for Google, has an article on his blog outlining the new program.

The Google Quality Program for lack of a better name is aiming to inform webmasters about parts of their websites that they may not even be aware that are outside of the Google terms of service (TOS). A black hat SEO may have gotten a hold of their website and placed bogus pages or code on the website that the webmasters may not even know about.

For those who have had their websites drop suddenly in the rankings or drop out of Google's index altogether and left wondering why, this may just be the ticket that some naive webmasters need to help them define the problem, so that they can track down and fix their sites. Cutt's site also offers some tips for re-inclusion for those who have been dropped from Google.

Anyway, it’s good to know that Google is taking a customer-friendly approach in helping webmasters. It makes good sense and good public relations to give webmasters the benefit of the doubt and help those with legitimate websites who erringly hired the wrong person or company to get back into the Google index. Two thumbs up for a customer-friendly approach.

CNN Uses Google Maps For Hurricane Katrina Coverage

2005-09-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

Millions of people outside the United States Gulf Coast have been glued to their television sets watching the Hurricane Katrina coverage. Millions also have turned to CNN as their source for coverage.

What has been striking besides the immense devastation and rescue efforts is that CNN, at times, uses Google Maps to show satellite views of the affected areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. This was especially true directly after Katrina passed over and those in the news media were trying to assess damages.

The digital satellite photos from Google Maps showed water within the city where water should not be and a vacancy on the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River where ships and boats should be.

For the Katrina disaster, Google has set up a special link on the Google Maps page just for Katrina with satellite views that the general public can observe as well. If you do a search for 'New Orleans' a red button for Katrina will appear. This link gives a clear satellite view of the destruction right downtown. The Satellite button also gives an expanded view of the region and the Hybrid view fills in highway and street names.

It's good to know that in times of crisis, the most trusted name in news can work with the world's most popular search engine to deliver accurate information and keep the public informed.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "I am a firm believer in people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is, to bring them the real facts."

Microsoft Acquires VoIP Company

2005-09-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol is a hot new technology for making digital phone calls over the Internet and avoiding charges assigned by your local and long-distance phone companies. Google and Yahoo currently have their mitts in VoIP and now MSN is trying to get elbow deep in the new emerging technology as well.

It looks imminent now that the big search engines are going to go head-to-head with VoIP service providers such as Skype and Vonage along with the cable companies and even the Baby Bells such as Verizon and AT&T, which were slow to market and just now getting their feet wet in the VoIP money pond.

MSN has acquired a company named Teleo Inc., which will be incorporated into the MSN services infrastructure, such as MSN Messenger to allow free PC-to-PC calling. When Teleo first rolled out their beta in 2003, the software allowed customers to use their PC to make VoIP calls to cell phones, regular phone or PCs. Microsoft may also resume some of this same functionality in addition to providing new services.

Microsoft has made this move in order to compete with Google Talk, which is also an instant messenger / VOIP application useful for making free calls over the Internet. Another rival is Yahoo, which has supported VoIP through its messaging service for some time. Yahoo has also been making noise about bringing forth a separate application for making calls over the Internet.

So, just when you thought world domination was on the back burner, the Big 3 search engines vie with the other big players in VoIP, cable and local / long distance markets for a piece of the new, emerging telecom pie. It will be interesting in the months and years to come to watch how the players jockey for position in the VoIP Derby, estimated to be worth millions in cash and prizes.

Yahoo Publisher Network Takes On Google AdSense

2005-08-03T07:16:00.000-07:00

Why should Google have all the fun, and all the bucks? Yahoo has decided to roll out its contextual advertising program today in order to compete with Google AdSense head-to-head. What this means is that publishers will be able to display Yahoo advertisements on their websites in lieu of Google ads.

When I say, in lieu, I mean that according to both Google’s and Yahoo’s terms of service agreements, each requires exclusivity for displaying ads on a website. Neither one, it seems, wants to feel claustrophobic and fight for ads space with each other in close quarters.

Like AdSense, the Yahoo Publisher program will let a webmaster display ads relevant to the content of the website, display public service announcements when none of these ads are available and track the earnings throughout the day. Unlike AdSense, though, Yahoo intends to offer some additional features not yet integrated into Google’s advertising program. According to Yahoo, this means publishers will be allowed to, “Integrate other Yahoo! services into your web site, including Add to My Yahoo! (RSS), Y!Q and much more to come.”

For advertisers this means yet another method in which to target their ads to a specific market. For those publishers, especially those who are concerned about carrying all their eggs in one basket by only carrying Google Adsense on all of their websites, the Yahoo Publisher Network will offer a viable alternative to diversify advertising assets. In today’s Internet publishing world, diversification is key to survival, so the YPN network will help many publishers survive and thrive for the foreseeable future.

AskJeeves Tells Advertisers Yes in August

2005-07-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

AskJeeves is rolling out its keyword-based advertiser program on Monday, August 1, 2005 in the first move to break away from a dependence upon Google ads for revenue. Even though the Ask network receives 70-percent of the revenue from the Google ads displayed upon the AskJeeves pages, the extra 30-percent would be a boon to this underdog search engine.

AskJeeves has a contract with Google until 2007 for the delivery of ads upon their search engine results pages. The new AskJeeves ads, however, until that time will be displayed above the Google ads, generating better click-through rates.

But the AskJeeves and its keyword-based advertising program also has some more ambitious goals. According to the MyWay website, “Jeeves will syndicate its ads onto other sites, including InfoSpace Inc. (INSP)'s (INSP) Dogpile, CNET Networks Inc. (CNET)'s (CNET) Search.com and ValueClick Inc. (VCLK)'s (VCLK) Search123.”

Eyeballing the lucrative search engine ad market that Google and Yahoo have cashed in on, AskJeeves is also expected to start delivering ads to its other IAC/InteractiveCorp-owned websites as well. IAC acquired AskJeeves in March 2005 and owns other popular properties such as Expedia.com, CitySearch.com, Hotels.com, TicketMaster.com and Match.com.

Because the search engine marketing cash cow has now grown into an enormous size, its no wonder that the smaller engines want to mark off their stakes (or steaks) as well.

Google Code Jam 2005 Will Be Rockin’ The House Down

2005-07-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Google and TopCoder are collaborating to offer Google Code Jam 2005, where the world’s top programmers compete for cash and recognition. With a prize purse at $155,000 (who picked this figure?), 100 participants from around the world will compete in the final rounds by solving programming problems and breaking each others code.

This Code Warrior competition is available in four programming languages - Java, C++, C#, and VB and the winner brings home $10,000 of the total purse. There are four phases to the Google Code Jam 2005 competition: Downloading the Arena, Coding Phase, Challenge Phase and System Tests.

The Arena is a Java Applet that one can download ahead of time to practice on sample problems before the start of competition. In the Coding Phase, participants enter the arena in groups of 10 and race to see who can deliver the most accurate solution in the shortest amount of time.

In the Challenge Phase, programmer try to break each other’s code. Points are given for successful attempts to break another programmer’s code and taken away for failed attempts.

At the end of the Challenge Phase, the System Test phase begins, which is an automated and objective test of the competitors’ work and the awarding of final points to the contestants.

According to Search Engine Journal, “Last year, more than 7,500 participants from more than 100 countries competed in the Google Code Jam. Sergio Sancho of Buenos Aires, Argentina was the winner of the 2004 competition, and Jimmy Mardell of Stockholm, Sweden, took home the grand prize in 2003.”

Google Code Jam 2005 registration begins July 25 and closes on August 19, 2005. Qualification rounds begin on August 22 and the Championship round of the final 100 participants is scheduled for September 23, 2005.

Google Code Jam 2005 is destined to rock the house down. Bring your Frisbee’s, beach balls and lighters to the Googleplex in Mountainview, California this Fall and watch out San Jose Jazz Festival, the Google Code Jam 2005 is coming to town.

Google Update Devaluing Paid Text Links?

2005-07-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

Google has just completed its newest Page Rank and Back Links update. Some have gained PR and some have lost it, which is typical. What is not typical is that many sites that have done active link-building in the past 3 months have actually lost many of their Google back links.

What up with that? Well, I have a theory. My theory is that Google is now ignoring text links that appear to be paid text links as far as PR and their back links counter is concerned. For instance, I have a PR6 website that is indexed daily that I have been using to get my new websites listed quickly into Google.

I've placed many off-topic text links on the left panel of the homepage. Up until this latest Google update, these websites showed a back link in Google to the PR6 website. Now, however, the Google back links from the new websites have dropped off the map. I'm also having trouble currently getting my new websites listed quickly into Google using this method.

This list of text links on my PR6 website are not paid text links, but to a search engine robot, they would appear to be. This is why I believe now that Google has taken steps to ignore paid text links in their quest to enforce their "natural linking" ideal of how the web should be won.

Page Rank and Back Links Are Now Getting Googled

2005-07-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

Many people have lost that lovin' feelin' when it comes to the past few Google Page Rank updates. Google itself has decried that Page Rank is for "entertainment purposes only." It is well-known also that Page Rank is not tied to the search engine results pages (SERP's), so a PR7 website can be buried in the rankings while a PR3 page may hold the top position.

Still, though a fair number of people continue to get excited every time Google does update its Page Rank in its toolbar. Many companies still use their site's PR number as a cost basis for offering advertising upon their sites. Others see PR as a good indicator of their link-building efforts for the past 3 months (or lack of efforts).

It appears as if Google is trying to make their Page Rank updates upon a quarterly basis. The last PR update, however, they missed by 6 weeks, while this PR update they only missed their quarterly mark by 2 weeks.

Google's back link update is also something that many watch to see how well Google is responding to their linking campaigns. Since Google only lists back links with a PR4 or above, this tool has been somewhat suspect from the very beginning. There is a better tool from MarketLeap.com that measures back links across all of the major search engines.

No matter what, though, the Google Page Rank and Back Link update is sure to raise the volume of the chatter at the SEO and Webmaster message boards for the next couple of weeks.

Setback for Wayback, Caught in the Legal Machine

2005-07-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

The Wayback Machine is a fun little tool to go back in time and see what old, archived web pages looked like at one time. If you would like to see some of your old web pages or those of a competitors or for a website you’re about to buy, you can check it out on the Wayback Machine.

In an odd legal turn of events, though, the Wayback Machine was used in a lawsuit to prove copyright and now, is itself being sued. According to the New York Times, “The Internet Archive was created in 1996 as the institutional memory of the online world, storing snapshots of ever-changing Web sites and collecting other multimedia artifacts. Now the nonprofit archive is on the defensive in a legal case that represents a strange turn in the debate over copyrights in the digital age.”

Healthcare Advocates is suing the owners of the Wayback Machine under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act since the Philadelphia law firm, Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey used the Wayback Machine to prove their case against them. Healthcare Advocates is saying that access to their old web pages is “unauthorized and illegal.”

For those who use the Wayback Machine outside the legal profession (such as historians, SEO’s, web businesses and other interested parties, etc.) this has chilling implications for the future of the popular Internet tool. This setback for Wayback hopefully will be resolved in such as way that the Wayback Machine can continue to be used for its original purposes, which is for entertainment purposes only and not as a tool for endless copyright lawsuits which will naturally lead to its demise.

Plagiarism Tool Weeds Out Copyright Violators

2005-07-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

There’s a nifty little tool from Copyscape that will help you find other websites that have taken your copy without asking. This copyright tool uses the Google API to query Google to find other websites that have the same text as the URL you input into the search box.

By using this copyright tool, you will be able to see if anyone has taken your copy and take appropriate action, by first asking them to take down your text, then contacting their hosting company or ISP if necessary.

In fact, I have used this tool myself and found that a company from India has copied my entire homepage and placed it on their homepage. I have contacted them about this matter and hopefully the duplicate text will be down soon.

This copyright tool is also great for finding websites that may be impacting your site by delivering to it a duplicate content penalty from Google. It is well known that Google like unique content. It is also well known that if Google finds two websites with identical content it will usually penalize both websites with a duplicate content penalty, burying both sites in the rankings.

If someone takes your copy without asking, it could be because of laziness or maliciousness. If they’re lazy, they are simply taking your copy rather than going to the trouble to write their own. If they’re malicious, then they are intending to bury your website in the ranking with a duplicate content penalty.

No matter what the reason, though it is important to protect your copyrighted material from theft and this little tool will help you do just that. Remember, the tool is free for all to use, so there is no need to copy it and place it on your own website.

New SEO Tool Checks Back Link Text on Yahoo

2005-07-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

There’s a new tool in town that will check the anchor text of your back links within the Yahoo database. Why would anyone want such a tool? If you have a website that has been around a while and have changed the keywords for your website several times (like I have) you may wish to check to see how many different keyword phrases you have out there diluting your latest keyword phrase changing efforts.

For instance, if you have a website currently optimized for the keyword phrase ‘auto repair’ and wish to change it to ‘car repair’ it would be good to know how many instances of ‘auto repair’ you have on different sites so that you can gauge the efforts it will take to rank well, through link-building, for ‘car repair’. This is also true if you have additional anchor text floating around the web optimized for ‘automobile repair’, ‘vehicle repair’, ‘automotive parts’, and ‘Mazda performance kits’.

If you website has too many variations of anchor text for your homepage, then your site may be too diluted in the anchor text arena to rank well for your current keyword phrases. This may just be the reason you’ve been looking for to build a brand new website optimized for your current keyword phrase rather than trying to revamp and older website.

Anyway, the tool is worth checking out as it will give you some additional knowledge about your website that you probably didn’t know before. And knowledge can’t be all that bad, can it?

Google Sitemaps, an Experiment in Crawling Before You Walk

2005-07-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Google has introduced a new beta product called Google SiteMaps. Google SiteMaps is a method for Webmasters to communicate directly with a Google robot that their website’s content has changed and it needs to be re-indexed.

According to Google, “Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and improve the time to inclusion in our index. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your webserver, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.”

As part of Google SiteMaps, Google offers its Sitemap Generator to format a website’s URL’s into an XML formatted file that the robot can easily read. For those who know scripting, customized sitemaps can also be generated.

SEO’s and others have known for a couple of years now the value of placing a sitemap on your website. This has been one method to encourage the robots to crawl your site frequently and give them a one-stop shopping place to get all of the information they need.

Google has taken this one-step further by introducing their own Google SiteMaps, which will spoon-feed their robot the information they need in the format that they require. For impatient Webmasters keeping close track on how often Googlebot crawls their sites, Google SiteMaps will be welcomed with open arms.

Adware-Maker WhenU Wins Trademark Lawsuit

2005-06-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Adware-Maker WhenU has won a major victory in the 2nd U. S. Court of Appeals, which ruled that WhenU did not violate trademarks with its distribution of pop-up advertising. The complaining company, 1-800-CONTACTS contended that WhenU was violating their trademark by selling pop-up ads to competitors while visitors were on the 1-800-CONTACTS website.

According to an article in CNET, the ruling states “We hold that, as a matter of law, WhenU does not 'use' 1-800's trademarks within the meaning of the Lanham Act when it includes 1-800's Web site address in an unpublished directory of terms that trigger delivery of WhenU's (ads) to computer users.”

WhenU makes free downloadable software that is distributed with popular free downloads such as free screensavers and peer-to-peer file sharing applications and is on an estimated 12 million PC’s. Both WhenU and the free download manufacturers split the profits from the advertising fees generated from the pop-up ads. WhenU’s spin on the win is that this victory is a “win for consumers”.

The real win for consumers though may be in downloading a free anti-adware / spyware application such as Spybot Search & Destroy in order to keep adware to a minimum.

MSN To Be As Relevant As Google In 6 Months

2005-06-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer vowed recently that in the next 6 months, MSN Search will serve up results that are as relevant as the Google results. According to an article in ZDNet, Ballmer added that, “Search has more relevance than just the desktop. It's important for people who search a corporate network. We'll use search to peer into a range of business applications which would allow multiple applications to be searched simultaneously.”

Ballmer is referring to MSN’s newest Neural Net & "RankNet Technology, where current reports of renewed relevance in search have been exciting. In a Microsoft white paper about gradient descent, they outline some of the mathematics behind the newest MSN algorithm.
One of the problems that MSN has faced and still faces is its interface. Most people go to MSN.com only to find a search box hidden at the top among an entire page of distraction hiding the search interface. Few people even know that a cleaner MSN Search URL exists.

The other question that arises is “Just how relevant do you have to be?” Some argue that all of the current search engines are now relevant and now it’s just a matter of marketing to get the word out and claim to have a better mousetrap. They say that “perceived relevance” is what is important.

No matter whether perceived or real, relevance is something that the big search engines will be fighting over for years to come. The biggest benefit will be to the search consumer, so in this case, competition can only make the mousetraps better.

Google Wallet Possible PayPal Rival

2005-06-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

Google Wallet, the new online payment system that is still in development has been rumored to be a rival to eBay’s Paypal online payment system. Since rumors of the clash have been flying around for the last week or so, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, decided to step into the spotlight for a few moments and squash the rumors.

Apparently, Google Wallet, will not offer a stored-value payment system, like PayPay does. With this kind of system, money is stored temporarily in a PayPal account during the transaction. This stored-value payment system is how PayPal has gotten in trouble and faced many regulatory hurdles in many states. The number one complaint is that the stored-value system is a function of a bank.

Google does not intend to go down this road. According to Schmidt, “The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers.” It looks like Google’s first use for Google Wallet will be to send its AdSense Advertisers electronic payments. Currently, advertisers are paid via company check once per month.

Since eBay is one of Google’s biggest advertisers, it was necessary for Schmidt to address the rumors quickly and directly. As more and more people jump into the Google AdSense and AdWord world and sign up for the new online payment system, it won’t be long before you’ll start hearing television advertisements that say, “What’s in your Google Wallet?”

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ODP Resource Out Of The Zone

2005-06-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

The Open Directory Project (ODP) is the largest human-edited, all volunteer directory on the Internet and one of the two major authoritative directories acknowledged by Google (with Yahoo Directory being the other). There has been much criticism over the past few years, some warranted and some not, of slow response times by the ODP to index sites. This is understandable, since anyone who has worked with volunteers knows that working with volunteers is a lot like herding cats. They come and go on their own time and you’re pretty glad to accept whatever they have to give.

In order to ease this frustration, though, the ODP put up a message board area on their website called the Resource Zone where the frustrated public could post a message to check on the status of their website in the ODP directory. Now, this wasn’t the perfect solution, but it did offer some relief to frustrated Webmasters who otherwise may never know after months what has happened to their site and if it ever was reviewed or not.

According to ODP administrator, DonaldB (Tin Man), “Our feedback indicates that the information we are giving out really is not a practical help in the vast majority of cases. People want information we either simply do not have or cannot for confidentiality reasons give out. Therefore, despite our communications, the existence of the status check forum raises unrealistic expectations, leading to more frustration but no satisfaction, for anyone.”

The Webmasters’ and SEOs’ frustration is understandable since there is so much pressure to get top placement in the search engines and the ODP is called out by name as one of the top two authority directories on the Internet. What Webmasters and SEOs need to realize though, above all else, that even though the stakes are high, the Open Directory Project is still an all-volunteer directory. It is regrettable to see the Resource Zone die from complications, though. Perhaps another process, such as an automated one, where an automatic email is sent to the Webmaster when a website has been accepted or declined can be developed.

Who knows what’s next for the Open Directory Project? Sometimes a step back can lead to two steps forward.

ODP Resource Zone Announcement

An Update On Yahoo Updates

2005-06-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

Search engine guru, Danny Sullivan called for search engines to issue “weather reports” at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose last summer, informing the public on when an update to their search engine algorithms is about to occur. Yahoo has taken this to heart and is offering up their second Yahoo Weather Report concerning at update that is occurring tonight.

According to Tim Mayer of Yahoo Search, “This is our second weather report. We will be making changes to the index tonight so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index as well as some fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches.”

It is commendable that Yahoo is sending out a Weather Report or a “Warning Shot” as I like to call it to the search community. Not all other search engines have followed through and those who do, mostly do it after-the-fact once speculation of an update begins on the message boards. With Yahoo setting an example of doing the little things to keep being customer focused, hopefully some of the other search engines will follow this lead.

YotoPhoto Free At Last, Free At Last

2005-06-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

A company called YotoPhoto has emerged, which offers search for free-use photos for both personal and commercial use. According to YotoPhoto, “Yotophoto is a search engine for free-use stock photographs. Some of the images are public domain and others have generous Creative Commons (or similar) licensing. Nearly all these photographs are free for personal and commercial use with minimal restrictions.”

They are currently indexing approximately 100,000 photos and their archive is growing by leaps and bounds. For instance, in one month’s time, they have doubled their photo index. There are some general restrictions on how the images may be used, such as no images may be used for hate or adult sites. They also ask that you contact the photographers as a courtesy to let them know how you’re using their photos.

Instead of searching Google images where most of the photos are copyrighted, YotoPhoto is a place to search and use photos for personal or commercial use. Webmasters, designers, and many others will no longer have to be frustrated searching for photos that are free for personal use but not for commercial use. At least this is one more tool in the toolkit for those looking for royalty-free and copyright free photos.

Chinese Checkers Investigate Blog Entries

2005-06-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

This Chinese government has decided to encourage businesses and the general population to blog but without any subversive or sexually explicit language. According to an article in BusinessWeek, “…bloggers were not allowed to post terms to MSN Spaces such as ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘Taiwan Independence’. Attempts to enter those words were said to generate a message saying those words were prohibited. Chinese censors scour Internet bulletin boards and blogs for sensitive material, and block access to violators. Sites that let the public post comments are told to censor themselves or face penalties.”

Apparently, this just goes with the territory when large corporations deal with China. Microsoft seems to take this in stride as part of the regulatory nature of dealing with individual countries and the filtering that needs to take place in order to do business in such countries. Earlier this year, France was up-in-arms about Google Books appearing online, which they thought may supplant French language and thought with English language and thought.

In order for U. S. technology companies to spread their wings abroad, it is important that they adapt to cultural norms inside the countries that they market in. This is especially true of countries that fear outside ideologies may be pushed upon them by the so-called “arrogant superpowers.” U. S. technology companies need to do their homework first when entering these countries and not rush into another Coca-Cola branding fiasco such as the one in China a few years back where the Coca-Cola corporation didn't know the words “Ke-kou-ke-la” meant “bite the wax tadpole” in Chinese. Enough said.

Yahoo Phishing Scam Catches Japanese Violater

2005-06-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

A Japanese man from Osaka was caught phishing in Yahoo waters recently. Instead of surfing the Internet, Kazuma Tabano was busy setting up look alike websites, trying to reel in naïve customers. The Japanese man built a Yafoo site that was nearly identical to the Yahoo Japan website. Now while Mr. Tabano was arrested by Japanese police, he wasn’t charged for phishing without a license, but rather for copyright infringement since his Yafoo logo clearly resembled the Yahoo logo.

According to The Register, “It is suspected that the man gained personal information on between 20 and 30 people who entered his site. The data was transmitted via mobile phone to the man's PC. It isn't clear what the phisher intended to do with the data. Police suspect he may have illegally entered the real Yahoo auction site by pretending to be one of his victims. The suspect is in charge of data input and software operations at a company, police said.”

Phishing in Japan is a fairly new phenomenon with only a handful of sites set up in the last 2 years. In the U. S., however phishing victims have cost banks and credit card companies an estimated $1.2 Billion in 2003. Some of the more common phishing sites have been those that have been set up to look like an eBay or Paypal site, asking email recipients to verify address, phone number and credit card information.

So, remember when it comes to phishing, don’t take the bait. If you do, however, wriggle off the hook quickly, report what has happened to your own bank and credit card companies and then contact the Internet Fraud Complaint Center so that you can help others to stay off the line as well.

Is VoIP the Next Big Thing on the Internet?

2005-06-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

First, what does VoIP have to do with the Internet? Everything. VoIP (or Internet telephony as some call it) is sending voice over the Internet and avoiding traditional local and long-distance telephone charges. According to the VoIP Service Providers website, “Residential VoIP subscribers are expected to jump from 3 million today to 27 million by 2009. Residential VoIP spending is forecast to increase 64-percent per year over the next 5 years.”

Over the past 5 years, local telephone companies have been losing landlines to cell phone services in an unprecendented pace. Once VoIP hits the consumer market hard, this landline loss will start to spiral even faster. Businesses already know the value of VoIP with many replacing their old PBX systems and teleconference systems with VoIP systems.

Why VoIP? VoIP is cheaper. Businesses and consumers can save over 50-percent off their traditional phone bills by going to VoIP. Most VoIP service providers in the U. S. offer VoIP for a low monthly fee that includes free calls to the U. S. and Canada and cut-rate prices to the rest of the world.

Why should SEO’s and the Internet marketing communities care about VoIP? SEO’s will see an increasing number of VoIP clients as the market continues to heat up. New Internet marketing opportunities also can also be realized through VoIP.

VoIP still has some drawbacks, though, which are keeping its growth rate from expanding too rapidly. The FCC has mandated that emergency 911 service be mandatory with all residential VoIP phone services by September 2005. Currently, the market is fragmented in this regard. Also, like all Internet connections, VoIP is subject to power outages, so power back ups by manufacturers will also need to be in place for home use.

By like all emerging technologies, it is good to start thinking about the Internet marketing possibilities for VoIP. In a couple of years, you’ll start to hear, “Can you VoIP me, now?”

Link Scammers Prey On Good Will

2005-06-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

There is a new reciprocal link scam that’s been going around. Instead of Webmasters emailing other Webmasters asking for reciprocal link trades, some unscrupulous Webmasters are approaching others by saying that they’ve done business with them in the past and that their link has fallen off the other person’s site and to please put it back up.

Our website has been approached by all kinds of people in the past couple of months claiming to have prior reciprocal linking relationships with us. The most recent was from a known bulk email spammer. When checking this company out of Whois it was discovered that this company was blacklisted for spamming. This website had never had a link on our website and in fact did not have any kind of links, resources or link directory page on its own site.

These scammers are trying to play on the goodwill of others hoping that Webmasters will apologetically put the link scammers link “back up” with no questions asked. It’s a nice racket for the scammers since they will receive a certain percentage of one-way links without much effort. All they have to do is accuse another Webmaster of dropping their links and many Webmasters will comply by putting up the links without further investigation.

My recommendation is to consider these emails a brand new link requests. Investigate the other website to see if you would actually like to trade links with them. Check them out on Whois to make sure they are not a ‘bad neighborhood’ website, do a search for their company name + message board to see what others in the community say about the company and find out where your link will be placed on their site. A little due diligence will go a long way.

GoogleGuy Gives Weather Report On Moonshine Update

2005-06-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Google’s Bourbon update started a couple of days ago and as usual, many are seeing double when it comes to the SERP’s. Rankings are being shuffled, websites are dropping out of sight, popping back up. All sorts of small chaotic episodes are being reported. For a while, the Google Toolbar was graying out Page Rank for all sites. The most astounding part of this update though is that Google is acknowledging its occurrence rather quickly.

According to GoogleGuy, “Here's the advice that I'd give now: take a break from checking ranks for several more days. Bourbon includes something like 3.5 improvements in search quality, and I believe that only a couple are out so far. The 0.5 will go out in a day or so, and the last major change should roll out over the next week or so. Then there will still be some minor changes after that as well. So my "weather report" … would be a recommendation that rankings may still change somewhat over the next several days.”

The “weather report” comment is in response to search engine marketing expert Danny Sullivan’s call out to the major search engines for an algorithm “weather report” in his keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, California in August, 2004. Yahoo and Google had both complied with this request in March 2005, with Yahoo offering advanced notice a day ahead of time and Google a couple of days after the start of their update.

Long holiday weekends are prime time to roll out new updates so its no surprise that Google took advantage of the search slowdown this past Memorial weekend in order to start implementing the Bourbon update. Having a weather report is fine for letting everyone know that an update is occurring, but a little advanced warning would be even better. Perhaps at this year’s Search Engine Strategies Conference, a call can be made to the major search engines to replace their “weather report” with a “warning shot” to cut down even further on speculation of whether an update is occurring or not.

Build Your Website for the Critical Editors

2005-06-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Some Webmasters build their websites for their visitors. Some build them for the search engines. Once you’ve gone to the trouble to build a website for both of these very important clients, its time to up your game and tweak your website as if a critical editor were going to peruse every inch of it looking for mistakes and improvements.

Both DMOZ and Yahoo have a group of human editors who check out websites for acceptability into their directories. Each has different requirements. This is a good place to start. Did you know, for instance, that you must have either a full address or telephone number on your website, otherwise it will be rejected by DMOZ? After paying $299 to Yahoo, there is no guarantee that a website will appear in their directory as this is simply a fee to review the website.

Before submitting to either of these directories make sure your website is optimized for your visitors and the search engines. Go a step further and make sure the look and feel of the web design is pleasing and correlates to your audience. For instance, if you have a conservative financial site, you wouldn’t want to use a gaming template as this wouldn’t be appropriate for the audience you wish to attract. Also, make sure your navigation system is obvious to your visitors and a critical editor who is in a hurry to find the flaw as he or she moves through your website.

It may be helpful to sign up with one of the many web design message boards out their since many offer free website reviews after you’ve made a minimum amount of posts. From these message boards you will receive valuable feedback as to what is working and what’s not working on your website. Ask the other members to give you fearlessly critical critiques of your website, otherwise you may not learn much from those being too polite.

The most important aspect, though, of building a website is to never stop working on it and improving it. Check out the websites statistics such as unique visitors and page views to see who is coming to your website, how long they are staying and where they are going. These stats will tell you if your web design is working or not. If not, then take some educated guesses based on your stats to improve your site and test, test, test.

If you keep it in your head that each website you’re building needs to pass the eyes of a critical editor, then you can’t help but build a quality site. Generally speaking, quality sites attract and retain visitors and do well in the search engine rankings. This is what its all about, right?

Google Summer of Code Open Source Project Now Open

2005-06-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

Is it Summer of Love this summer? For Google it is. Someone at Google has found the love and decided to offer the Google Summer of Code to students who wish to write Open Source code in addition to partying and going to the beach. The Google Summer of Code project offers student programmers a stipend of $4500 to complete an Open Source project in relation to some “established prominent open source organizations” who mentor the program by the end of summer.

The Google Summer of Code project is open to 200 participants who have their applications accepted. The students will get $500 for startup costs and the mentoring organizations will receive $500 for the costs of overseeing the projects as well.

If you happen to be an evil-doer from a nation on the US State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism, don’t hold your breath about being accepted as Google is off-limits to you. The same holds true for Google employees, interns and contractors as well.

Why is Google doing this? According to Google, “Google believes that there are more Open Source Developers out in the world waiting to be discovered and that this program might help reveal who they are.” They go on to say, “By pairing applicants up with the proven wisdom and experience of established prominent open source organizations, we hope to make great software happen.”

So, Google has found the love this summer and wishes to spread that love among a group of upcoming developers. If you’d like to get in on the love check out: Google Summer of Code

Google Ogles Boston-Cambridge for New Googleplex

2005-05-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

Google has set aside its automated search in favor of a manual search of the Boston-Cambridge area for new office space for its new east coast Googleplex, according to an article in the Boston Business Journal. Google executives have hired well-known real estate agency Trammell Crow Company to show them what is available in the area. The price-sensitive executives apparently are not looking in the high-rise buildings, which command higher per square foot rental rates, but rather in alternative areas that can provide 75,000 square feet upfront with an option to grow to over 200,000 square feet if necessary. The expansion could happen as early as the year’s end.

Google is looking in this college-town marketplace in order to find 1,000 mid-salary workers (ages 22-30), which are expected to inhabit the new weight roomed, grand piano-ed, video gamed, volley ball courted East Coast Googleplex compound. According to the Journal, “The ‘Googleplex’ concept features lava lamps in the lobby, exercise balls and bicycles in the hallway, recreation facilities that include a foosball table and roller hockey in the parking lot twice a week. Employees, or ‘googlers’ as they are called, work in groups of three or four people who share space with couches and pets.”

Apparently, the expansion queries have come after Google posted $1.2 billion in revenue in the first quarter this year. Of this amount, $584 million was generated through Google’s partner sites. It is clear now that Google has gone beyond Internet search. Google is expanding and crawling soon to a town near you.

Yahoo Slow to Move on Nudes

2005-05-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

According to an Associated Press story, an Oregon woman is suing Yahoo! for $3 million over naked photos that her ex-boyfriend had posted and which Yahoo! failed to remove in a timely manner. Ms. Barnes, a 48-year-old woman from Multnomah County, claims her ex-boyfriend started posting "unauthorized profiles" in December that included her email address and work phone number.

According to the Associated Press, “Moreover, the former boyfriend engaged in online discussions in Yahoo chat rooms, posing as Barnes and directing men to the profiles, the suit claims. Due to these profiles and online chats, unknown men would arrive without warning at plaintiff's work expecting to engage in sexual relations with her," the suit says.

The AP goes on to say, “Barnes sent Yahoo a letter in January saying she did not create the profiles and wanted them removed. Additional attempts to get Yahoo to remove them in February and March failed to prompt a response, claims the suit.”

Does the search engine giant, Yahoo! actually want these kinds of legal woes? Their behavior suggests that perhaps they do. Yahoo! must know that it would be very easy for a person like Ms. Barnes to do some Internet searching for “character defamation” and happen upon a site such as Personal Injury Lawsuits to find out more about libel, slander and personal injuries that include compensation for embarrassment and other kinds of emotional pain and suffering.

And the kicker is, that she probably conducted all of her Internet legal research on Yahoo!

Websites Need LoJack to Prevent Hijacking

2005-05-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

Web page hijacking has been around for about a year now and is getting worse. Many other SEO blogs have reported that even Google itself has had its own page hijacked. This is ironic, since the hijacking problem is Google-related and the search giant has known about this problem, but has failed to address it.

There is even a movement within the SEO community to bang the drum so loudly that Google will be forced to address the issue. Since Google has become a big, publicly traded corporation, they have taken on the, “If no one’s making noise, then it must not be broken” stance. Well, there has been noise, but perhaps not enough noise. And like anybody else who doesn’t want to spend the time to fix something, they deny there is a problem.

But there is a problem. By simply building a blank HTML page and adding a meta refresh tag from site A to site B, with a zero second refresh rate, a Webmaster can trick Google into thinking the hijacked page is the original page. Why would someone want to hijack a page? For the Page Rank and the visitors. Spammers have found an easy method to skirt the real work and parasitically take what is not theirs.

SEO Dotcomicide has actually posted a screenshot of the hijacked Google page. A company called all-in-one-business.com has taken the top position in the rankings for the search term “adsense”. Most likely this was not a malicious trick, but a way to call attention that there is indeed a problem. Sometimes a problem is not a problem until it happens inside your own home.

If you’d like to sign a petition to have the hijacking bug fixed, see Hijacking Bug Petition.

Yahoo! Y!Q Contest Ends June 16, 2005

2005-05-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! has decided to open up a contest for the top hack of its new Y!Q product. The Y!Q Challenge offers $5000 to the Webmaster with the most innovative use of its new context search technology on his or her website. According to Yahoo! the entries will be judged on:

Relevance
Prominence
Placement
Usefulness

According to Yahoo! they are running the contest “to encourage publishers to use Y!Q on their sites. By implementing Y!Q, publishers will have a head-start in using one of the many new offerings that Yahoo! has planned for publishers in the near future.”

Its great to see a large company like Yahoo! engaging the public in such a personal way in order to improve their products. By conducting a contest (or focus group) Yahoo! stands to gain a great deal of knowledge of what the public wants and how the public would best make use of their products. Donald Trump, in his Apprentice Television show, would surely approve of such a method of finding out what the public wants and then giving it to them.

Its good also to see Yahoo! engaging the hacker community, to help them use their talents for good for the benefit of everyone. MSN early this year decided to engage the same community to bang on their search product and offer advice in order to help develop a better mouse trap. The only thing missing now is Google following suit and engaging the public in the same manner.

No matter what, though, Yahoo! has taken another great step in engaging the public to participate with their product offerings (A few weeks ago, Yahoo! also started offering a free 5-page website to small businesses in their Local Search program). So, look forward not for the new technological offerings from Yahoo! but also innovative ways in which Yahoo! keeps using to get the word out and engage the public in all it has to offer.

More info

AskJeeves Puts the Excitement Back in Excite

2005-05-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

AskJeeves takes an early summer vacation and buys Excite Europe in an effort to expand its overseas operations. AskJeeves had previously bought the U. S. Excite counterpart in March 2004. Excite is a well-known brand name in the search arena, opening its doors in 1995.

According to the AskJeeves press release, “The acquisition of Excite Europe will extend Ask Jeeves' ownership of the Excite brand beyond the United States, giving the Company ownership of Excite's Internet domains throughout Europe as well as control of existing portal offerings in several major European markets including Spain, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The acquisition provides immediate access to a wealth of resources in the European portal market in terms of users, operations, market knowledge and revenue streams. Ask Jeeves will also have the ability to extend its leading search technology to Excite Europe users.”

AskJeeves still remains a David among the Goliaths of Google, Yahoo! and MSN. However, this has been the year of acquisitions and mergers for the search company. Acquiring Bloglines in February 2005 and then being acquired by IAC/Interactive in late March 2005, AskJeeves continues to aggressively search for a competitive edge against the “Big 3” search giants.

Many top companies have built themselves up through strategic mergers and acquisitions. This may indeed be AskJeeves plan. Scooping up smaller companies with important and beneficial technology is how Adobe has operated and achieved greatness for years. Since AskJeeves, though is the 6th largest global web property, they still have a ways to go in the search engine marathon. But what is clear for 2005, is that AskJeeves is making its move along the track and the Big 3 had better start peeking over their shoulders to see who is coming up from behind.

Google Desktop Search for Enterprise Spocks Comments

2005-05-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

The recently released Google Desktop Search for Enterprise is aimed at helping business employees find what they need quickly. According to CNET, the appliance is targeted to “helping workers more quickly find information on the Web, in their computer hard drives and e-mail inboxes, as well as on corporate intranets.”

The Enterprise Edition is based on Google’s Consumer Desktop Search Engine and integrated with Google's Search Appliance and Mini already in place in many companies. The added benefit of Google’s Desktop Search for Enterprise for businesses is that this product is encrypted added a whole new level of security to search. Google already has Boeing and Morgan Stanley onboard for the Enterprise edition and other big names will follow.

Google has this to say about the productivity benefits of its own Desktop Search for Enterprise:

Find your email, files, media, web history and chats instantly
View web pages you've seen, even when you're not online
Search directly from your desktop with the Deskbar
View search results from your desktop, intranet and Google.com

Since we’re talking about the Google Desktop Search for Enterprise with the emphases on “Enterprise”, what would Mr. Spock say about the new technology? “Interesting” may be one utterance or “I find this to be very logical” could be something he would likely say. No matter what, its apparent that Mr. Spock would give two ears up for the new Google Desktop Search for Enterprise. Isn’t that right, Captain?

More Tricks From Spammers

2005-05-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, its been reported that some adult Webmasters are spamming their own sites with different combinations of numbers, hoping to cash in on searchers looking for various sets and sequences of numbers. For instance, some people will plug their delivery service tracking numbers in the search engines and pull up results. Their results most likely will appear, but along with those results may be an adult site that contains the same numbers on it. Just another trick up the old spammer’s sleeve.

Besides number spam, another trick is to put up a pseudo dictionary section of a website upon one’s site in order to try to capture traffic from all sorts of off-beat word combinations for which people will search. This is especially effective in capturing those people who like to search in the “AskJeeves full sentence approach”. Unfortunately, the results may just yield a page full of adult sites, which may not be the intention of the searcher. Dictionary spam pages are not valuable to visitors as they are only set up to trick the search engine robots and deliver traffic and move that traffic to another page quickly.

At some point the adult Webmasters may combine the two techniques and come up with single pages that number and dictionary spam into one page. Let’s hope, though, in the future, the search engines will be able to identify and penalize these pages since they provide no real value to the average Internet searcher.

Local Search More Relevant

2005-05-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Local search is becoming more and more relevant to users. I speak from experience since most of my customers now days are finding my SEO company through doing local searches. Apparently, even in the Internet Age, people still prefer to shop locally. Many will jump online and go to their favorite search engine, type in the keyword phrase they’re looking for and append the city, state or region for their searches.

If you have a company that only serves the local market, then you would do well to be found for local searches. For instance, if you have a doctor’s office or a dentist’s office or perhaps even own a land-based business such as Pocono Real Estate & Mountain Homes that serves a small region in Northeastern Pennsylvania, then you would do well to do the type of Internet marketing that will pull in local traffic.

If you’re looking to pull in local customers through the Internet, the first thing you need to do is search engine optimize your website for your local keywords. After the title tag, meta tags and body text are optimized for you local market, then you need to conduct a link-building campaign targeting your local market as well. Regional information within the link’s anchor text will help here. Getting your site listed in some general business directories that list location will also help you tap into the local market. The same holds true for industry organization listings that list only members in your industry. Lastly, get your website linked upon some other local websites and directories covering the same region that your business covers.

Make your business THE business in your region that people will find when doing an Internet search. This gives your website credibility as a major player online and offline as well. Remember, if you have a locals-only business, then thinking locally upon the global Internet will pay many dividends that you hadn’t even anticipated.

Yahoo Music to Listener’s Ears

2005-05-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Says, “I Got The Music In Me.”

Napster and iPod beware. Yahoo! has just rolled out Yahoo Music Unlimited with pricing that undercuts the market by one-third. While Napster charges $14.95 per month for unlimited access to it’s music catalog, Yahoo Music Unlimited is charges just $4.99 per month. This price includes access to over 1,000,000 song titles delivered from the four major record labels plus many independents as well.

When users sign up for service, they will download the free Yahoo Music Engine. According to Yahoo, this music search engine will let users play, manage, discover, rip, burn and create playlists. Users can also transfer music to compatible players made by Rio, Sony, Phillips and Zen.

Now here’s the rub. Yahoo Music Unlimited is based on Microsoft's Janus technology. Janus-compatible players have not penetrated the market yet, so there will be some growing pains is this regard. But, when users realize that they are continuing to pay 3 times the price for iTunes on their iPods, there may just be a bit of a mutiny to get to the new Janus-compatible players.

Yahoo! has decided to roll out its new Yahoo Music Unlimited in a big way. Now make way for the hottest new method for music downloads since Napster began in 1999. Sometimes it comes full circle, doesn’t it?

Google Web Accelerator Closed for Retooling

2005-05-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Google has introduced its new Web Accelerator beta, which is supposed to “help web pages show up in a snap.” Designed for DSL and Cable users, this new product is supposed to make results appear even more quickly. Sorry, 56K modem users.

Unfortunately, the beta has now been closed to the public. This posting appears on the Google site, “Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.” Now, this could be taken at face value or mean any number of things including some buggy-ness or potential security problems involving the display of private password-protected pages as have been previously reported. Anytime Google introduces any new product, a controversy is sure to follow and this is no different. This will all shake out, though.

No matter what, it is good to see Google taking steps to make the user’s experience a faster one. If “Home Improvement” host Tim Allen were an Internet junkie, he would relish the faster experience that Google is delivering with a grunt and some verbiage like “more power, more speed.”

Once the controversy is resolved and the bugs are worked out, it will be interesting to see if the new Google Web Accelerator picks up speed or simply coasts to the shoulder and calls for road service.

SEO Inc. Dribbles Down Google Rankings

2005-05-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

A fellow named, Philipp Lenssen, reported in his Google Blogoscoped weblog that long-time holder of the number 1 spot in Google for the coveted search term “search engine optimization”, SEO Inc. has received a penalty from Google and falling from the top rankings into oblivion. Actually, Mr. Lenssen reported that SEO Inc. had been banned but this may be too harsh of a term since SEO Inc. can still be found in Google, albeit finding them is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

According to Mr. Lenssen, SEO Inc.’s attorneys sent him a “cease and desist” order, so for monetary reasons, he had to take down the original post. John Battelle, has taken up, well, the battle and posted the original text in his Searchblog for all to see. Where Mr. Lenssen may have gotten in trouble with his report is not in the reporting itself but in the speculation of why the penalty occurred. His reasoning is logical, but may not be the full story.

My own theory, (and this is just a theory so no attorneys please) is that Google with their new algorithm has cracked down on back links that appear not to be “natural” links. When checking out SEO Inc.’s back links in Google, Google reports 33,600 back links that are PR 4 or above. When one takes a look at SEO Inc.’s site map, there is very little actual content that would encourage other Webmasters to want to link to this site (at least not 33,000 of them).

So, anyway, this is just a theory. Over the years, many websites have conducted link-building campaigns, traded reciprocal links, done third party linking and other linking strategies in order to achieve higher rankings so SEO Inc. is not alone in this. They just may be a casualty in a Google crackdown on “over-linking”. Anyway, this is just some more speculation to chew on. When a giant like SEO Inc. falls, many David’s like me come out and wonder what the stone was that made the giant fall.

AskJeeves Cuts Ads to Aid in Customer Satisfaction

2005-05-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

According to an article in MyWay, AskJeeves’ Chief Executive Steve Berkowitz announced that his search engine will be cutting the amount of ads it shows atop the results pages by 31-percent. The report also states, “The company's tests show that a smaller number of ads boosts the frequency with which people use the site and aids user retention. As such, Jeeves expects the change to help lift query volumes and ad revenue later in the year.”

In the near-term, this will have a negative impact on revenue. But, in the long-term, this move is expected to increase revenues significantly as user satisfaction increases and new visitors come on board. Currently, Google delivers the AskJeeves ads in a contract that runs through 2007.

What a concept! Here’s a company willing to put customer satisfaction first over short-term gains and shareholder satisfaction in order to delay gratification and receive bigger rewards later. Isn’t this the way businesses used to be run before the Me-Generation, Golden Parachutes and CEO salary spikes that put professional athletes’ pay to shame? Anyway, it looks like AskJeeves has decided to do it right and what is so surprising is that this common sense way of doing business should come as any surprise at all.

New York Attorney General Sues Spyware Maker

2005-05-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

I spy with my little eye some spyware on a lawyer’s PC. Not a good move according to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer who is suing Internet marketer, Intermix for placing spyware on millions of PC’s including 3.7 million downloads on New Yorker’s PC’s alone.

According to an article in Yahoo! News, “Spitzer's civil suit accuses Intermix of violating state General Business Law provisions against false advertising and deceptive business practices. He also accuses them of trespass under New York common law.” Spitzer also says, "Spyware and adware are more than an annoyance. These fraudulent programs foul machines, undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers' efforts to remove them from their computers. These issues can serve to be a hindrance to the growth of e-commerce."

Many PC repair shops are blaming spyware for half of their repairs since machines with spyware tend to run slower and have a more difficult time rebooting. Most users don’t realize that spyware has been downloaded to their machines and even if they do they cannot uninstall the spyware with the typical Windows uninstall feature through the Control Panel.

Finally, it seems that people are getting tired of the intrusiveness of some others on the Internet. Spammers are recently getting held liable in court cases across the country and now spyware manufactures are starting to be sued for monetary damages as well. Its not the Wild, Wild West on the Internet anymore. A little law is in order.

Google Site-Targeted Campaign Promising

2005-04-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

Google is beta testing its new site-targeted AdWords feature so that advertisers may pick the websites on which they want their Google ads to appear. According to Google, “Since Google first introduced AdWords, advertisers have asked us for the ability to run their ads on specific websites. Site targeting gives our users that ability, while also allowing their ads to compete for ranking with traditional keyword-targeted AdWords ads. It's one more tool that AdWords advertisers can use to bring their message to highly-targeted groups of web users.”

Google goes onto say, “Advertisers will create and manage site-targeted campaigns in their normal AdWords account, in the same manner as keyword-targeted campaigns. When first creating any new campaign you'll decide whether to run site-targeted or keyword-targeted ads. For site-targeted campaigns, you'll be able to enter the URLs of sites where you'd like to advertise. You'll also be able to tell us the type of site you're looking for and we'll help out by suggesting possible sites from the Google content network.”

This new site-targeted AdWords feature will no doubt be helpful to many advertisers who wish to reach more targeted visitors such as those visitors who come to popular online magazines. The one area that Google has not adequately explained yet is how they intend to battle misuse of this new service. For instance, a popular online Christian magazine running an AdSense campaign is now displaying Google ads with a Christian theme. Suppose that tomorrow an online pharmacy chooses to target Viagra ads to this same site. Will Google filter out this choice? Will the online Christian magazine be able to block certain kinds of ads from running on its website? Or perhaps a politically conservative site wants to stir things up and run and ad on a liberal website? Who gets to choose the acceptability of this content? Inquiring minds want to know.

The positive potential for the new site-targeted AdWords feature is enormous but also is the potential for abuse. Hopefully, Google will make is clear in the coming weeks how it intends to guard against spam in their new service offering. Many AdSense publishers are waiting to see how this will affect them.

Microsoft Metro to Markup Adobe PDF

2005-04-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

When Microsoft’s long-awaited Longhorn operating system is finally rolled out later this year or early next year it will include a new document format that they have dubbed “Metro.” Metro is based on XML (extensible markup language), and is expected to rival Adobe’s PDF (portable document format).

According to Computer World, “The Metro technology is likely to go head-to-head with Adobe's PostScript technology. ‘It is a potential Adobe killer,’ said Richard Doherty, research director with The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, New York. ‘But this is just the first warning shot. Adobe could put something that is even more compelling [on top of] Longhorn.’”

Metro will be licensed royalty-free. Users will not need a special client in order to open the Metro files and the printing of the files are expected to deliver better and faster results than the current PDF files. Bill Gates made this announcement Monday in Seattle as part of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC).

In addition to Metro, Gates also announced the introduction of 64-bit Windows operating systems and predicted that 64-bit hardware would be mainstream on servers by the end of the year.

What these two announcements mean to the end user is: better and faster. Better and faster printing and better and faster servers and end user PC’s. It’s good to see that after a couple of years on cruise control that Microsoft has finally decided to once again take innovation by the horns, or the Longhorn as it may be.

Google PR Toolbar Update Late for Gosh Sakes

2005-04-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t already heard, on Friday, April 22, 2005 Google began its toolbar Page Rank update, for real. Whether it was an early April Fool’s Day joke or a burp, glitch or hitch in the update, reports were on March 25, 2005 that Google was updating the toolbar PR and the update did not complete. This brings to mind the question of whether or not Google is on a quarterly PR toolbar update schedule as they have been for the past year or if the schedule is more random now? Or, did Google simply blow their scheduled update by six weeks?

As usual, Google isn’t telling since they maintain that the toolbar PR is for “entertainment purposes only.” While Google is correct in its claim, the faulty perception of many in the community is quite the opposite. Many Webmasters will not trade links on pages that have a least a certain Page Rank. When a website’s PR goes up a notch, some will take this as justification to charge more for text link advertisements.

Those with a high PR may gloat will others with a lower PR may feel frustrated and seek to do “whatever it takes” to increase their website’s PR. Unfortunately, Page Rank has been a great distraction from keeping one’s eye on the ball. Page Rank is not the game or the goal. The goal is more traffic, more sales, more profits. Some lose sight of this in their quest for high PR. When you take a look at the SERP’s you’ll notice that they are not arranged in Page Rank order.

Since the SERP’s are not arranged in Page Rank order, then why spend time developing PR instead of developing your website in a way that will garner higher rankings and more traffic? This may be another reason that Google was late with the Page Rank update, because PR just isn’t that important. Google has maintained this all along. We just need to get the word out so that more people will listen.

Domain Pop Back Link Checker Rocks

2005-04-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Every once in a blue moon a new free tool comes along that is so useful for Webmasters and SEO specialists that it just has to be written about. A company called Domain-Pop.com has come up with such a free tool for checking a website’s back links.

This back link checker adds a couple of new features that other free tools do not. For instance, all that is required is to input a website domain name and run the check. Larger websites may take a while, but its worth the wait. Besides offering the full URL’s of the back links, Domain Pop also offers the IP address associated with the URL and the Google Page Rank (PR) of the page that your back link sits upon.

Having the Google PR listed gives one valuable information about the “worth” of their back links that can be used to analyze and create further linking strategies. With this tool, one can also analyze a competitor’s back links and come up with a list of potential new link partners. In addition, with this tool, you’ll be able to check to see if there are any suspicious websites or networks linking to your site that may be damaging your site’s rankings. Having the IP address associated with your back links also gives valuable information since it is important to have many back links coming from many different IP addresses rather than the same address.

So, if you’re looking for a new tool to help you look at your back links in a new way, stop by the Domain-Pop.com website and try the free tool out for yourself. You may just gain the knowledge you’ve been looking for in regard to your back linking program.

Froogles Boggles Google’s Froogle

2005-04-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

An article in USA Today states that Google has lost its ICANN challenge to Froogles.com owner, Richard Wolfe. Google tried making the case that Wolfe’s Froogles.com was infringing upon its Froogle.com shopping site and the Google trademark because the domain names were too similar to each other. A panel of three New York judges voted 2 to 1 to dismiss the case. According to USA Today, “Froogles.com name will remain with Richard Wolfe, a disabled Holtsville, N.Y., carpenter who started the Web shopping site in March 2001, before Google introduced Froogle in December 2002.”

In a separate hearing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Wolfe has challenged Google’s use of the Froogle as infringing upon his Froogles mark.

According to Wolfe, “"It still amazes me that I should have to go through this at all. I started my shopping service called Froogles almost two years before Google started a shopping service called Froogle. What more does anyone need to know?" Google had previously filed 18 other domain name complaints with the ICANN panel and this is the first that they’ve lost.

Apparently, the owners of the Halloween website, Boogle, the people search site, Whoogle and the animal park site, Zoogle are rethinking their domain names right now. You never know when Google will hire the attorney site Soogle to baffle, befuddle and bewilder you into submission.

Adobe Buys Macromedia for $3.4 Billion

2005-04-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

Adobe Systems, Inc. has released a press release stating that Adobe is in the process of acquiring Macromedia for $3.4 billion dollars with the deal to close this Fall 2005. According to Adobe, “The combination of Adobe and Macromedia will provide customers a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Together, the two companies will meet a wider set of customer needs and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets, particularly in the mobile and enterprise segments.”

According to Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe, “Customers are calling for integrated software solutions that enable them to create, manage and deliver a wide range of compelling content and applications - from documents and images to audio and video. By combining our powerful development, authoring and collaboration software - along with the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash - Adobe has the opportunity to bring this vision to life with an industry-defining technology platform”

This all sounds good. A couple of questions one has to wonder about, though is what will happen to Dreamweaver and what will become of Freehand? Macromedia Dreamweaver is the Internet’s most popular web page creation package, which is a direct competitor to Adobe’s GoLive. On the other hand, Macromedia Freehand is less popular than Adobe Illustrator, but has a devoted and vocal core following.

It will be interesting to see if the future will bring Adobe Dreamweaver to the forefront and stop GoLive altogether, leaving it to go die? Also, will Freehand be tied up and left to sink while Illustrator takes center stage with only the distant second cousin CorelDraw as the only competition left? And what kind of coupe would Corel be for a second takeover target. Adobe has been long-know for “buying the competition” so Adobe’s most recent move should surprise no one. Less competition only makes Adobe that much stronger.

Can the Spam, California Judge Says

2005-04-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Both the L. A. Daily News and the Los Angeles Times have run stories regarding a company called Optin Global Inc., which has been given a temporary restraining order from a San Francisco judge in regards to allegedly sending out spam emails. The judge has also frozen their assets. The Federal Trade Commission made the accusation after receiving 1.8 million consumer complaints against Optin Global.

Optin Global and its partner Media Limited Corp. has been accused by the FTC of sending out unsolicited mass emails regarding home mortgages, travel deals and prescription drugs. According to the FTC, the emails are fraudulent because the sender information is falsified, they fail to offer the consumer a way to opt-out, they contain false subject lines and are not marked as advertisements plus a few other violations put in place to thwart spam.

According to John Chu, attorney for Optin Global, his clients are innocent because “They are the middlemen” in this operation. Chu is pointing the finger at Optin Global’s 100 email marketing subcontractors who may have sent out the illegal emails.

These articles bring up some good points in regards to opt-in email companies of which there are many. Typically an opt-in email company will gather lists of opt-in email addresses where consumers have actually requested that they be contacted via email or newsletter for additional information about a product or service. The opt-in email company will gather the list and then sell the list to online marketers who will, in turn, send out the actual emails and newsletters.

So the question, which has not been answered so far in this case, is did Optin Global gather and sell its lists or did they give their lists to their 100 subcontractors and order them to send out emails which violated the 2004 anti-spamming federal legislation? Did one of the subcontractors become a rogue spammer unbeknownst to Optin Global or did Optin Global have knowledge of the methods that were being used to deliver these emails?

If all of these emails originated as opt-in emails (as the name Optin Global suggests), then why use spammy techniques to deliver them? Apparently these are the questions that San Francisco U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti and the FTC also want to know. A hearing is scheduled for May 10, so we’ll learn more at this time.

Yahoo Offers Free Websites with Local Listings

2005-04-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

In order to encourage businesses to sign up with Yahoo! business listings at a local level, Yahoo! Local is giving away a free 5-page website to businesses who sign up for their services. According to Yahoo! you can “Promote your business to highly qualified prospects in your area by listing your business on Yahoo! Local. Each listing features detailed information that sets your business apart. Plus, now every business in the U.S. can get a FREE web site.”

This new offering not only encourages businesses to jump onboard the Internet train, but also take advantage of Yahoo!’s Enhanced Local Listings offering as well. Yahoo! is trying to tap into the ‘late adopters’ to the Internet, marketing to this group specifically. And just what is the number one way to market to people? Yes, that’s right, give away something of value for free.

Consumers and businesses alike, like to receive freebies. Whether you’re talking about Hotmail.com giving away free email service or Google and its free 1 or 2 Gig Gmail service or free ad stats utilities, search boxes, news feeds or whatever, the word “free” is like gold. Once you get a customer onboard by offering a freebie, then it is much easier to market to them.

By providing a free website to business owners who have been thinking about the need to establish a web presence, Yahoo! is establishing would could be many long-term business relationships. So giving away something for free could turn into a fortune for Yahoo!.

Top Paying Google AdSense Keywords Tool Available

2005-04-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

There is a website named Googlest, which tracks the highest paying AdSense keywords from Google for public consumption. The keywords are tracked by region, so regional differences are readily apparent. Googlest tracks the maximum and average cost per click (CPC) for each high cost keyword phrase.

This website is an important information site for those who already have an AdSense banner on their websites and wish to add more content and optimize in order to capture higher CPC rates and for those who like to build websites from the ground up focused on certain high CPC keyword phrases.

In fact, with this information, one may wish to start an entire business focused around building websites that will capture this high AdSense payouts as the main form of income from their sites. The results are compiled daily so users have the most recent information on AdSense CPC rates. The one shortcoming, though, is the lack of historical data and trends.

If one was to build a business around building websites targeting the high CPC keyword phrases, then the ability to do some sort of trend analysis over the long run would be mandatory. As it stands now, though, Googlest is still a valuable tool for those who are currently running AdSense ads and wish to add content and target a few more keyword phrases that can deliver top dollar for their bottom lines.

First Felony Conviction for SPAM: 9 Years Handed Out

2005-04-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, the old Monte Python bit goes. And so goes angry public sentiment over email SPAM and those who do the spamming. According to an article in the Washington Post, Spammer Jeremy Jaynes was the first person convicted of a felony for spamming and handed a 9-year sentence.

The trial was conducted in Loudoun County, Virginia because that is where the America Online servers were located that Jaynes and his two cohorts, Jessica DeGroot and Richard Rutkowski allegedly spammed. DeGroot had her conviction overturned by Judge Horne and Rutkowski was acquitted of the charges.

The Virginia jury recommended that Jaynes serve 3 consecutive 3-year sentences. According to the Post, “During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Jaynes as the head of a lucrative spam business that he operated from his home with help from his sister and codefendant, Jessica DeGroot, and a third defendant, Richard Rutkowski. They said the defendants used phony Internet addresses to send more than 10,000 spam e-mails to America Online subscribers on three days in July 2003 -- a volume that makes the crime a felony.”

Jaynes is free on a $1 million bond pending the appeal of his conviction, though he can rarely leave home and has to wear an electric monitor device for tracking purposes. Jaynes, a former eagle scout who used to help build houses for the poor has Circuit Judge Thomas D. Horne who is quoted as saying there are "substantial legal issues" in the case that need to be resolved.

Nine-years for a nonviolent crime may seem stiff to some, but it just goes to show how passionate public sentiment is about SPAM and those who flood their email inboxes with SPAM. Spam I am says Uncle Sam, I will not eat green eggs and Spam. Or I am what I Spam. You get the message. Just say ‘No’ to Spam.

The Web's Biggest Search Engine Not The Best

2005-04-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

According to an article in Database Pipeline, The Web's Biggest search engine is claiming that it searches more websites than any other search engine including Google. The Web's Biggest uses the Whois database to conduct its searches and the Whois database contains all of the registered Internet domain names. According to The Web’s Biggest, "Other search engines missed from a third to more than half of the Web sites [included] in the Web's Biggest search results," because they are not using the Whois database.

Adam Radly, Web's Biggest spokesman, said its traffic presents an accurate compilation of the popularity of a Web site. “The search engine's approach also enables it to qualify as the biggest "wiki,” the company added.

The Web’s Biggest goes on to say that it searches nearly all websites in English, while other search engines miss many sites because they rely on hyperlinks and manual submissions in their searches. As for Google, The Web’s Biggest won’t have this edge for long, though. Last month Google applied to become an ICANN official registrar in order to get access to the Whois database for presumably this reason among others.

So, the real question is not only who is the biggest, but who is the best search engine. When I go to The Web’s Biggest search engine and type in my usual search for “funny t-shirts” and hit the Return key, the first 5 results are for an astrology site, a Christian dating site and 3 other Christian sites. In the next level of results under the heading “Search results by relevancy” are such listings as ‘cash is god,’ ‘av-god.com,’ and 16 other websites that mention ‘God’ in their titles. In this supposedly relevant search area there are no results for funny t-shirts at all. I then notice that the search had defaulted to “God” on a separate page and I needed to retype my search and try again.

Under the search box are buttons to let you choose if you’d like to search WebsBiggest, Google, Yahoo, TopSites, EditorsChoice, LookSmart, YellowPages or All. If you input “funny t-shirts” and click All, once again the search box defaults to ‘God’ and Christian search results appear. If you select one of the other choices, then you do get relevant results, which begs the question of why not just use one of the other search engines for your searches since the results are far more relevant? Also, when doing a search on The Web’s Biggest, one will notice that there are what appear to be sponsored advertisements on top of the listing, though nowhere are they marked as such. There are some sponsored results marked as such on the right panel, but the top three results have nothing to indicate to the public that these are advertisements as opposed to organic listings.

The Web’s Biggest may have laid claim to being the biggest search engine for now, but they have many miles to go before they can claim to be the best. As a search engine, if you’ve crawled millions of websites but don’t know how to serve up relevant results then what good are you? If The Web’s Biggest is to succeed, they will need to focus a little less of the biggest and a little more on the best aspect of being a respectable search engine.

Google Sandboxing New Links?

2005-04-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

According to an article in WebProNews there is a new theory based on anecdotal evidence and the recent G-patent application that Google is sandboxing new links. According to the theory, this sandboxing of new links, or new link filter as some are calling it, dampen the value of new links pointing to a website.

What this means is that websites no longer get a link pop from building links quickly. Under this theory, reciprocal links, paid links and linking networks are being devalued since these are seen by Google as an artificial way to manipulate the search engine rankings. For the past several years, Webmasters and SEO professionals have known the value of linking schemes in order to achieve high rankings.

Google, however, has maintained that it favors “natural linking” above all else and frowns upon linking scheme to artificially manipulate rankings. Natural linking is seen as Site A wants to link to Site B because Site B has lots of valuable content that would be of interest to Site A’s visitors. Because content is still king, the websites with the most relevant content will naturally garner many incoming links.

If this Google Link Sandbox theory is true, then this should send a shiver up every SEO professional’s spine. No longer will SEO’s be able to “get in, then get out” when doing link-building for a website. Webmasters who are building large networks of interlinked websites may never see the benefits of their efforts and may see a penalty instead. Also, companies who have already appropriate funds for a large, paid linking campaign will need to rethink their strategies.

But like all Google theories, the Google link filter theory is just a theory at this point. Google, in typical Google fashion, has not commented on this theory. The theory does make sense, though. And if you’re a believer in anecdotal evidence, then you may want to take this theory seriously.

Click Fraud Class Action Court Case Filed

2005-04-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

According to an article in Excite, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Lycos, AskJeeves and other search engines regarding click fraud and collusion. Lane's Gifts & Collectibles LLC from Texarkana, Arkansas lead the plaintiff team in the lawsuit.

The story first broke through the Wall Street Journal yesterday and today they have an article titled 'Click Fraud' Is Costly for Web Outfits, which states that as much as 20-percent of the clicks on paid advertisements may be front those not interested in the product. According to Excite, “The suit concerns a growing search-industry problem of "click fraud," in which someone clicks on online ads with ill intent. Advertisers generally pay Google, Yahoo and others based on the number of times people click on their ads displayed alongside Web-search results, with each click costing roughly 50 cents on average. By repeatedly clicking on the ads, or using software programs to automate the clicking, fraudsters can run up ad charges for rivals.”

Besides the click fraud charge, which is no small matter, the larger issue in my humble opinion is the charge of conspiracy and collusion of price fixing between the search engines. If this allegation of collusion turns out to be true, this may be a huge setback for the search engines named in the suit as far as advertiser loyalty and customer loyalty. This will also open up the advertising dollar door in a big way for Microsoft’s MSN search engine, which was not named in the lawsuit. MSN is currently using Yahoo!-Overture (YO!) paid advertisements along side their search results but are developing their own advertising technology in order to get away from the dependence upon YO!.

Because brand loyalty is so big on the Internet this lawsuit may just be to the search engines what the after hours trading scandal was to the large mutual fund companies. Many loyal customers fled the scene of the crime when the after hours trading scandal was announced. If the allegations against the search engines are not true, then let’s hope the damage to these companies stays to a minimum. No matter what happens, though, this lawsuit is sure to bring up a few surprises to the general public. So stay tuned.

Google Grading Websites with Patent: Sandbox Evident

2005-04-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Employees of Google have filed a patent with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (#20050071741) that outlines how Google is using or will use historical data to rank websites. This pending patent gives credence to the Google Sandbox theory, in that historical data is being used to determine a website’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP’s).

Some of the highlights of this patent include:

1. Adding links too quickly will send up a red flag for a potential SPAM site
2. Adding links too slowly will mean a website is not popular among its peers
3. Having the same anchor text in back links on multiple sites will signal potential SPAM
4. Having deliberately different anchor text in back links on multiple sites will signal potential SPAM
5. Registering domain names for 1 year at a time will signal potential SPAM (longer domain name registrations preferred)
6. Pages with stale content decay in value over time
7. Stale links decay in value over time
8. Older websites that make sudden changes may signal a change in ownership of the website and thus will be devalued
9. Browser Favorites add value to a website’s rankings
10. Substantial versus shallow website content changes are measured
11. Change in keyword density is measured
12. The number of links to low trust websites (such as affiliate links) are counted and given a value.
13. Outbound links to trusted sites help in the rankings
14. Past ranking on the Google search results pages influence current rankings
15. Google AdSense click-through rate (CTR) helps determine the quality of a website

Google’s grading system may be analogous to a report card / transcript model. The report card in Google’s grading system are the search engine rankings themselves and the transcripts are the historical data. It seems that Google keeps a permanent record of all websites with different grades given for all of their ranking criteria, thus making up the transcript.

Of course, this information was released the day before April Fool’s Day so a misinformation or disinformation campaign is certainly possible on Google’s part. It may just be another cat and mouse game with the Webmasters and SEO community. Or this may be a trial balloon sent up to gauge the reactions of the community. Only Google knows for sure. And that’s the only thing of which one can be sure.

Yahoo! Announces Search Engine Update

2005-04-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

On March 31, 2005, in the new Yahoo! Blog, Tim Mayer announced that Yahoo! was starting to release its new updated search results. According to Mayer, this was no bologna or April Fools joke, either. Mayer stated, “Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch had asked search engines to provide an algorithm 'weather report' in his keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose last August. We think it's a good idea too. It is important to have a dialog with publishers who rely on our product to send them visitors and that these content providers provide us with valuable feedback on our search products.”

Well this announcement sure does one-up Google in the communication department. Google updates have not been announced ahead of time and people are usually left wondering if an actual update is occurring. With Yahoo! now making the announcement, SEO’s and other can watch the behavior of this update and analyze it with the confidence that an actual, official update is occurring. A week or so ago, MSN announced that it is inviting another round of Search Champs to come and pound on its software, offer feedback and generally help improve its product from the consumer perspective.

Both of these announcements are geared toward keeping the customer informed of any changes that may affect them and engaging the customer in what their products have to offer. As great of a company and search engine that Google is, the Grand Daddy of All Search Engines could take a few lessons in customer service and customer communications from their competition. Yes, rolling out Google Gulp on April Fool’s Day was amusing, but this really didn’t tell us anything about how they are engaging the public to help them improve their products or sending out a report to inform the public that another update is on the way.

Sometimes a little mystery is good as it keeps the public interested. Other times mystery can be seen as simple disinterest, which may not be the message that Google wishes to send out about itself or its services. Unfair or not, just think about a similar label that Microsoft has had to bear all these years. Does Google really wish to develop a reputation that is similar to Microsoft? Now that Google is a large, publicly traded company, it would do well to bend over backwards to keep the customer informed and involved in its products or services or else its customers may just assume loyalties to those who seem more interested in their online welfare.

Yahoo! has just taken a positive step in this regard. Let' s see if they can keep up their customer service first approach as this will surely gain them market share in the short run as well as the long haul. And it really is all about the long haul.

Microsoft Buys Google for Cool $37 Billion

2005-04-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

According to the Seattle Times, software giant Microsoft has just closed a deal to buy the world’s largest search engine for an unprecedented $37 billion in cash and stocks. According to the Times, “Microsoft has decided to abandon its new search engine after just a few short weeks in order to capture the holy grail of search engines, Google. Since going public last summer, Google’s share prices have skyrocketed and never looked back. This had to be a major part of the decision for Microsoft.”

According to an article in SFGate magazine, Bill Gates has an estimated net worth of $46.5 billion, while the collected assets of Google’s co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page total about $14.4 billion this year. Brin states, “Google is making out like a bandit on this deal. Microsoft is paying us more than double the market value for Google.”

While Gates could not be reached for comment at press time, Microsoft spokesman, Tom Fooligan stated, “Microsoft is committed to bringing our customers the highest quality software and Internet experience on a Global scale. We see great value in acquiring the world’s largest and best search engine and tend to wrap many Microsoft products into the Google search engine after our initial review period has ended.”

When asked about how Microsoft would wrap its products within Google, Fooligan stated, “Microsoft sees the acquisition of Google as a huge opportunity for cross promotions. The potential for interlocking our two brands is enormous. And if anyone is wondering, there is no immediate plans to change the name Google at this time, though the name Moogle has been suggested by our marketing department.” Fooligan went on to say that Moogle may take on a cow theme along with the Microsoft and Google logos imbedded in all of its graphics.

The Microsoft acquisition of Google still has to pass federal antitrust laws and acceptance from several bureaus including the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. In fact, the FTC has made a preemptory, two word comment regarding this announcement, “April” and “Fools”. Keep smiling.

Blaster Blasted for Virus Attacks: Microsoft Merciful

2005-03-31T07:04:00.000-08:00

According to PCWorld.com, Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19-years-old from Hopkins, Minnesota has been given a sentence for launching the W32.Blaster-B worm and its variant in August 2003. In a merciful move by Microsoft, the teen will not have to pay back the $497,546.55 owed the software giant. The Blaster-B worm exploited a Microsoft security flaw and in turn launched a Denial of Service attack against Microsoft.

Judge Marsha Pechman will still need to confirm the settlement, which includes an 18-month jail sentence followed by 225 hours of community service. The community service is in exchange for the money owed Microsoft. Microsoft has stated that since Parson, nor his family were in a position to pay back the money owed, that community service was the best option.

According to the settlement, Parson will have to work 75 hours per year for 3 years doing community service and this service cannot involve computers or the Internet. Parson was arrested by the FBI after launching the Blaster-B worm variant. According to PC World, “Parson's variant used a file name that was identical to a domain name registered in his name. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to trace the domain name to computers owned by Parson, and he was arrested days after his variant appeared.”

Even with so many viruses floating around at any one time on the Internet, it is still rare to see any of the virus creators brought to justice. Hopefully, publicizing this story will deter some hackers from creating and launching their viruses. It’s also good to see that this teen was granted leniency especially because of his young age.

So, the moral of the story is that if you’re feeling creative, why not create something useful like a new software utility instead of a virus. Or create a digital painting. Or do digital basket-weaving. If not, the FBI may just launch its own Denial of Service attack against you. Enough said.

Amazon’s A9 Opens OpenSearch For All

2005-03-30T08:27:00.000-08:00

Amazon-owned A9.com has opened up its OpenSearch technology for all users who currently have a search box already on their websites. OpenSearch is a new XML-based technology that lets users syndicate their website’s search results. On the A9 website, a visitor can search for products or information and once the results are returned, they can do another search inside each website while staying upon the A9 site.

The advantage of this kind of search is that deeper searches can be made into each website. According to A9, “The web is a big place. And search engines that crawl the surface of the web are only picking up a small fraction of the great content that is out there. But more than that—the richest content can't be adequately indexed by one engine alone. Different types of content require different types of search engines. And most of the time, the best search engines for a site are the ones written by those that know the content the best. Unfortunately, that often means that users need to know where that site is and how to find, and use, the search engine once they are there. By supporting OpenSearch, that search engine can be exposed to the world and the results made available everywhere. Even small, specialized websites can now have the same visibility and distribution as the major search engines.”

Some of the websites that have jumped onboard of this new technology include the New York Times, NASA, Wikipedia and Flickr. By clicking the “Try It” button next to any of these websites results listing, A9 will display an additional search box for searching the internal contents of each of these websites. By clicking on any of these new results, a new window is opened up that links directly to that website.

One of my favorite features of the A9.com search is that when you do a search not only are the web results displayed along the left side, but in the middle of the page are the image search results as well. When trying out a new search engine, I like to search for the keyword phrase “funny t-shirts” as a test. With A9, results similar to other search engines are returned under “Web Results” but a whole row of images of funny t-shirts is also returned, which, in my opinion, greatly adds to the relevance of the search. There is even a new feature on the right side for adding and deleting columns so that you can display instead of (or in addition to) images, books, movies, reference, yellow pages, Your History, Your Bookmarks or Your Diary results as well.

When hovering the cursor above the “Site Info” button on the search results, a box appears with information on traffic rank, links, loading speed and age of the website. The downside is when clicking the “Site Info” button, the A9 site jumps to Amazon.com in order to display much of this same information and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by all sorts of Amazon advertising, which in my opinion, is irrelevant to my search.

All in all, though, A9.com is worth checking out. It adds a whole new dimension to search not covered by the Big 3 search engines with its website search features and multi-search capabilities. A9 ranks a 10 in my book.

Urchin Finds Google, WebTrends Finds Francisco Partners

2005-03-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

Google has announced its intent to buy Urchin Software Company. Urchin is a San Diego based web analytics firm that offers leading edge tools for analyzing visitor behavior upon websites. Urchin offers two main products, Urchin On Demand (accessible via the Web) and Urchin Software, a modular log-based web analytics software that resides on a server.

According to the Urchin website, “Founded in 1995, Urchin Software Corporation is a leader in the web analytics market. With more than 20% of the Fortune 500 as customers and a user base in the millions, Urchin is the most widely trusted professional web analytics and marketing intelligence software in the world. Urchin's products offer enterprise level features at a mid-market price point.”

Now why would Google acquire a web analytics company? For several reasons. First, Urchin could be a valuable tool for those who use Google’s Blogger for analyzing visitor traffic. Second, AdWords could benefit from the robustness of Urchin. Third, well that is yet to be seen within the minds at the Mountain View Googleplex.

Now, when the Urchin deal went down, their biggest competitor WebTrends was acquired by Francisco Partners from NetIQ. Francisco Partners is known for being a large, technology-focused private equity fund. According to Ben Ball, general partner of Francisco Partners, "We are proud to establish a deep relationship with WebTrends, and are excited about providing the company with resources to accelerate its growth. We look forward to working with WebTrends' experienced management team to enhance the company's customer relationships, product capabilities, and strategic leadership."

Francisco Partners must be doing a double-take right now since corporate giant Google has more resources to put into Urchin than Francisco Partners will have to throw into WebTrends. What must be even more disturbing for Francisco Partners, though, is that Google is known for giving away free services (such as Blogger). So, if Google intends on giving away Urchin for free (or some form of Urchin) to the general public, then most likely people will flee WebTrends with its hefty price tag ($9,995 for enterprises users), making Urchin the sole proprietor of the number one position for web analytics packages.

There has been some speculation that Google was interested in both Urchin and WebTrends and chose Urchin because of the lower price tag. Another big factor that most likely swayed Google’s plan to go with Urchin instead of WebTrends is that WebTrends owns Google’s long-time nemesis, Web Position Gold. For several years, Google named Web Position Gold by name as a software package to avoid in relation to Google since WPG violated Google’s Terms of Service.

No matter what happens, it will be interesting to keep an eye on how this story develops and to see if there actually still is a WebTrends a few years from now.

French Flogging Fries Folks at Google

2005-03-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

An article in InADaily.com says the Google is backing off from a lawsuit filed by Agence France Presse. In an earlier blog story that I posted a week ago titled, “French Fries Google With Copyright Lawsuit Again” I pointed out that Agence France Presse (AFP) had filed a $17.5 million lawsuit against the California search giant for indexing its headlines, photographs and news snippets.

Instead of using the common robots.txt file or NOINDEX tag to exclude Google from indexing its news stories, AFP has put the onus on Google to remove the AFP stories using Google resources and technology. While this kind of nationalism is sure to be a hit in France, the repercussions for AFP in the long run may do more harm than good.

Since Google is the world’s largest search engine, most online companies profit by being listed in Google. Being de-listed by Google generally can have very ominous and detrimental results for a company’s bottom line. Since AFP is choosing a rather dramatic way to opt-out of Google, this will have some immediate impact on their bottom line. Of course in the short term, AFP will most likely make up with this with the publicity that the lawsuit has brought them.

In the long run though, this will most likely turn out to be a very bad move for AFP. Not only will they not be getting search engine traffic from the world’s largest search engine, but also, their competition will getting this traffic. In fact, AFP’s competitors are most likely salivating at this prospect right now. When a competitor storms off in a huff and leaves an open space for the rest of the competition, one can bet that other French press agencies are already huddled in the boardroom scheming how best to take advantage of this situation.

Six months from now it will be interesting to see how this French flogging has paid off for AFP, or whether Agence France Presse will now have taken to simply flogging themselves.

SEO Companies Play Chess with Search Engines

2005-03-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

Chess great Bobby Fisher recently emerged from Japan, escaping to Iceland to avoid U. S. authorities. Even Bobby would be amused with the chess match that search engines and SEO’s play on a daily basis. This is especially true when it comes to linking.

In the old days, websites didn’t have to have links from other sites pointing to them. People would simply submit their websites to the search engines directly. Then it became known that links were important. So, webmasters started trading links with a wide variety of websites with differing themes, under the idea that quantity would get great results. Which it did.

Then the search engines made another change to their algorithms, giving priority to relevant links. So, reciprocal link trading between relevant websites was born and continues to this day. But, it is also theorized today that reciprocal links don’t hold the same value that they once did.

So, those into SEO know that in order to stay competitive they need to make a counter move to the search engines’ reciprocal link devaluation. Three basic counter moves have developed. The first move is to gain one-way links from directories or other sources such as paid links. The second method, which is employed by some unscrupulous Webmasters, is to do reciprocal linking but employ some methodology so that the search engines cannot find their partner links so that their websites appear only to have a bunch of one-way links pointing back to them and none going out.

The third move is find link partners who are willing to do triangular linking. This would look something like, “If you link from your site to my site, I will link from another of my websites to your website.” This would give both websites non-reciprocal links. This method, though, is not quite as effective as one-way linking since the Webmasters would still be giving away an outbound link. Triangular linking is currently most difficult if not impossible for the search engines to detect. And, if somehow, in the future, the SE’s will be able to detect this method, then octagonal linking may just be the next counter move employed.

In fact, since there is not a lot to do in Iceland and it looks like Bobby Fisher will be holed up there for a while, perhaps some of the big search engines would like to employ Bobby’s help with fending off the SEO’s. Bobby has proven himself to be able to think many steps ahead and from his opponent’s eyes. Maybe along with the Cassandra, Florida, Brandy and Allegra updates, there will be a Bobby update in the near future as well.

Google SERP’s Burp, PR and Back Links Updating

2005-03-25T08:18:00.000-08:00

Well, its that time of the year again, the end of the first quarter and strange oddities are happening with Google. The SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) are burping, bouncing and bandying about as they have tended to do every quarter now for the past year or so. In the SEO forums, there is quite a stir as some sites have finally popped into existence on Google and some sites have dropped out of sight.

Most of the changes though are not this drastic, but there definitely is a shuffle going on. It must be pointed out that it is early in the process and things have not shaken out yet. Normally, these quarterly updates take a week or two from beginning to end before all of the results settle into place.

Google PR (Page Rank) is also starting to get its update right now. As is typical, many are seeing their PR fall a notch at this point. This has happened in the past 3 PR updates as well. Many will see a PR drop only to be followed days later by PR going back up a notch to where it was before the update. The PR update will be welcomed by many who have spent this past 3 months with intense link-building campaigns and wish for this to be validated by a jump in PR.

The Google back links update is also occurring at the same time as these other two updates which makes one wonder if this is one of the famous (or infamous) major Google updates such as Florida or Allegra occurring? For the SEO Firm website, Google right now shows 10 more back links than it did just a few days ago. The back links update also gives validation to Webmasters and SEO’s that their linking campaigns are working.

No matter whether this is a major or not so major Google update, the inevitable is happening: change is occurring. It will be interesting over the next couple of weeks to see how things shake out. For SEO’s and their customers this will also be a time for reassessing strategies and making any refinements to those strategies if necessary. Hopefully all these burps in the SERP’s will lead to more relevant listing in the rankings. That’s what its all about, right?

Topix on Topic for Takeover By Large News Organizations

2005-03-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

According to a press release in the Topix blog, Tribune Company, Gannett and Knight Ridder have jointly acquired 75 percent of Topix.com. Ownership among the three of the largest news organizations in the country are split evenly with each company gaining a 25 percent stake.

According to Rich Skrenta, CEO and co-founder of Topix.net, "This transaction provides us with the resources to be the best place to connect to a very wide range of news on the Web. We all serve the news enthusiast, so it’s a natural partnership. Gannett, Knight Ridder and Tribune generate valuable online content and Topix.net is dedicated to making that content easily found. By believing in the potential of our ideas and technology, they have made an investment in the future, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.”

Here’s a little background about Topix.com, ‘Topix.net was founded in 2002 with the specific mission of providing users the ability to quickly and easily find targeted news on the Internet. With thousands of news sources continually releasing stories twenty-four hours a day, finding relevant news can often be a time consuming task. For complete coverage, users are forced to visit many different sites and sift through a variety of stories that may or may not be relevant to them. Topix.net alleviates this problem by creating thousands of topically driven, specific news web pages and populating each of those pages with only news about that particular topic. So, whether you are interested in finding all the news about your community, or your company or industry or perhaps even your favorite team or celebrity, Topix.net provides an intuitive, easy way to find the targeted news that is relevant to you.”

Now, why is all of this important? For those who subscribe to the “Internet will develop like Television” theory with Google, Yahoo! and MSN paralleling both the growth and flattening interest in CBS, NBC and ABC, this may give some more ammunition for this argument. Some recent studies have pointed out that Internet users jump to using more than one search engine for their specific needs. With the backing of the three large newspapers' news databases and advertiser base, Topix could be the next premiere news search portal on the Web. Over time, it may elbow out Google News, Yahoo! News and MSN News as users become more sophisticated and expand their searches beyond the Big 3.

Just like CNN created the first 24 / 7 news channel, the Internet may be ripe for its own version of this. News search portals running 24 / 7 is nothing new to the Internet, though, but having one mega-site serving up relevant news gathered from 10,000 new sources from around the world, rather than from just its own company’s resources may make Topix a big player in the months and years to come. Time will tell. Wait for the late-breaking news on this one.

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Don’t AskJeeves, Ask Barry: Diller Drives New Acquisition

2005-03-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

U. S. media mogul and entrepreneur, Barry Diller is acquiring AskJeeves search engine for $1.85 billion according to the BBC News Online and the LA Times. Diller heads up IAC/InterActive, which is 10 times the size of AskJeeves and owns other popular properties such as Expedia.com, CitySearch.com, Hotels.com, TicketMaster.com and Match.com. So, if you’re looking to take your date on an exciting weekend getaway to a far off city, then a newly integrated AskJeeves may be your place for one-stop shopping to make this happen.

The integration of AskJeeves and the other online properties may just give the Internet’s 4th (or 5th depending upon who you talk to) largest search engine a boost in the search engine wars in relation to Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In addition, having the Ask search engine on the other properties’ website will also undoubtedly boost their marketing efforts and effectiveness.

According to Diller, “AskJeeves was founded almost ten years ago based on the idea that simple text search results alone are not sufficient or satisfying - but, rather, that consumers want answers to questions - and questions posed in natural language and answered with spot-on accuracy were especially desired and appealing ... we believe that in the future it has the potential to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond, and by beyond we mean in wireless, in the search for anything on any device.”

AskJeeves and its quirky butler logo was named for a P. G. Wodehouse character. According to the Jeeves website, “P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was the creator of, among others, the original and immortal Jeeves (the archetypal 'gentleman's gentleman') and his master Bertie Wooster. Affectionately known as Plum, Wodehouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century, and is read and loved by fans worldwide. His prolific output included nearly 100 novels and collections of short stories, as well as plays, musicals and song lyrics.”

AskJeeves has had many ups and downs over the years. According to the L. A. Times, “Ask Jeeves, named after the butler from P.G. Wodehouse's stories, has taken employees and investors on a roller coaster ride since its founding a decade ago during the start of the dot.com boom. It's stock once soared above $100 a share, but came crashing down below $1 during the dot.com bust.”

Steve Berkowitz will continue to head up the AskJeeves property in his role as CEO. He has stated that joining IAC/InterActive will give his company the financial backing to compete with the Big 3 search engines. Upon the announcement of the acquisition, AskJeeves shares jumped 15-percent. Its too bad that I just got a few stains on my new AskJeeves “I Love Bloglines” t-shirt as this could have been worth something, someday.

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MSN Adds Ads, Competes for Marketing Dollars

2005-03-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

MSN.com (Microsoft) search engine has recently announced two new programs for courting advertisers. First, according to the Detroit News, Microsoft will be testing its MSN adCenter in France and Singapore within the next 6 months. Currently, MSN serves up sponsored ads on their search results pages which are delivered by Yahoo! – Overture (or YO! for short). MSN’s contract with Yahoo! for ad delivery runs out in July 2006.

According to Microsoft, “MSN adCenter is the MSN Paid Search solution, which will offer innovative tools in search marketing. The new MSN search advertising solution will put the power and knowledge of the audience in your hands, allowing you to refine your online campaign with flexibility and control to help you maximize ROI.”

The second advertising solution, which MSN is beta testing right now, is MSN Shopping beta, which will replace the current MSN Shopping site and is expected to compete with sites like Shopping.com, Froogle and Yahoo! Shopping. According to MSN, “We are testing new technology to help you find product information easily and make informed buying decisions. Our focus here is to explore new ways to help you search for products, refine your search, sort results in a variety of different ways (by price, popularity, etc.), compare similar products and their cost at different stores and to provide product ratings and reviews by shoppers like yourself.”

The new MSN Shopping site offers yet another avenue to connect buyers and advertisers and compete head on with the other two search giants. In fact, both MSN adCenter and MSN Shopping will help MSN take market share away from Google and Yahoo! and attract new advertisers as well. Currently many advertisers buy PPC ads on Overture in order to get into MSN. The PPC ad rates for MSN adCenter are expected to be far lower than Google or YO!, which will give advertisers yet another alternative for their advertising dollars. MSN’s shopping site will also pull advertisers away from the other two search engines and help MSN to gain ground in the ever growing competition of the search engine wars.

This competition will be great for consumers, advertisers and MSN. It will challenge Google and Yahoo! to keep delivering new and innovative search tools in order to try to retain market share themselves or at least grow the market so that even if their shares decrease, the market will increase and they will still be able to satisfy their own shareholders.

The search wars are just getting started so stay tuned.

French Fries Google With Copyright Lawsuit Again

2005-03-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

First, it was the French flap over Google putting great books of the world (including French) online, then it was the French AdSense publishers threatening to boycott Google, and now Agence France Presse (AFP) is suing Google for indexing their news pages. This Rabbit Redux copyright lawsuit means AFP wants Google to stop showing snippets of their news stories, including photos in the Google News search results.

Since AFP uses a subscription-only business model, they have a financial vested interest in where their stories appear on the Internet. The question is, however, does showing a headline and 60-word snippet of their stories which link back to their website erode or enhance their bottom line? Apparently, AFP thinks that Google has eroded their bottom line to the tune of $17.5 million which, is the amount of the lawsuit.

Even though AFP is subscription-only, not all of their content is locked into password-protected pages. A trip to their homepage will reveal top news stories on the right panel, that when clicked will open up a new browser window and display the entire news story. The same is true for photos on the front page as well.

Has AFP taken the easiest method to disallow the search engines from indexing these pages? The answer is no. When taking a peak at the AFP robots.txt file below, one can see that none of the search engine robots have been disallowed. Isn’t adding one short line to the robots.txt file a little easier than plunging forth with a $17.5 million lawsuit?

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /beta
Disallow: /francais/news
Disallow: /english/news
Disallow: /espanol/news
Disallow: /arabic/news

Perhaps AFP isn’t concerned about Google indexing these pages and are more concerning with the indexing of the subscription pages. Since Google cannot get to these pages on the AFP site it is picking them up from other sites which do have an AFP subscription and have not taken measures to disallow Google from indexing them. A simple NOINDEX tag on these pages would do the trick, which AFP could require from its subscribers.

This may not even be the point, though, since under the “fair use” laws, using a title and 60-words of text will most likely not be seen as infringing in the U. S. courts which is where the lawsuit was filed. One has to wonder why the lawsuit was filed in the U. S. where these laws apply and not in the French courts where there is not as much lenience on using snippets from others copyrighted materials.

So, what is this lawsuit really about? Could it be about control, territory, pride, domination, keeping foreign influence at bay? Or is it really about the money? If it is all about the money, then it will be interesting to see how AFP fairs when Google excludes them and AFP’s competitors start riding high on the Google Gravy Train. Perhaps AFP doesn’t care, though. And perhaps this is what its all about.

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Is Your Zombie PC Used For DoS Attacks?

2005-03-20T07:02:00.000-08:00

According to a story in BBC News, hackers have hijacked over 1 million computers worldwide in order to conducts Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Spamming, Google AdSense abuse and identity theft. According to BBC News, “The huge number was revealed by security researchers who have spent months tracking more than 100 networks of remotely-controlled machines. The largest network of so-called zombie networks spied on by the team was made up of 50,000 hijacked home computers.”

Are you still feeling safe? The German Honeynet Project gathered, recorded, analyzed and publicized this information in hopes of making people aware that their home computers may be infected with these “zombie bots” without them knowing it. The home PC’s that are especially targeted are broadband home PC’s that are always turned on.

Without knowing it your home PC can help launch a DoS attack against another online business and take them down in seconds. This is most often done in order to wipe out one’s competition on the Internet. Sending out Spam to millions of other PC’s or manipulating Google AdSense results are other areas that hackers target with exploited PC’s. A newer area of exploitation by hackers is identity theft, where they will use a zombie PC to spoof an online bank like Washington Mutual or business such as Ebay or Paypal in order to get your credit card information or other personal information.

Most of the hijacked PC’s are running Windows XP (Service Pack 1) followed closely by systems with Windows 2000. The ports most often exploited are 445/TCP, 139/TCP, 137/UDP and 135/TCP. What is most remarkable, though, is that an unprotected PC needs only be connected to the Internet from a few seconds or a couple of minutes in order for the automated bot to find it and infect it. So, if you’re setting up a new PC, install your firewall and anti-virus software first, before going online for the first time.

In fact, in order to protect your home PC from these bots firewall, anti-virus and spyware software is essential in order to insure a clean machine. Even though you have taken all of these measures, though, this may not be enough to protect your PC. For instance, my last PC had all of these protective devices in place and still much activity would take place on the computer after it had been idle for some time. I couldn’t get to the bottom of all this activity that was keeping my hard drive busy and my screen saver from resting for an extended period. A new PC so far has help to solve this dilemma.

So, the next time you get one of those annoying pop-ups that say, “Is your computer infected by a virus” get rid of that pop-up, check your firewall and run your anti-virus and anti-spyware software just to make sure. Monitor your computer’s activity during idle time. If your PC tends to be very active at times when next to no activity should be present then you may wish to take additional steps such as turning off your PC frequently or taking the Shields Up test. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

MSN Brings Search Champs Back Into the Ring

2005-03-18T07:28:00.000-08:00

MSN has just announced its Search Champs v.2 program will be taking place in April 2005. In October 2004, MSN hosted the first round of Search Champs, calling upon experts from around the world (and even spammers) to help them fine-tune their new search engine technology before roll out in January 2005.

In the first round of Search Champs, MSN states “The Champs reviewed our product plans from the bottoms up, including the current and upcoming features as well as future ideas that hadn’t made it into our first version release.”

For Search Champs v.2 MSN goes onto say, “We worked hard in our selection process for V2 to ensure diversity, a wide range of backgrounds amongst the invitees, and fresh perspectives. The Search Champs V2 program has similar goals to the inaugural Champs program, and we are working diligently on an easier communications process based on some great feedback from V1.”

What a concept. One of the major search engine companies are actually bringing in expert users from around the world to pound on their product, make suggestions and overall make their search offerings a much better product. Not only that, but they’re also making a public announcement ahead of time to tell us this. MSN is stating that they are making a commitment to openly enlist the outside public’s help to create a better product for everyone. My hat’s off to MSN for engaging outside resources within the search community instead of hiding behind a cloak of secrecy as some search companies do (you know who you are).

This is a win-win for MSN and the public as the public is now actively engaged in the success of their product, having a vested interest in its success. MSN benefits by its bottom line. This spirit of cooperation of actively asking the public what it wants and then giving it to them, will go a long way in making-up market share in the search engine wars. Since the new MSN search was rolled out in January, I find myself using it more and more because of the lack of preference for older websites, the turnaround in making updates to the results pages and the relevance of the searches.

If Search Champs V2 can improve upon this performance, then I’m predicting many more rounds and even sequels to come. I even see a Sylvester Stallone endorsement in the offing: Rocky – Search Champs X: The Final Round. Coming to a streaming video home theatre near you.

It could happen.

Search Engines Are Good

2005-03-17T05:51:00.000-08:00

Due to some recent criticisms on my part regarding the major search engines, I now feel compelled to set the record straight on where I am coming from in regards to the SE’s. Search engines are good and I’m a big fan. That’s it. Simple as that. But like any passionate fan, I can be both the biggest supporter and the biggest critic at the same time.

In support of the search engines, I’m a huge fan of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AskJeeves and others. What kind of Internet would exist if we didn’t have the ability to do search? Or what would it be like if most searches were long, laborious and irrelevant? Would the Internet and ecommerce have taken off without search? I don’t think so. Besides the content on the Internet itself, search is what makes the Internet great.

In regards to the criticisms, I want to see that search keeps improving for the searcher. More relevant content and more relevant services while maintaining ease-of-use are the key. I also want to see that a somewhat even playing field among e-businesses is not only maintained but continues to improve in fairness. In these two areas I find myself lodging the majority of the criticisms towards the SE’s.

I’ve decided to set the record straight on my view of the search engines not because I’ve received any comments from others in regards to this, but I’m doing this of my own accord. Any time I feel I’ve been overly critical of something I also feel the need to step back and put the criticisms in perspective to the overall picture. The overall picture is that though I do criticize the search engines for their shortcomings, I’m also a big fan. For instance, where would an SEO firm be without the search engines? I think you get my point.

FactBites Search Engine Lets You Chews

2005-03-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

New search engine FactBites is chewing up the competition. FactBites is a refreshing new search engine that is different from all the rest. Do one search and the first thing you’ll notice is no advertising, just results.

The second thing you’ll notice is how the results appear. Generally the results are arranged with title on top and three bullet-pointed sentences underneath. The results are geared toward giving the searcher a real and informative snapshot of what the website is about without having to actually go there. This will save a lot of time as searchers simply need read the summaries to find what they’re looking for and not leave the FactBites site until they’re ready. In addition, at the top of the page, some alternative relevant categories are offered to help refine the search.

According to FactBites, “Ordinary search engines tell you next to nothing about the sites they select for you. How many times have you thought "Well, sure, I know that these pages all contain my keywords, but do they really have anything to do with my topic?" Visiting every site until you find the right one is a hassle. Factbites presents the user with full, meaningful sentences from every site in the search results…Factbites searches for matches on the basis of your whole topic area, not just your keyword. This means that it can return relevant, informative results on your topic that don't necessarily mention the word you searched for.”

The one big downside right now is that FactBites is somewhat limited in its searching for keyword phrases. In fact of the several phrases I tried to search for I was returned this message, “Remember this is a topic-based search engine. Further, our coverage is limited in this beta version. Please avoid unusual combinations of words.” The good news is though that one word phrases work well. And of course I’m happy since searching for “seo” puts the SEO Firm website in the number 2 position.

All-in-all, if you want, “Just the facts, Ma’am” and no advertising shouting at you from the pages, then you just may be ready to swallow the new FactBites offerings.

Websites Hijacked: Wagons Circle the Googleplex

2005-03-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

There is another interesting thread in WebmasterWorld.com that talks about how websites are being hijacked by unscrupulous webmasters and the Google Police are asleep at their desks, with “Do Not Disturb” signs on their doors. According to the thread, websites with Page Rank 5 or below are being targeted by criminal Webmasters, which tank their competition and raise their own sites in the Google rankings violating copyright among other things.

The webpage thieves are doing so by means of a “randomly generated meta refresh page pointing to an unsuspecting site.” These pages employ a 302 redirect inside their server pointing to the unsuspecting Webmaster’s page. As Webmasters who are into search engine optimization know, Google will penalize sites using 302 redirects.

What this means is that if you, your Ma and Pa or Aunt and Uncle build a website in hopes of retiring early and working from home and are unfortunate enough to be targeted for a hijacking, you website will never achieve high rankings in Google, will languish at the bottom of the rankings forever and most likely you will never know why. Only the savviest of Webmaster may be able to discern that a 302 hijacking is actually occurring.

Apparently, Yahoo! and MSN are not susceptible to this hijacking problem as Google is. That is why many Webmasters are up in arms now and wish to storm the Googleplex with picks, axes and laptops in hand. The problem has been going on for 9 months or more and the most vocal of Google’s representatives (unofficial), GoogleGuy has yet to respond.

So, if you have a website that has been optimized for the search engines and is performing well in Yahoo! and MSN and is over 8 months old (outside of the Google Sandbox) but is buried in the Google rankings, your site may just be the target of a website burglar. Right now there is no good solution to this dilemma, so a call-to-action phone call or email campaign to Google may just be in order.

It is recommended, though, that you call or email first before circling the Googleplex as a courtesy warning shot before the actual Cyber-Alamo begins.

Google Sandbox MSN Sandbox Like Night and Day

2005-03-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

Both Google and MSN each have their respected sandboxes though the difference between them is like night and day. The Google Sandbox is an unofficial name dubbed by those outside of Google for where new websites go to languish for the next 8 months until they suddenly pop up into the rankings.

The MSN Sandbox is an official title given to an area of the MSN site where people can go to play with the newest betas that MSN has to offer. As of this writing the MSN Sandbox contains new beta releases such as MSN’s Anti-Spyware, Newsbot, Spaces, Messenger 7, Toolbar Suite, Lookout Search Tool, 3-degrees, NetScan and TerraService.

Of note is the MSN Spaces service which is, “A brand new MSN service that makes it easy to create and share an online scrapbook; complete with blogs, photos and personal recommendation lists.” This slick, consumer-oriented offering lets friends and family communicate in a whole new way. In addition, a new application called 3-degrees, let’s family and friends, “connect online, extending real-world social interactions.” This tool allows for simultaneous interaction such as listening to a shared play list at the same time.

It is apparent that MSN is stepping up their game in the search engine wars. Not only are they offering new analytical tools for news searches and desktop search but they’re also offering fun, personalized services as well.

Sandbox is a better name for MSN’s play area than Google’s storage area. In fact a better name for Google’s filter / archive might be StorageBox or FlowerBox or even CatBox. Can you dig it? But in regards to MSN’s Sandbox its play time – so go play.

SEO Inc. Loses a Chink in the Rankings

2005-03-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

SEO Inc. has been a mainstay in the number one position in Google for the coveted search term “search engine optimization” for as long as I can remember. Now SubmitExpress has taken over that position. So, one can view this as normal search engine fluctuation or variation, and yes, this is possible.

But with the recent Google update just a couple of weeks ago where some pages from SEOGuy went south after a long run in the north, one has to wonder if Google is indeed becoming more democratic. Outside of Google’s recent internal cloaking and keyword stuffing debacle, it looks like they are making moves that will give other companies a chance at top positions rather than having a few companies grabbing and holding all of the top spots for themselves.

I’m not going to make any statements of whether or not SEO Inc. deserves to be in the number one position, since I do believe they are about one in ten who would fit that position nicely (the other 9 being the ones on the same page). Ironically, though, three out of the top 10 for the search term are actually search engine submission websites.

Not to name names, but one company has not only disappeared from the top 10 but off the map as well. This company advocated using SEO tricks such as building hidden doorway pages and using invisible text in order to gain top rankings and guided you through the process of building this system. This was bound to happen though as Google has been cleaning up these kinds of sites from their SERP’s within the past 6 months.

Perhaps a truly democratic Google experience is right around the corner. Or perhaps the only thing that is really important is that we keep taking steps in that direction.