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Search Engine Roundtable (15 unread)

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 22, 2008

Posted: August 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Permalink for 'Search_Engine_Roundtable/2008/08/22/Weekly_Search_Buzz_Recap___08_22_08__SES_SJ_2008_Recap__AdWords_Quality_Score_Update___Apple_Store_is_Cloaking_'

Weekly Search Buzz Recap - 08/22/08: SES SJ 2008 Recap, AdWords Quality Score Update & Apple Store is Cloaking!

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 6:30pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Can you believe the summer is almost over -- for real? And can you believe that SES San Jose is over? I can't--and I still wish I went! (As you could probably tell, I didn't. I'm moving in 2 weeks!)

Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008

So what did you miss this week? Well, we had some nice bloggers help us with great coverage of Search Engine Strategies. All in all, the 4 days were packed with great informative sessions and we have the liveblogs for you.

Thanks again to our livebloggers, Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs, Sheara Wilensky & Avi Wilensky of PromediaCorp, Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel, Chris Boggs of Brulant, and Dave Rohrer.

Google AdWords Quality Score Update

Yesterday, Google announced that the quality scores were changing in real time. They also added in a relatively professional way that they'd be raising costs. Forum members are not particularly pleased with that part.

Yahoo Redesigns Explored

This week, we've seen Yahoo indent site results in a format that is similar to the layout we're familiar with on Google. It's not all that bad. Yahoo Site Explorer has also been redesigned with several new features. I recommend that you sign up.

Google Integrates 404 Widget Experience

Got a 404? Google has a widget points you to the proper page. Except it didn't work at first -- mostly because the server was returning a 200 response on our test page. Google then fixed it but JohnMu tells us that we shouldn't be returning a 200 response on any of these pages. So yeah -- it was our fault for the most part, but we has fun blogging that. ;)

Will Your Penalized Site Get Trusted Again by Google?

If your site is penalized for doing something wrong, does Google hold it against you forever? According to a recent discussion on the topic, no, if you clean up, you're given a chance. I like that computers are so nice to us. I wish people were just as nice. ;)

Desperate for Link Exchanges? Hit Up Google Groups!

If email fails you and you can't get those links you're begging for, you can always troll on Google Groups. But fortunately, the folks at Google have a good sense of humor and respond in kind. ;)

Is the Apple Store Cloaking?

As you may or may not know, RustyBrick is building a Jewish prayer book for the iPod Touch and iPhone. We've had a lot of success with it thus far, but Barry recently discovered that the Apple store may be cloaking. In this particular case, the Google cache shows information that is only available in the iTunes store. The big question: is the Google cache really crawling the iTunes store? (What do you think?) Thus, is this cloaking?

Google AdSense Font Tests Occurring Again

What do you think of a Google AdSense unit that matches the font of your site altogether too well -- or not at all? Well, Google is running limited tests on fonts for AdSense units. Google is looking for feedback as well, so be sure to give them your $0.02.

WebPosition Rankings Update Forthcoming

Do you rely on WebPosition? We've had a lot of recent coverage about the issue that ranking reports stopped working, and WebPosition is working on a fix that many forum members feel is going to be short-lived. We shall see.

Congratulations to Search Marketing Standard Magazine!

If you missed the announcement, we're here to tell you that Search Marketing Standard was acquired by iNET Interactive. This is a huge milestone for the print publication and great news for readers. Congratulations to you all!

Read This

If you're dependent upon the video recaps instead of the text recaps, I'm sorry to say but Barry is on vacation this weekend. Thus, you're stuck with me for this week's report. So sorry to disappoint! :)

Webmasters Discuss Google Base and Shopping SERPs

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 5:18pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

A week ago, we blogged about the effectiveness of Google Base and the shopping SERPs. To reiterate, webmasters have wondered whether Google Base would help them achieve better traffic or if there was no change when utilizing this other Google product.

In a blog comment, an anonymous retailer says that using Google Base has helped him/her get an increase in traffic and the person encourages others to try it out.

On WebmasterWorld, many people say that it has helped them as well. Netmeg, for example, says that "everyone we've submitted a feed for is doing surprisingly well with it."

"What if you don't have reviews?" one member asks. A useful tip is provided:

Reviews are hard to get. We find that only 3% of the people who buy actually leave a review.
What you have to do is to break out the adwords budget a bit, get that nice badge and start driving traffic to your top 10 selling items. If you use two or three check out methods, offer some kind of discount for people to use Google check out for payment. We used a 5% off your order type of coupon we made in our Google Checkout panel if you placed your order online.

From there, service your customer and wait for the reviews.

As another forum member says that you don't have to focus your energy *all* on Google. "[T]he more shopping engines you advertise on the more reviews Google will pick up, assuming you get reviews on those other shopping sites."

Google Base program policies are here if you want to try it out.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Map Maker Now Available in 57 Countries

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:51pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

At the end of June, we announced the launch of Google Map Maker. Now, two months later, Google has its own update. From a Google Groups thread, we're told that Google Map Maker is now available in 57 countries.

Again, here are some features available to you when you utilize the Map Maker:

There's a Map Maker User Help document for more ways to use this tool and a Google Map Maker Group as well.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Google AdWords New Quality Score Announcement

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:38pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Google has new and important information about the Quality Score, according to the Inside AdWords blog. According to the AdWords team, the Quality Score is more accurate since it will be computed during every single query. Keywords will no longer be marked as "inactive for search." Also, there's a "first page bid" to replace the "minimum bid." The AdWords team explains:

First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They're based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad's Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword.

Forum members are reacting with much cynicism toward this approach. On DigitalPoint Forums, a well-seasoned advertiser worries that first time bidders will "start raising bids to get on the front page when they should probably be bidding using an ROI strategy."

Over at WebmasterWorld, similar sentiment is expressed and there's a lot more confusion. What happens if an advertiser wishes to lower his bid from the first page bid? Google has yet to answer that.

Other people think this is a nicer way for Google to say that they're raising advertising costs. Surprised?

However, one advertiser says that the "first page bid" may actually help since it's saving time on testing. It's a good point but I still think the skepticism needs to be addressed as those points are a lot more worrisome.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo! Site Explorer Gets a Facelift

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

The Yahoo Search Blog tells us that Yahoo! Site Explorer has a new interface with more dynamic features. Additionally, the redesign boasts a new Site Summary page that provides interesting statistics for sites that have been authenticated with Yahoo! Site Explorer. You can see this and more at [https:]. (The blog post already has some nice comments, including a bunch of spam comments that I hope Yahoo deletes, like this: "Hi, This new tool is ok, though i haven't checked it but just uploaded my new website on low cost health insurance..." Enough said.)

Barry has already blogged about the new features on Search Engine Land and explains that the new Site Summary page gives you a nice bit of information as seen below:

+ Site URL
+ Number of pages known
+ Number of pages crawled
+ Number of host on this domain
+ Number of inlinks
+ Number of inlink domains
+ Number of outlinks
+ Number of outlink domains

Here's an image of the new interface as well:

It looks good. Thanks for the update, Yahoo!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Is Apple Cloaking Their iTunes Content, With Google Looking The Other Way?

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Cloaking IP Delivery

Over the past few weeks, my brother and I have been working on a side project at RustyBrick on building out iPhone Apps. During this process, I took detailed notice to how iTunes works, how their API functions, and how Google indexes that content and it has raised some questions in my mind.

Let me step back and take you through this. We build an iPhone or iPod Touch application for the Jewish community. It is called Siddur, which is a Jewish prayer book. In short, it has Jewish prayers and tools to aid in those prayers. The community loves it, so I wanted to share the "reviews" that are on the iTunes Store with everyone, so we looked into using the API or XML from the iTunes store. As you can see on the iPhone Siddur, we added customer reviews pulled dynamically from the XML. How did I find the XML?

When we were looking at some Google search results, I discovered this result. If you click on the link, it actually will open up iTunes on your computer but if you click on the cache link, it shows you the content you would find in the iTunes application.

Screen Shot Search Result:

Screen Shot of iTunes App in Store:

Screen Shot of Google Cache:

So I did some forum research, to find an old WebmasterWorld thread. The thread talks about Apple's relationship with Google but then interestingly enough has a link. The link is [google.com], which then links to http://services.google.com/marketing/links/itunes. Now, that is interesting, but I can speculate on it or it can be something that is 100% unbiased and not "evil." Update: It appears that the Google iTunes link in this paragraph no longer redirect to Google AdWords. They did last night and they did in 2005. Update 2: Matt Cutts of Google explained below that the google.com/itunes link was an old promotion for music labels. Basically, Music Labels received a promo to sign up with Google AdWords to promote their music. The promo is no longer valid, so Google dropped the link. So it seems totally unrelated to this story.

So why am I uncomfortable with this? Well, not everyone has iTunes on their computer. By listing the content of what is found in iTunes, in Google, as if it was a document accessible on the web... Well, that seems not so useful. Why not label these results as "iTunes" is required, or something like that? Why not let other developers build this into Google through Sitemaps?

Yes, I know Apple provides these iTunes hyperlinks so people can easily send the link to friends to download music, movies or apps - but again, these are not real "web documents." Or maybe, I am just being too picky?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Can A Google Penalized Site Get All Of It's Trust Back Quickly?

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:01pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A question I get quiet often is, my site has been penalized, and I want to know if I will have to start from scratch, to earn Google's trust back? I often say that I doubt you have to start "from scratch," but I am sure you won't be at the level of "trust" you once had with Google, after they have learned that you once did something that was not so good in their eyes.

A Google Groups thread asks that question and Googler, JohnMu, responds. Here is the question:

While waiting to see if a recent Reconsideration Request is accepted, I have been wondering whether or not Google regards any domain that has ever been penalised as less trustworthy than a domain that has not.
Or is it the case that once a penalty has been removed and a site is placed back in the search index, it can compete on a level playing field - as it did before the penalty?

JohnMu of Google said:

If a site cleans up issues so that it complies with our Webmaster Guidelines, then there's generally no reason why we would treat it as something less trustworthy. Cleaning things up is always a good idea :).

I always wonder what this "trust" factor is. Can it visually look like some sort of trust slider? The more trust, the more the slider goes to the right, the less trust, the more it is to the left?

How I see it, if a site is penalized for links, the day before the penalty, Google has your trust at (let's say) a 8.5 of 10. Now, Google flagged many of your links as part of a link scheme and your site and those links fall in trust. Now your site drops to a trust value of 1.5 of 10. Now that you have been penalized, you work on cleaning up your links by getting rid of the bad links. As you do this, Google may say, okay, we now trust your site, so you slide back up to maybe a 5.5 of 10. But those old links, the bad ones, that Google once trusted, are now gone forever. So you won't reach the 8.5 of 10, like you once had.

Now that is how I envision the link side of things. I can be 100% wrong, it is just how I imagine it working.

According to Google's response, it is possible to gain all your trust back. But, for some reason, I don't think it is possible to get it ALL back overnight.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

SES San Jose Roundtable Live Coverage Day Four Recap

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 3:02am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Here is the concise version of the live blogging coverage our volunteers put together at SES San Jose yesterday:

Again, a big thank you to our volunteer live bloggers, breaking their fingers on their keyboards. Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs, Sheara Wilensky & Avi Wilensky of Promedia Corp, Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel, Chris Boggs of Brulant, and Dave Rohrer.

Searching For Jobs in Search: Starting and Advancing Your Career in the Industry

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 1:53am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

This panel of experts will discuss the qualities they look for in candidates, as well as strategies for career advancement in the search industry. The discussion will include:

How have the criteria for a strong candidate evolved over the years? Are the sources that were relied on in the past different than they are today?

How can you break into the search industry as a marketer who doesn't have direct experience with the medium?

Can specific training jumpstart the experience necessary to enter into the search industry? What particular types of training are recommended?

How important is training and continuing education to career advancement? What are other recommendations for career advancement?

Moderator:

Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce

Speakers:

Frank Watson, CEO, Kangamurra Media

Katie Donovan, Business Development Manager, SEMPO Institute

Ken Clark, EVP & Co-founder, Onward Search

Search Jobs: Demand is High. Look at SEMPO Job Board. Salaries are still fairly high as well.

Hiring Criteria/Skills

KC: companies are focused on what is your experience within the industry or segment they operate in as opposed to just are you a good search marketer. They want proven success in that niche.

KD: Need people skills.

FW: Someone that is going to be outgoing. Need to have certain level of confidence.

KD is finding that training sales people in SEO helps, they have the people skills and can help understand what problems the customer is having.

Audience member: better to have someone with narrow and deep skills, or wide but shallow skills. Need to look at size of company. Job seekers need to look at where they find a place they might like and what matches their skill sets and what their area of comfort.

Amazon person in audience: looking for horsepower, analytics skills and creative ability. They ask lots and lots of questions to help determine if the candidate has these skills.

FW commented to audience member that it is great to have someone that has both the marketing knowledge and the IT knowledge and can sit in the middle. KC: Don’t think there’s a perfect background to be a search marketer.

For new people, is training a good thing? KD said previous training is a good thing, SEMPO and one other are only ones with certification programs, some employers do give everyone training when they come in. Ways to prove what you can do: take a charity and do things for them. SEM Cares. KC: feels training/course does give an advantage. Be able to demonstrate something to the employer that shows you have initiative, even if it is a small project.

Breaking In/Finding Jobs

SEMPO has an RFP section, often has people with small budgets, but you might be able to get experience from them. Look at Craigslist and other online places to find small things to build up portfolio. Come to conferences like this to network with people. Affiliate marketing might be another way to prove what you can do, but may be difficult. KC: take active part in managing your reputation online. Recruiters do their research. Make sure you’re on LinkedIn.

Don’t have to write about SEO on a blog. FW wants to see your passion for something, write about what you know and what you’re interested in. DT asks panel how to do lateral transfers. How do you keep your advancement going after you’ve gone past the entry level? KC: There is an executive trail. He doesn’t have numbers to quote, but there is job creation in those higher levels.

Training

Online Training, Certifications (online courses, search engines). It’s a nice to have, but not a must have. Not like on IT side where you need to have an MCSE to get a job. Probably a couple of years to figure out which certifications will be in the highly desired. They are more beneficial for someone just getting into the field.

Advancing Your Career

FW: Become more known in the space. Get a moderator job on one of the forums. KC: ask yourself where you want to be in five years. Do I want to be a generalist or specialist? Agency or inhouse? Manager or individual contributor?

KD: just because you know you’ve done well, others may not realize. You do have to let people know about your accomplishments.

Thanks to Keri for this!

Search Advertising Tools

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 1:35am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

In order to get a leg up on the competition, successful Search Engine Marketers need to be armed with the latest tools of the trade. Join us as we explore a range of popular search engine advertising tools along with some important features you should be aware of. Whether you are looking for a free basic tool that will help you get started or a more advanced paid offering, our panel of experts will provide you with the insight and experience to zero in on the right solution.
Moderator:
Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ
Speakers:
Yoav Izhar-Prato, Co-founder & CEO, Kenshoo LTD
Neeraj Kochhar, VP/Director of Search, SMG Search
Thomas Bindl, Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH
David S. Kidder, Co-Founder & CEO, Clickable

First up is Yoav from Kenshoo.

Keeping all the ingredients in place and correlation between them is the key factor. Must implement "quality management".

What is quality management? Understanding page content, behavior, and how conversions take place.

Under consumer behavior - takes 4-5 clicks on average for conversion to take place. Most of the systems in place today attribute the conversion to the last keyword used. You need to look at the whole path to the conversion. You need to be able to assign weights to first click, last click - weights needs to be allocated properly.

Another aspect is super structuring. Doesn't matter how many engines using, need one campaign management center. Use your structure across all campaigns.

Bid optimization - algorithmic and rule based. Believes in a combination of both.

Major aspect is path to conversion. Lots of keywords can contribute to the conversion. Again, assigning weights to them is critical.

Next up is Neeraj from SMG.

What is a holistic approach? Search in the context of broader cross channel communications. Looking at TV, and other channels collectively is key.

Talent - need search professionals with marketing mindsets that understand consumer behavior, ROAS, engagement and technology.

Innovation - we think of search as web based. Expanding beyond that to mobile. Agnostic to a particular device. Understand the motivation for mobile search. Understand the motivation for Google to present text results or image results.

Technology - generation efficiencies.

Methodology and approach - life cycle of a search campaign.

First piece is to understand consumers. Google Trends is a good tool for this. What other queries are consumers using? What are consumers thinking about your business? Mine search query data. Look at seasonality.

Connect - how to take the insights and build messaging, how do you target people? What mode are people in?

Measurement - key component - otherwise throwing dollars away.

Beauty of search is speed. Can do all this fairly quickly. All this happens in real time and in a dynamic way. Don't need to invest millions. Can invest small.

Holistic approach - two key components - paid and natural. With SEO there are no guarantees, but need to get all the work done. With paid search you can bid on keywords you can't rank for naturally. Want to maximize coverage on page 1. Drop off rate from Page 1 to 2 is 85%-88%. Page 1 is the true opportunity. Need to be there. Need to craft the right balance between SEO and paid.

Starts with KW list. Look at volume. Map keywords with content. Where do you need to supplement or get support from paid? Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz, and other tools are great.

Must understand if search is always a meaningful platform. Can it help you if you are in the deodorant business?

Must look at entire cycle - the funnel. How are people moving on from keyword to keyword through the funnel and what do they do to prior to converting?

Finally, competitive analysis. What are you up against? What is the likelihood you will succeed?
What's your strategy relative to the competition? Always keep a holistic approach in mind.

Need a way to centrally manage all your keywords. How do you generate scale? May be running campaigns on 3 - 10 engines. Need to consolidate. Need to look at all the variables.

Measuring beyond the click. Are consumers completing the actions you want them to complete? Are they driving sales?

If doing something on TV, or radio, it's important to have search support.

That's all.

Last up is Thomas Bindl. Topic - "Tools that make SEM life easier".

Gives live demos of the following keyword tools:

Google Sets (great for generating keywords)
Digital Point keyword suggestion tool (Gives free access to WordTracker)
SEO Book keyword tool
Google Trends
Refine Labs keyword tool (pulls data from Google and shows competition and volume)
Spyfu
Keycompete

Contributed by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

Organic Listings Forum

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:49am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Pose questions to our panel of experts about free "organic" listing issues, plus participate in this session that allows the audience to share tips, tools, and techniques. There's no set agenda, so this is an ideal session to discuss any major recent changes with organic listings.

Moderator:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media

Speakers:
Jerry West, Founder, Web Marketing Now
Sharad Verma, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search
Aaron D'Souza, Software Engineer, Google
Nathan Buggia, Program Manager Lead, Webmaster Center, Live Search

It's the next to last session of four days at SES and it's a forum session with no set agenda, so this is a bit incomplete. My apologies in advance.

Singular vs. plural search phrases. How do they treat them different? Verma talks about search engines doing query rewriting. Buggia – sometimes will combine word into what they think is root word, sometimes they keep them separate. D'Souza also said that it shouldn't matter. Where it might be different is how much weight each term gets – should a stem get more weight? That's where you might get some variation, but not as vast as questioner found.

Variability of results among the engines. Missed explanation as to differences here. Each engine does have a different type of audience, they have different types of behaviors when they search.

Think about ranking about which types of pages to show for what pages. Indexing is what pages to index, but without any context. Try to figure out which pages are going to answers questions.

Question about searches / pages from different countries. Vanessa said it was good to set targeting for country in Webmaster Tools. There will be filtering in SERPs.

D'Souza Mentioned duplicating filtering at indexing level.

Grehan said ideal would be to have servers/host in country of target.

Buggia said top level domain is biggest clue. Having directory structure for each language does help

Vanessa: use meta language tag.

Title/keyword phrase combinations. Example of four words phrase, any subset of this would have a match, as would stems. Stuffing title tag less important than quality of content on site.

Displaying results on search engines. SERPs not showing meta descrptions. Meta descriptions are good to create a snippet when they can't easily find the text in the page (but have a lot of inlinks that talk about it).

Inbound links. Asks about page rank toolbar. Grehan says it's green fairy dust. D'Souza says it's not integers, much finer granularity.

Buggia all sites use page rank-type thing as initial base value, but so many more things go into ranking. Think of a search engine as a reputation engine.

Top five things you would focus on? You've got to be kidding if you're going to get a straight answer out of this panel for that.

Content.
Audience. Have a specific audience and people who want your content.
Internal linking
Do a site: search in Google using phrase in question, then adjust linking structure. Look at how other sites are doing this, make sure you also look natural in what you're doing with incoming anchor text links, etc.

Grehan asked what panel thought about PR sculpting.
Look at your problems, start fixing those first. Make sure you understand value to the business of things like page rank sculpting – how do you know that's what you should work on, vs. other things that would be better to work on.

Gerhan asked how important is an H tag. Diff't pieces of text on the page are rated differently. Other more important things though about content. Rainy day thing you may want to take care of, but again other stuff should fix at.

Be sure to use webmaster tools for each engine. You can get info from engines about problems they have, crawling info, and give them clues about what is going on.

Provided by Keri.

The Best Kept Secrets to Search

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:32am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Secrets of paid and organic search? Sure, they're out there. Join us for a no-holds-barred interactive session in which veteran search engine marketers disclose some of their favorite search engine optimization and marketing tips, tricks, and secrets. While there's no replacement for old-fashioned hard work, getting the inside scoop and shortcuts to search success never hurt.

Moderator:
· Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce

Speakers:
· Katee Crawford, Online & E-mail Marketing Specialist, California Chamber of Commerce
· Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting
· Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite

Q&A Panelist:
· Jamie Smith, CEO, Engine Ready

Dana: I am so psyched about this panel. We are going to take about red hat – revenge SEO!

First up is Katee Crawford, with her is Jamie Smith, they work hand in hand so Jamie may pop in with some comments. Please welcome Katee Crawford to the stage.

Katee: I am going to be speaking to you about what we do at the California Chamber of Commerce. We are NOT tourism, everyone thinks we are. We are large business advocates and we also provide affordable and easy to use services. We provide labor law compliance info, books and software. For marketing we use PPC campaigns and started SEO as well. We do catalogs, direct mails and email campaigns – about 30 in the past year.

I am going to give you some tips in how to improve your ROI.

Educate your SEM company on all your marketing materials and products.
Joint efforts produce better results so work together.
Rethink the norm: Integrate marketing with promotional offers.
The "I deserve it" tactic works. We gave away free Starbucks cards.
Track often and evaluate honestly.

Jamie: PPC Insider Tips:

- Don't change your bid more than once every couple of days – when you run the reports, it skews your conclusions when you change your bids, and it defeats the purpose of testing
- Test special characters in your ad creative, such as TM
- Exact match all combinations of exact matched terms
- Test no spaces between words in a multiple word phrase
- Test placing phone number in ad – we found that local numbers vs. 800 numbers improve the call in rate
- Test placing .com at the end of some keywords.

Katee: We are looking forward to 2009 to improve our marketing plan. Thank you!

Eric Enge: I have 5 quick tips for you.

Syndicating content is a great way to get links, lots of websites are starved for quality content, so it solves the problem for them, and you in turn can get links with good anchor text. The bad part is that when you do syndicate content, the engines see duplicate content, and they will almost always recognize the original author – but not always.

But the solution is simple. Take the article, get a writer to work with it, and give it a spin – and you might get a different result.

Local Search: Search engine challenge: obtaining accurate data. So they use many sources, such as yellow page sites, syndicators such as LocalEze and local news sites.

Give them the data directly. All 3 major search engines give you a way to give them authenticated data directly. Give them accurate data.

Google Local: They will allow you to submit locations individually or by feed. The feed is useful for large numbers of locations. Individual submissions are verified by Google.

More on KML – "Keyhole Markup Language" – language for geographical annotation. Search engines find the location of your KML using your sitemap file.

It's good to be listed in many places. It increases the data accuracy problem. Invest the time and effort to get this data right. Services help with this but cost money.

In summary: Quality data drives rankings!!!

Getting free links from Google Webmaster Tools:

- If you don't have an account, get one!
- Add to your .htaccess file a 301 redirect from the incorrect to the right one.
- Look for malformed URLs.
- Look for the Not Found Report in the Web Crawl Errors section.

Make sure you find lost links! Sometimes sites list URLs but don't like them. Media especially is bad at this. If you can discover these situations and ask people to fix them it would be very good.

MSN Search Funnels – shows what the users intent was when they do a search term, what they search on next. You can go the other way, and see also what they search on before. You can also use search funnels to isolate problems on your website.

Dana: Next up is Richard Zwicky,

Richard: I work at Enquisite. If you don't know what we do, look it up. I will share with you today some basics about what you should know and then go a little deeper.

If you don't know this, you are missing a huge opportunity: only 1.8% of traffic comes from page 2 of the search results. Everything else comes from page 1. So spend a little of time on the pages that are on page 2 and you will increase your traffic.

Build out what the customers are actually trying to get from your site. Don't just focus on getting the traffic, but what do to with that traffic.

Links are probably the most relevant, non-page factor you can build into your SEO. You need to understand what's coming to your own site and what's coming to your competition. Also, identify sites that are citing you but not linking to you.

MSN has some great linking tools. Use linkfromdomains:www.yoursite.com.

Regional links – they matter. Think of links geographically.

Learn, learn and learn some more. There is no magic. You're competitors are probably lazier than you are. Take an active interest in continuing education.

So – when to consider going black? I have found that anyone doing SEO properly knows how black hat works, so they don't cross the line and do anything bad.

What do you do? Someone is slandering you or your business. They do it anonymously so you don't know who it is. So if you want to get rid of a bad site, do it at your own risk. Be very careful. I don't do this, but I know how to do it. Here are the steps.

Go buy a domain. Don't touch your own. Don't use your own name! Get a UPS mailbox near your opponent's address.
Go buy another domain. Don't use your own name! Put your opponent's address on your site.
Go buy another domain name with your opponents address. Go to the post office and pay for a mail redirect to your mailbox!!
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Do it again, host your sites all over the place. Never use your name.
Make sure none of your sites link to each other.
Start optimizing these sites and get good links. Link out to the same sites as your opponent. Get yourself in the same neighborhood as far as the search engines are concerned.
Link to your opponent, ask them for a link. Get indexed. Do some SEO work.
Start showing up in the SERPs.
Add more content, however you can. Reprint PR from within the industry.
Have a bunch of orphaned pages in your sitemap.
Submit the site map.
Now go out and start messing with all of these sites. Do everything bad you can think of. Go copy your opponent's content! Do it as fast as possible as soon as the content is posted and submit it as fast as possible!
Start messing up. Start copying their sitemap into your own. Remember, you look like them according to your registration info. You kind of look them as a website. It's confusing to the engines.
Keep doing more black hat and work really hard to get your site banned.
Just after you have pulled every stunt you can, and you know these sites are going to get banned, redirect to your opponent!!!!!!!!!!
[This gets a lot of laughs]

Now your opponent will get thrown out. Everything you have done looks like them and now everything bad will happen to them. But of course they bashed your site in the first place so they deserve it. Now all of what they did is going to get looked at. And if they happened to do something wrong along the way, now they are facing review. And if they get resubmitted, and they mess up in the future, the threshold for error is really low.

So what have you done? You have forced the competition to clean up their act!!!!!!!!!

Session coverage provided by Sheara Wilensky of Promediacorp.

How to Choose a Search Vendor

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:18am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Marketers face a bewildering number of options in selecting their search marketing campaign tools and vendors, and making a decision will only become more difficult as the variety of players in the industry grows. Likewise, instead of just settling for the usual functionality, features, and pricing, search marketers are clamoring for more integrated tools and innovative solutions when they survey the various vendors. Join us for an enlightening discussion as industry veterans share insight into matching the best product offering to your company's individual search goals.
Moderator:
Jonathan Allen, Search Marketing Specialist, VNUnet.com
Speakers:
Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search, DoubleClick Performics
Jeannie Moran, eCommerce Marketing Director, AutoNation

Eric from Doubleclick starts off.

Has an agency point of view. Will talk about natural and paid, and will give guidelines what to look for in a PPC provider. Also, guidelines for finding someone to bring pieces together.

8 Things to consider for hiring an SEO firm:

1- An understanding of your business, goals, and has a plan around that. Stay away from anything that feels canned, templated, or prepackaged. Need customization.

2- Alignment - someone with experience in your vertical. Need someone with expertise, or partners that have the expertise. Always question and test expertise and background.

3- Consider what your buying. Basically hiring a consultant when hiring an SEO or PPC firm. Looking for a partner to work with you in an integrated fashion. Look for someone with expertise in consulting. Find someone who is a taskmasker - will push you forward. Need to get recommendations implemented. Want someone who is pushy to get tasks and goals accomplished.

4- Equipped - Want to find a whole team that represents you. Folks that specialize in copy, keyword research, technical side - when you have that team - you get the best of both worlds. Good account management at the front end. Find a vendor that is balanced. Balance between technology and expertise is the sweet spot. Be wary of folks who tell you they have everything you need, but don't. Just like interviewing - ask for examples of work, tools they use and how they use them, and how they will help you move towards your goals.

5- Sound methodologies - SEO done right is an art and science. Need a good process, one that doesn't limit creativity. Find one methodology that is specific to SEO - like keyword methodology. Ask questions about it.

6- Leaders - you need an advocate for your goals. Having someone with the skills to understand how to talk to technologists, marketers, to digest this is important. Passion is very important. Need someone who can preach the benefits of SEO. Be careful that if they have these skills, they have the expertise to back it up. Good vision + good tool sets.

7- Education is vital. Good consultants share information. Need someone who is open about their knowledge in a simple manner. Someone who can speak in layman's terms and technically.

8- Trustworthiness. Hiring a partner, so honesty is so important. If you feel oversold or fabricated, try to trip up with questions. Get referrals. Find out the work they've done. Just like on a job interview - if you probe and ask the right questions, you will get to the right story. At the end of the day, you have to trust your gut. Have to feel good about it. Don't hire because someone is down the street. Need to find someone who matches your culture and can communicate well.

Choosing a paid search vendor:

Outsourcing is done for efficiency. Consider three things.

1- Are you going to get an account manager that will do everything? A generalist? Or will you get a specialist. Bid management is huge. Need someone with the skills.

2- Technology - need integrated API's with the engines. Frequency of reporting is close to real time. Want to know about tool sets. How do they do bid management? How do they structure campaigns?

3- Methodology - Ask what the typical launch time frame is? What goes into a launch? What is the process? Need to be as clear and organized as possible. Need consistent delivery on promises. Dig deep and ask tough questions.

How can we bring these together? There is a massive trend of clients looking for holistic search management. Old model was to find best in breed in SEO and PPC. If not working together - not thinking of it as one - leaving opportunity on the table. Need someone who an test rankings and ROI on both the SEO and PPC side.

Next up is Jeannie from AutoNation, Inc. AutoNation is the largest auto dealer group in the county.

Will present the opposite view - from the client side. What they look for. Goal is to share specifics of what worked for them.

The auto industry has been hit hard recently. There's a huge focus on where dollars are being spent.

Setting the stage. Has hired several vendors, and fired several. Can't settle.

Hiring a vendor is a partner. Going into a relationship.

5 Rules:
#1- Sign a prenup. A mutual NDA. Puts both parties at ease.
#2- Don't disrespect the family. Need to be aligned.
#3- Build trust. Set reasonable expectations. It's a two way street. Client has to build trust with agency. Need to trust what vendor is sharing. Lots of ways data can be manipulated.
#4- Be honest about dating others. Working with multiple partners can be tricky. They use multiple vendors, but they know what each other is doing.
#5- Keep everyone happy. Make sure it's worth the vendors time and your time.

Groundwork for Success.
Educate yourself in what you are buying. Need to be able to ask the right questions. Some players will guarantee positions. Must filter between pros and amateurs.

Purchasing considerations - never meet with the sales team only. Meet with someone who will be accountable with what will be done in proposal.

Make sure technology is compatible with applications already in use.

Confirm capabilities; Does the tool work on tier 1 and tier 2 engines?

Get all promises in writing.

Negotiate a trial period. A test pilot. Only do things that way now.

Always ask about hidden costs. How do you know what to ask for?

Technology is very important. Ensure that applications for tracking and reporting is not being duplicated or inflating.

Check if product works with foreign languages.

Verify API status to ensure that fees are included in contract, not additional.

Make sure you understand methodology for measurement.

Support - need a strong team. An available contact.

SEO Vendor Considerations:

1) Strong keyword research strategy. How will they determine KW's you will show up for?
2) Strong copywriting and link building.
3) Optimization plan for organic pages.
4) Measure organic conversion and ROI.
5) Proven results. Ask about failure, success, and referrals.

Paid Search Vendor Considerations:

1) PPC programs in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
2) Web traffic measurement tools to measure your precise ROI.
3) A/B testing of PPC ads and landing pages to identify the most effective campaigns.
4) Account managers that are Google Adwords Certified and Yahoo Ambassadors.

Social Media Vendor Considerations:

1) What channels are you currently active in for clients? (Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon)
2) Give examples of how channels might be used to bolster the overall SEM effort.
3) Proven results, failures, success, and referrals.

Key Takeaways:

1) Educate yourself to ask the right questions!
2) Invest time to find the right partner!
3) Agree and document billing model!
4) Start small - test vendor on small scale!
5) Monitor, measure, and optimize!

Contributed by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 21, 2008

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google and Yahoo Share Details About Ad Deal

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 5:04pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Reuters has reported that Google and Yahoo have disclosed parts of their ad pact. The details, which were filed with SEC, "take the unusual step of disclosing the contract governing the partnership, but leave out any financial terms, such as the revenue split on their deal."

The article states that a number of people are upset by the possible partnership, especially since this will give the Google empire control of 90% of the search market. However, the article later states that Google and Yahoo wants to emphasize that this is a non-exclusive agreement "in which Yahoo is effectively contracting with Google to sell ads alongside a portion of its search results." This positions Yahoo to focus on its stronger suits.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Maps Users Cannot View Maps Created by Others

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

In a Google Groups thread, users are reporting that they are not able to share or view maps that are created by others. This error has been reported since July 29th and a number of users are impacted (but others are not).

After heated discussions on the thread and 56 messages with a number of members trying to illustrate the problem, Maps Guide Mike says that this is a bug that was indeed fixed and that they will push the fix externally soon.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups. Additional coverage is at Google Personalizes Maps by Adding "My Maps" Feature and Google Maps Supports User Generated Reviews.

Google Provides More Information about Personalized Results

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

A WebmasterWorld member points out that Google has been a little more open with regards to personalized search results. For example, when you do a search, you might see something like this, where Google says that these are searches based on your web history:

When you click on "More details," Google gives you more information about personalization:

Google announced this transparency at the end of July, and it's been relatively welcome addition. They fear that the results could still be personalized if you're not logged into your account, however.

On a similar note, Pierre Far has written that you can now opt out of this behavioral tracking, and he directs you to the forms you need to fill out on Google and Yahoo (in addition to NAI).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.

Long Title Tags Improve Google Search Rankings?

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:32pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topic of title tags. Now this title tag discussion is not a typical boring thread. In this thread, some webmasters and SEOs have been observing that longer title tags are returning higher rankings in Google, when compared to their counterparts.

The example given by the thread creator, is a generic one. Search for Ie: [blue used widgets] will more likely return a number one result with a title tag that looks like "blue used widget bla bla widget," while a number five result might be "blue used widget."

Of course, there are more factors, many more factors, that come into play in which page ranks better for a search term, then just a title tag. But there is some good discussion around this thread.

Senior member, CainIV, said:

I would agree. I am finding that prominence in the title, as well as a combination of semantics is playing a big role now. Longer titles with closely related themed works are working very well.

Do you think longer titles make an impact?

Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.

Google Places Product Results In 4th Position : Confuses Searchers

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google is now placing product results, for some searches, in the middle of the search results. For example, a search on ipod nano returns the Google Shopping results in the fourth listing, as opposed to above the web search results.

Yes, this is Google Universal Search at it's best, but it is confusing some users. A WebmasterWorld member asked why Google was placing AdWords listings within the search results. Yes, you and I know they are not AdWords listings, but does the average searcher? In that case, does the average searcher care if there are product results in the 4th listing, mixed into the search results? Maybe not, maybe that is what Google is testing.

For you, the advertiser, if you have product and you are not in Google Shopping/Product Search, then maybe it is time you submit your products to Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords Sandbox Finally Supports Video Ad Creation

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:14pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

After hearing rumors of the ability to create video ads within the Google AdWords API Sandbox, and then hearing that the launch of that feature would be delayed, it is now officially here.

Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team said at a Google Groups thread that this feature is finally here:

After a few false starts it does now look like video ad creation in the Sandbox environment is enabled for all users. I tested it today and my request that previously failed now goes through.
Apologies for the length of time it took to get this resolved.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google AdSense Adds Western Union Option To Five Countries

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:05pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

One of the most sought after payment options for Google AdSense publishers is the ability to be paid via Western Union.

Google had announced at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld that they have expanded Western Union payment to the following five countries:

Bulgaria
Egypt
Lithuania
Morocco
Taiwan

Western Union payments are also currently available in other countries, including Argentina, Chile, China (Mainland), Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines and Romania.

If you are in any of these 14 countries and would like to receive payment via Western Union, follow these instructions. You must also be set up as an "individual" publisher to qualify.

AdSensePro Ashley added that "payments will be made in US dollars, but your Western Union agent may be able to convert your payment to your local currency."

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 8, 2008

Posted: August 9th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: August 8, 2008

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 8:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

The Olympics start today and Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and the Search Engine Roundtable have special logos up for the event. Google launched Insights for Search. Google begins to track your web surfing via DoubleClick cookies. Yahoo Search had a major update. Live relaunched Webmaster Tools. SEOs are split on buying nofollowed links and do like blog links. Google blocked ranking software. Performics has been sold off. Do the best SEOs offer consulting? AdWords is performing maintenance this weekend and they are shutting down version 11 of the API on the 26th. More news at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

I may not be able to mail schwag outside of the United States.

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: 08/08/08 - Google Insights, Performics Dropped & Yahoo Gets Better

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 6:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Today is 08/08/08. You can imagine how precisely Barry planned out this post -- since, well, that only happens once in a century.

The Olympics are Here!

Also occurring almost as infrequently is the Olympics, which started yesterday and are now being celebrated within the search industry and here at Search Engine Roundtable. Speaking of which, the designer of our Olympics logo, Mabe, got engaged last night. Everyone needs to congratulate her!!!

Google Launches Cool Tool

One of the cooler tools that I've seen released by Google is Google Insights, which was unveiled this week. For the statistics junkie, this is HAWT.

Google's DoubleClick Cookie Tracking Arouses Happiness, Fear

To better advertise to the search audience, Google and DoubleClick are going to apply cookie targeting. to utilize some more sophisticated means of advertising, including frequency capping, frequency reporting, improved ads, and better conversion tracking. This is both exciting but also frightening--lots of information from two really powerful companies.

Yahoo Encounters Search Ranking Changes, Gets Better

Yahoo is upping the ante and is apparently becoming closer to Google in terms of how relevant the results are. This may be due to a number of updates and algorithm ranking changes that we reported earlier this week. In any event, it's promising stuff!

Microsoft Updates Webmaster Tools

Earlier this week, Microsoft updated Webmaster Tools with crawl error and backlink reports. Sadly, though, the webmaster community has not been receptive to this tool. I hope they do, though, since the really awesome guys at Microsoft put considerable work into that project and are passionate about what they do.

Polls: Your Favorite Links?

We held two polls related to links recently and got some interesting feedback. In our first poll, you were asked whether you would buy links with the nofollow attribute. The answer, actually, is undecided. Half of you said yes, and less than half of you said no (with some being "other"). Personally, I think that nofollow paid links, if relevant, would yield clickthroughs, so that's important, right?

What about links from blogs? Most of you like blog links, with 64% of you saying yes. I'm surprised that such a large number (29%) said no -- if blogs are updated, have good content, and again, are relevant, why the hell not?!

Google Blocks WebPosition

The WebPosition application has been blocked by Google for reportedly automatically checking rankings. Apparently, Google never liked the application to begin with, with their SEO guidelines specifically pointing fingers at WebPosition and suggesting that people don't utilize the service.

Google Sheds Itself of Performics

While Google loves acquisitions, there was one they just couldn't keep. We learned mid-week that Google has gotten rid of Performics so as to avoid a conflict of interest with SEM agencies around the world. Now, Publicis, a French company, gets all the good stuff.

Why Don't SEOs Execute their Clients' Ideas?

Following a discussion on one of the forums, Barry wrote about why SEOs don't take on client work. Why aren't SEOs applying some of the ideas presented by clients and using them to boost their own companies? Well, there are a variety of reasons, but notably, the issues remain that it requires a lot of manpower, dedication, and the passion usually lies in helping people, not competing. I've been presented with a fair amount of great ideas in the past, but would it even be ethical to steal it and call it my own? I think you know the answer to that.

Google AdSense and AdWords Downtime Tomorrow

All Google AdSense and AdWords publishers and subscribers should note that there is Google AdWords downtime tomorrow as well as Google AdSense downtime. What happens during these routine maintenance practices? We don't really know; Google went the political route and didn't give us a straight answer. That made a forum member start guessing, and it was pretty informative.

Also, Google AdWords API v11 will be sunsetted on August 26th, so be sure to update to v12 ASAP!

Have a happy weekend!

The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics & The Search Engine Industry

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China start officially today. To celebrate the day, Google, Yahoo and Ask.com all have logos and themes up. We also have our theme up, we hope you like it.

Here is the Google Logo:

Here is Yahoo's animated logo:

Here is the Ask.com theme:

Dogpile and Live Search do not have themes. It would have been nice to see a custom background with Olmypic "hotspots," maybe next year.

Here is our theme:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

What Exactly Happens During Google AdSense Maintenance?

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:15pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday, AdSenseAdvisor posted on WebmasterWorld that there would be an outage for Google AdSense tomorrow, August 9th, between 10AM and 2PM PDT. Ad serving isn't affected but AdSense addicts won't be able to check their accounts.

Usually, these announcement threads go unanswered. This time, though, someone asked the details behind such a maintenance procedure. At first, AdSenseAdvisor gave the generic answer: "our engineers carry out all the tasks required to keep our systems running as they should."

Did the political answer suffice? Not so much. Forum members started speculating what would happen. A good explanation (though purely speculation) was offered by Hobbs, who said:

During maintenance, raw data is redirected from processing into storage mode, this includes all the traffic and clicks logs plus every thing else Google collects, think of it as a huge bucket filling up.
Post maintenance: First a raw data sample is processed and analyzed for consistency, click fraud, earnings .., if all is well the data processing tap is opened and reports start to trickling in till the bucket is empty.

So why can't you access your data? A few reasons are proposed: it may be on hold until this is complete, or if there are any problems, the reports would be inaccurate anyway so Google tries to avoid displaying it until everything looks good again.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords API Version 11 To Be Discontinued August 26th

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

In March, Google released AdWords API v12 and is finally discontinuing version 11. This will occur on August 26, 2008.

Migration from API v11 to v12 should be relatively straightforward. Jeffrey Posnick of the AdWords API team recommends that you read the documentation for any questions. Of course, Google Groups is available should you have any additional follow-up inquiries.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Live Search Greatly Improves Webmaster Tools But Webmasters Don't Give a Hoot

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time and resources building out enhanced features to the Live Search Webmaster Tools. They announced releasing the new features this week, but it has gone, pretty much, unnoticed in the SEO and webmaster community forums.

I won't go through all the features of the tool, Vanessa Fox has done that at Search Engine Land, but I will discuss the lack of discussion around this launch.

There has been sufficient buzz about this tool in the past. We heard promises that it was coming in August 2007. Then in September 2007, Live Search began accepting beta testers to the program. In November 2007, Microsoft announced that it would be launched shortly. A few days later, I showed off screen captures of the tool and interface, and was a bit unimpressed, to say the least. Then Microsoft launched a beta version. I then discussed the Live Search rank bars found in their Webmaster Tools.

In any event, now the tool is out of beta, they added a bunch of features and no one cares. All we have is a single post at WebmasterWorld two days later, saying, that Microsoft announced it. But that is it. No feedback, no complaints, no suggestions, nothing. Someone did Sphinn the Search Engine Land post, but it has zero comments and only five sphinns. Hopefully people will have time to review it over the weekend and complain about it next week. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.

Advertisers Are Happy But Scared Over New Google / DoubleClick Cookie Tracking

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday Google announced that they will utilizing the DoubleClick cookie-based tracking technology to bring more targeted ads and better targeting features to adveristers. You can read most the blog and news commentary via Techmeme.

The features are simple:

Frequency Capping to enable advertisers to say, show my ad to this specific user only X times.
Frequency Reporting so advertisers can see the frequency data.
Google says this will provide "Improved Ads Quality."
And better conversion tracking with "View-Through Conversions".

So, there are many good features here for advertisers. But it also scares many people.

DoubleClick is huge, they run a huge portion of the ads across the web. In fact, some of the ads on this site are powered through DoubleClick. But then, look at the number of sites with AdSense on them. Now combine them. Google will be tracking individual computers from all sites containing a DoubleClick served ad and a Google AdSense served ad. Of course, Google the opt out details.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 7, 2008

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Does Google Index Flex Content?

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Web pages that are designed with Flex Content, that is, using "a module that allows for flexible display of introductory text, title, and an image from any content item," are not spidered by Google, from reports in Google Groups.

What are the options, then, if you're a Flex content developer? Just like Flash content, it seems, you should make the same content available in standard HTML for the search engine spiders. This would also help those users visiting your site using a browser that is not Flex compliant.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Performics Dropped by Google, Acquired by Publicis

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:47pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

The Washington Post reports that Google has sold Performics, its search marketing division of DoubleClick. Because of the conflict of interest, this was promised, as stated by Barry both here and over at Search Engine Land.

Is there surprise in the industry? Not so much. Most people consider this "fairly expected" and that Google really only needed an affiliate network.

Nobody seems particularly moved by the news reports, and they're happy that Google has ridden itself of the conflict.

Blog discussion can be read at Techmeme, our past coverage is here, and forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Deep Analysis of Google SERP Click Through Rates

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:34pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

The Searchlight Digital Blog has an interesting post that illustrates the percentage of click-throughs you'd get based on a specific Google ranking. The analysis performed by Searchlight covers over 36 million queries and more than 19 million clicks.

The interesting data comes from the explanation from Pete, the blog post's author:

Where this gets really interesting though is when you look at what can happen if you own most of the real estate on a good SERP. The top four results put together account for over two thirds of all clicks that will happen (68.69% in total). The top ten taken as a whole will give nearly nine tenths! (Actual total figure - 89.69%).
Drop onto page two, and you’re basically stuffed. Unless the term gets huge traffic, you’re not going to.

In a way, this information is troubling, however. The discussion on Sphinn concerns individuals. NickWilsdon, for example, is quoted as saying: "That shows the effect of Google pushing up these authority sites into top positions. Eventually they will just leave scraps for everyone else."

I guess we're all hoping that day never comes.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

SEOs Like Links From Blog

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

A week or so ago, I wrote a piece named Are Links From Blogs As Valuable These Days? In short, some SEOs are now against buying or obtaining links from most blogs. They feel that Google may be devaluing the once golden, blog link (yes, I am generalizing). So I decided to run a poll to see how our readers perceive links from blogs.

The results are in and we have 141 responses from SEOs and webmasters. 90 or 64% of the respondents said they like links from blogs. 41 or 29% of the respondents said they do not like links from blogs. While the remainder, 10 people or 7% of the respondents said it depends on the blog.

Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 90 respondents or 64%
:: No said 41 respondents or 29%
:: Depends said 10 respondents or 7%

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Did Google Stop Crawling Blogger Blogs on Personalized Domains?

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

There are threads at Google Groups and DigitalPoint Forums with multiple reports of Google not crawling Blogger hosted blogs, that are on custom or private domains (i.e. not on blogspot.com domains). Many have reported that the Googlebot crawling has stopped as of July 30th.

I asked Branko to help me see any pattern to the issue and we found a couple things. Both domains listed in the thread have similar patterns.

(1) They both have a robots.txt file that blocks a Google crawer, Mediapartners-Google. Now, we know that Google uses multiple crawlers to index content and they all work together. Branko theorized that maybe that "reduced frequency due to reducing the number of spiders that visit his site." I agree, that is a possibility.

(2) This is more striking to us, is that if you view the source code of both of the reported blogs, you will notice a widget from a script named SetSystemMarkup. I am not sure what that widget does, but in the widget, it has NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW in it. Maybe Google is misinterpreting that as a META tag? I do see that these blogs are both in the Google index, but maybe this is impacting any recent crawl activity for these sites.

I do not think this is a Blogger or Blogspot.com wide issue.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Fixes Search Volume Bug in AdWords Keyword Tool

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Yesterday, we reported on the Google keyword tool outage, where the reports were missing search volume data.

The problems actually persisted throughout the day, causing major headaches for advertisers looking to research possible keywords. In any event, a Google representative posted in the WebmasterWorld thread that it would be fixed very soon. The Google rep said at about 2pm (EST):

This is very much a known issue, and while I have learned to never say definitely when something will be resolved, I hope that things will be back to normal by the end of today. If not then, well, very soon. ;)

As of about 5:30pm (EST), we have been receiving reports that the bug is resolved. I have confirmed it works for me, so you can now give it a try over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 6, 2008

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Launches Insights for Search

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 5:25pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

At Search Engine Land, Barry talks about a brand new tool -- Google Insights for Search. The tool is intended to give advertisers and marketers some metrics of user behavior. In the screenshot below, you can see these metrics, which include geographic distribution, time trending, and news headlines. What you don't see (but is also included) are related search terms and rising trends. (Click for larger image)

Interestingly enough, the map is interactive and is quite similar to the display on Google Analytics. You can click on the regions and zoom in to cities to get an exact idea of where people are searching, like so:

At the same time, the table on the left hand side also gives you specifics (which cities are performing the search.

All in all, this tool like really fascinating and should definitely become a useful aid.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

How Many of You Meet with SEO Clients?

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 5:07pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: SEM SEO Companies

In a High Rankings Forums thread, forum members discuss whether they meet with their SEO clients or not. It must depend on how the business is structured (and if the client is local), but in the latter case, if the client is local and you're charging hourly, most people don't see why this would be a problem.

The frequency of meetings is also discussed. Again, the geographic location plays a role here, but it also depends on how deep you are on the project. One forum member says that if they're in the middle of working on changes, their meetings are more frequent than if they are in maintenance mode.

Some others don't take local clients at all because such meetings are too time consuming. Can you relate to that?

How many of you meet with your clients in person?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Google AdWords Schedules Downtime on August 9th

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 4:36pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Google AdWords will be unavailable on August 9th between 10AM and 2PM PDT on Saturday, August 9th, we've learned, while system maintenance is performed.

Ads will continue to run, but you won't be able to access the AdWords interface to make any changes. The API will also be unavailable.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

SEOs Split On Buying Links Have The NoFollow Attribute

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:27pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

In May I ran an informal poll asking Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute? In short, a nofollow attribute is an HTML attribute you add to a hyperlink that tells the search engines that you do not vouch for this link. Most search engines will not count that link as a vote for the site it is linking to.

I was actually surprised by the results. They were split down the middle.

Of the 177 responses, 50% or 89 people said they would buy a link with a nofollow attribute. While 45% or 80 people said they would not. 5% or 8 people said, it depends.

Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 89 respondents or 50%
:: No said 80 respondents or 45%
:: Other said 8 respondents or 5%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums .

Is Yahoo Search More Relevant Now? SEOs Claim "More Like Google"

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:20pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization

Yahoo conducted an update to their search engine over the weekend. We reported on the early discussion around the update and it then became official when the Yahoo Search Blog confirmed the update later in the day.

But since then, I have been hearing and reading discussion that the new Yahoo Search results are more like Google. And since Google tends to be the barometer of what is "relevant" and what is not, maybe Yahoo's search results are becoming more "relevant."

Yahoo Search moderator, travelin cat, at WebmasterWorld said:

We have never ranked in the top 100 results in Yahoo since their split with Google. Starting a couple of days ago, our site started showing up in Yahoo serps. Most of our kw phrases are now on either the first or second page.

Plus, we have a whole new DigitalPoint Forums thread on the topic of the Yahoo results being incredibly similar to Google results. Here is a select comment from that thread:

Did anyone noticed changes in Yahoo!' SERP today. Yahoo is following the same way as Google. Frequent change in Google SERP is kind of common now but it's new for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is changing search results very frequently now.

Not only are the results looking a bit similar, in some cases, the frequency of updates seems to be getting similar and the discussion has grown a bit around this update.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Suffers Temporary Outage

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:11pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

About a month ago, Google's external keyword tool began to show search volume numbers. Last night, there were reports via WebmasterWorld that the tool stopped showing these estimated search volume numbers, all together.

The reports were sending back error messages that read, "Insufficient Data." This happened for any and all keywords searches between the times of about 5pm (EST) and 10pm (EST) last night, August 5th.

I personally tested the tool this morning and most popular keyword phrases are showing search volume data. I suspect it might have something to do with the launch of Google Insights for Search, which Tamar will have a post on later and which I wrote about at Search Engine Land just about 8 hours ago.

All seems to be good now with the Google Keyword Tool.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebPosition Ranking Software Being Blocked by Google?

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:01pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine tools

The historically popular search engine ranking software, WebPosition, has reportedly been blocked by Google from checking rankings automatically.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that WebPosition is no longer able to process one's search rankings as of August 5, 2008. Old time WebmasterWorld member, Barbara 'WebMama' Coll, who has been a member of WebmasterWorld since 2002, said:

Has anyone else noticed that after years of threatening it appears that Google has now blocked WP Gold from reporting rankings through their tool? We called the WP support line and they said they are waiting for Google to 'do' something and have NO ETA has to when it will be fixed.

There is no estimated time when the software will begin working again. This software has been around forever and I believe Google has threatened to block it many times. In fact, Google has named WebPosition Gold in their SEO guidelines saying, "Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google."

So maybe Google did something about it finally? Or maybe not. Time will tell.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » August 2008

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Search Engine Roundtable (15 unread)

Posted: August 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 6:30pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 5:18pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:51pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:38pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Cloaking IP Delivery

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 4:01pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 3:02am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 1:53am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 1:35am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:49am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:32am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:18am CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2008 San

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 5:04pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:32pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:14pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:05pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: August 9th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 8:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 6:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:15pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:47pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:34pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 5:25pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg