SEO News » Items by Tamar Weinberg

Items by Tamar Weinberg

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 2, 2009

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 10:00pm CET 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.

Weekly Search Buzz RoundUp - 01/02/09: New Year's Edition

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:51pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

This is my last SearchBuzz RoundUp post for awhile, so enjoy it while you have a chance. This week, we rang in 2009. What happened?

Happy New Years '09
Very cool search engine logos have been posted this year. Google had a cool 2009 logo that still somewhat resembled "Google." Even Cre8site, Bruce Clay, and Baidu had cool logos.

Google's Results Run Wild
Google had a PageRank update this week, and then we saw some major changes in the SERPs. In fact, on the international side, the results are very odd to those familiar with the usual rankings.

Microsoft Crawls Through Javascript
Microsoft is taking a clue and is using the MSNBot-Media crawler to get the data behind Javascript. This is good and innovative -- and since Google has been doing it for awhile, it's about time the other search engines did the same.

Google's Wildcard Domain Bug
An interesting observation with a wildcard domain was spotted this week. I'm able to replicate it on my end too. I wish I had a site like that with all page 1 results. Just kidding. ;)

Google Alerts Accuracy Report
There have been reports of Google Alerts sending out irrelevant alerts to individuals subscribed to them. I've seen something similar but not 100% and it's related to the blogroll issue we reported earlier. Fun.

Google Is Not Kid Friendly
Don't search for child day care centers on Google. The search term for the particular search in question is so rare (and "misspelled") that Google recommends a porn site in the "Did You Mean?" column. Well, I guess I was wrong when I said that people don't primarily use Google to search for kinky stuff. Sheesh, people.

On that note, Google's "strict" image searching is not strict at all. Don't look if you don't like nude images with your breakfast.

Microsoft: Not So Good
This week, Danny Sullivan smacked Microsoft with some advice they should actually take seriously. Unfortunately for my friends in the Live Search team who really ROCK, it is evident that the higher-ups don't care. And that is sad -- and that's why Microsoft deserved everything it got from Danny.

On another note, Microsoft ContentAds are getting bad CTR. Then again, the information is now private and I'm hearing that ads are performing badly across the board.

Fat People Should Slim Down
...at least according to Google's AdSense ads. People are spotting more and more ads targeting fat people and some are finding it offensive. Are you?

Have a nice 2009 all!

Major Google Search Results Changes, January 2009

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:25pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

A few days ago, we reported the last Google PageRank update of 2008. We're not certain if this is related, but there are a lot of interesting observations related to the PageRank update that we've seen. For once, I've noticed discussion about fewer sitelinks on some sites. In fact, I've personally been impacted by 8 to 6 sitelinks on one of my sites.

Google is also apparently giving some browser "hijacking" domains (that is, sites that don't let you hit the "back" button) a lot more visibility in the SERPs in addition to mirror sites.

We're also not sure if this is related but some people have spotted some big drops their rankings in the SERPs.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 31, 2008

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Tough SEO: SEO For Sites You Don't Manage & Leftover SEO

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 3:29pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

If you're about to take on a prospective SEO client and they start taking the initiative on their search engine optimization (in ways you hadn't even thought of), should you proceed with the client -- especially if you're going to disagree with them (since their initial implementation was probably a measure to cut costs and keep their spend down?)

Probably not. But before you lose the client, make sure to educate them. Show them why you are doing something. Eventually, both you and the client may have a good relationship as goals and objectives are clearly defined.

What about an SEO client whose site is not accessible for you to actually perform the SEO? The other option may be link building, but on-page SEO is still very important. If you can't do that, try creating "microsites" that you actually can SEO.

What would you do?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

Danny Sullivan Gives Microsoft The Hard Truth

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 3:06pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Danny Sullivan writes about the problems about Microsoft search at Search Engine Land, and he explains what they need to do in order to get it together.

Some reasons are that Microsoft's key executives don't care about search. For example, in Danny's experience doing conferences, Microsoft has yet to send a key player such as Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer run the keynote conversation. They simply don't think it's worth it. (On the other hand, other conferences are fair game for these guys.)

Another reason for Microsoft's failure is that they seem to emphasize that they care about search, but they certainly aren't practicing what they appear to preach. Danny points out the following taglines: Google's tagline is "Search, Ads & Apps" and Microsoft's is "Software + Services." Where's search, Microsoft?

A third reason Danny cites is that Microsoft still doesn't get search. At least not the way we see it. He says that Microsoft perceives search as software, and that's not it. Search updates are rolled out on Google on no schedule, but with Microsoft's (cough) bureaucracy, it seems that changes must be done on some sort of schedule.

Danny goes into a lot more detail, explaining that there are executive inconsistencies, lousy advertising, requiring integration of services, and lame distribution deals that are not swaying people away from Google.

All in all, Microsoft in the search market is destined to go down. Or maybe the key players in Microsoft should take a good read at Danny's honest and forthright opinion so that they can make some real changes that can actually improve the perception of Microsoft in the eyes of searchers.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Google AdSense Now Pushing Fat Ads: Is this Offensive?

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 2:55pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

If you're fat and get offended easily, don't use any service that uses Google AdSense. That's what WebmasterWorld members are spotting -- ads targeting the "fat" people of America. Apparently there's a conception that the holidays may have gotten people overweight. Or perhaps this is a way to ring in your New Year's Resolutions.

But that isn't satisfying publishers who are using Google AdSense. On top of other offensive Google AdSense ads, this isn't faring well for Google.

In reality, though, not every publisher is that disappointed in these ads. Some are considering clicking on the ads because they are looking to lose weight. Others are seeing a fair share of earnings from other clicks. It's certainly not as bad as ads featuring naked people, but it's not necessarily in the best taste for everyone.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Recommends Product Ideas for Your Google Mobile Suggestions

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 2:46pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Want Google to implement a new feature for Google Mobile? You no longer need to venture to Google Groups to make the request. Simply hop on over to [productideas.appspot.com] and submit your product ideas. So far, according to the stats, "805 people have submitted 313 ideas and cast 9,772 votes."

These include:
* "An native iPhone App of Google Reader (include a mini browser), more fast and no problem of reloading page after open a link"
* "Google Talk with multiprotocol capabilities."
* "A "Google Product Ideas" for all google services."
* "i want to be able to see my friends on maps on my phone"

If you have your own suggestions for your mobile device, go to the site and start contributing. You never know!

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 30, 2008

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

New York Times Sued Over Linking Practices

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:55pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

An article at E-Commerce Times talks about a recently-filed lawsuit against Boston.com, a NYTimes company, that is being sued for its linking practices. According to the article, the simple presence of a link has prompted the suit, but from CenterNetworks, the real reason might be apparent: GateHouse, the company suing the Times, is upset because Boston.com is linking to subpages of the site, thereby causing readers to bypass the significant advertising on GateHouse's home page.

(My commentary: If there were no links there at all, GateHouse still wouldn't see traffic to its homepage. Be happy that you got the link!)

In any event, there is some worry if merely linking will require permission in the future. That would be a pretty silly move.

Then again, I worry that the E-Commerce Times article that WebmasterWorld members referred to isn't accurate since every other article I read on the subject matter is about circumventing the advertising.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Are there Honest Copywriters Out There?

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:50pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

At High Rankings Forums, there's a disgruntled individual who has been looking for honest copywriters and hasn't had any luck. All have been deadbeats.

Maybe this individual isn't looking in the right place, given that there are a lot of good copywriters out there that I know. So how do you find them?

* Get a reference before you hire them.
* Buy a cheap writing sample to see what you're getting into.
* Speak with site owners and find out if they have professional writers on staff who can help with content production.
* Copy+paste snippets of text to make sure they're providing original and not plagiarized content.

How do you spot good copywriters?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

How Do You Ask for Links?

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:16pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Link building is going to happen whether I like it or not, so I better accept the 949394 emails I get per day. A WebmasterWorld thread asks link builders how they ask for links via email. Some tactics include putting the link up first (and thereby then emailing people -- they often will give the reciprocal link) and keeping the email short and brief and personal.

Ask for the link. Don't demand it.

Offer people you link to something valuable in return. For example, wheel suggests that you say something along the lines of "I've got data your visitors may find interesting" or "Here's a unique coupon code."

Since these are email requests, though, can you be reported to Google for spamming someone else? There's no answer to that -- it depends on the recipient.

I should add from my experience that it's unwise to ask big blogs for links. They might have a high PageRank and is extremely relevant for your purposes, but chances are, old posts won't be updated. (And like I said in sentence #1, we get hundreds of link exchange emails a week. That said, most aren't read anymore.)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Take the 2008 Search Quiz

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:08pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Know everything there is to know about search? You sure about that? Matt McGee is hosting the 2nd annual search quiz and you're invited to challenge me and others.

Last year, I won this cool contest, but this year, well, I won't tell you -- I'll wait for Matt to tell you himself :)

You have till tomorrow evening to play, so be sure to sign up now!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 26, 2008

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Weekly Search Buzz RoundUp - 12/26/08: It's Not as Dead as You'd Think this Holiday Week

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 3:49pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Happy holidays! Some of you are still celebrating and that's quite all right - enjoy the 4-5 day weekend while you can! But you've missed some happenings and we're ready to serve!

Holidays, holidays, holidays
Yesterday, people celebrated Christmas. Google anticipated the holiday for 5 days with a unique logo but we've also done some cool stuff over here at Search Engine Roundtable. Have you seen it yet?

And while we alluded to that 5 day weekend, not everyone at Google was celebrating. JohnMu visited the forums on Christmas like one helluva dedicated guy. :)

Finally, you might have gotten your Google AdSense or Yahoo publishing network checks early this year, but don't expect to have earned a lot yesterday. It was a pretty slow holiday week.

Google: Probably Not Accounting for Bounce Rate in the Algo
Matt Cutts semi-confirmed that the Google search team is probably not accounting for bounce rates because they are spammable and noisy. He suggests that the Google Analytics guys care a lot more about bounce rates than the Search Quality Team.

Other things the Google Search Quality Team Doesn't Do
People don't like what Google does but they really don't necessarily know what Google does or doesn't do. JohnMu confirms what Google doesn't do which includes Google crawling differently on sites they don't agree with, large companies being able to influence how Google crawls their websites, that crawlers can damage sites, and that Google will react to spam reports when a website is clearly not in violation of any rules. Seriously -- for at least the first three of these, it's a little outrageous to put the blame on Google.

Google Toolbar PageRank Update, Perhaps
Numerous webmasters reported a Google PageRank update. Have you noticed anything?

Google Fixing Blogroll Links in Blog Search
While I'm still encountering issues with inaccurate Google Alerts due to blogroll links showing up in Google Blog Search, Google's team is acknowledging that they're fixing it. I hope so!

Google Image Search Enhancement: Cool
If you haven't noticed yet, you can now search by style in Google Image Search. That means you can distinguish line art from photographs and faces and more. Whee!

Let's Make Fun of SEO Newbies
There's a Google Webmaster Help thread that pokes fun at SEO newbies. Hey guys, I bet you were all n00bs once!

Happy Birthday to Us
Search Engine Roundtable is 5 years old and Barry has celebrated the year by writing a "year in review" post. Whoooooooooosh!

If Link Buying is Bad, Shouldn't PRWeb Be Bad Too?

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 3:07pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Since there's a huge war on paid links, is it true that you should avoid link buying at all costs? That means even using sites like press-release distributor service PRWeb.

Perhaps -- but PRWeb's goals are obviously not in the link building sphere. The goal for PRWeb is promotion of a particular service or website, not for link building. It's uncertain how Google handles links that are generated through PRWeb.

Randy says an important piece of advice for how you should handle this in general:

Truth be known, all link building should be approached from a Promotions/Advertising/Marketing mindset, not an SEO one. Get links that will stand a chance of bringing you real traffic from real qualified people visiting your site.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

How'd You Do With Google AdSense this Holiday?

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 2:53pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Do people really use the Internet during the holiday season? According to the activity on Twitter yesterday, perhaps they actually do. But elsewhere on the 'net, that may not necessarily be the case. Publishers report that they get the lowest earnings during the holiday time, for the most part.

Of course, like any industry, there are always anomalies. A few publishers, but hardly the majority, report that the performance has been pretty good.

I guess I'm not too surprised.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: Decmeber 24, 2008

Posted: December 24th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Summary of Multiple Google Docs Bugs Reports

Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:59pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of bugs reported within Google Docs. Some of these have been fixed and others are still pending. Here's the lowdown of what we've found in the forums:

* A Google Employee says in a Google Groups thread that the bug that made folders visible on the left hand side of the Google Docs pane has been fixed.

* There's still an open bug (but Google is aware of it) with regards to some spreadsheets not being viewable. The error encountered is "Sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties and cannot show all of your documents." (Google Groups).

* Related to the report above, some users cannot see any of their documents with the same error. Google is also aware of this. (Google Groups)

* When Google Docs documents are being emailed, some senders choose to CC themselves to confirm receipt. However, Gmail automatically assumes that these are spam. The Google Docs team is aware of this as well. (Google Groups)

* Google is also aware that some people can only see the first 50 folders and they are working on a fix (Google Groups)

If you're affected by any of these issues, please go to the forum discussion referred to in the bullet point for more information and related discussion.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 23, 2008

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 10:03pm CET 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 AdWords API Sandbox Database Refresh Postponed Two Weeks

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 3:31pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

On December 17, we announced Google's plans to push out a data refresh for the Sandbox due to some issues and bugs that users have been encountering.

The initial Sandbox refresh was scheduled for December 19th. Apparently, though, Google has announced that the Sandbox update has been postponed for about 2 weeks. No further information is available.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Are Corporations Capitalizing on Google AdWords in the Poor Economy?

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 3:13pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

A WebmasterWorld member is disappointed that he as a Google AdWords advertiser is unable to bid with any reasonable price on any ads because corporations, as he sees it, are greedy and are raising bid prices. He is frustrated that these corporations are not interested in lowering their bids to a profitable level and thus his ads are not appearing given that some big company is driving up the costs.

But is that really what's happening? Perhaps there are corporations that don't care to lower their bid costs, just like the guy says. But perhaps there are corporations that fired their Google AdWords consultants or Internet Marketing type people and they simply forgot to regularly review the Google AdWords accounts. That means there are hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars on ads because the companies are not evolving with the times. That's more likely in this scenario.

What do you think?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 22, 2008

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

2008 Holiday Season Logos From Google & Search Engine Roundtable

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:54pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Last night, those of us who celebrated Chanukah lit the first candle. This means it's holiday season officially! Google is also building momentum with their holiday festivities with two new images:

And given that there are 8 days of Chanukah, we're doing something special at Search Engine Roundtable. Every night around the time the Daily Search Rountup comes out, we'll have a new theme. Here's our first logo which is live until later this afternoon:

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

Google Image Search Enhancement: Search By Style

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:46pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

The Official Google Blog announced on Friday that a new option is available for searchers: the ability to search for images by a specific style. For example, line art is obviously not the same as a photograph -- and now Google can distinguish this for you.

Here's a screenshot. Click for a larger size:

As you can tell, you can now drill down to news content, faces, clip art, line art, and photo content.

I like. Do you?

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google AdSense Hiccup Reported on December 19

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:38pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

On Friday, a number of Google AdSense publishers reported that AdSense was down. The cause was unknown and Google officially never actually volunteered more information about it.

Google AdWordsAdvisor was able to provide the publishers with information -- mostly ensuring them that Google was prioritizing the issue -- but there is no further information on behalf of Google's actual AdSense team.

AdWordsAdvisor does say, though, on a completely side point, that "In the AdWords side of the world, though, the stats that advertisers see in their account are delayed by up to three hours as a matter of course, under normal circumstances." We're not entirely sure how this factors into reporting on Google AdSense's side, but this is interesting information regardless.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 19, 2008

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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/2008/12/19/Weekly_SearchBuzz_RoundUp__December_19__2008___Google_s_Enhancements__Yahoo_s_Data_Retention___YouTube_on_Google_Maps'

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: December 19, 2008 - Google's Enhancements, Yahoo's Data Retention & YouTube on Google Maps

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 4:30pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

It's almost the holidays! PARTAY! But until then, I have a recap for ya without any special frills. This week, we have some reports from SES Chicago, some news from Google, Yahoo's 90 day data retention policy, and then some. Keep reading for more.

Blackhats = Whitehats
After SES Chicago last week, Doug Heil is starting to see more like a black hat (or so he's changed his vision from 4 years ago when he may have thought differently about buying paid organic links). Today, he calls that paid advertising. He also considers some very well known blackhats in this industry "whitehat." Are the lines blurring? Maybe with the big players, we suspect, but there are definitely other blackhats out there who will practice until they realize that their strategies are not going to last.

Microsoft Live Search Update
There's really nothing to see here, but there was a Live search update that let a lot of spam on the top of the SERPs. This is why Microsoft isn't really getting that search share it wants, I suppose.

Google's Enhancements
Google will soon be sporting page enhancements, such a pagelinks (contrary to sitelinks, they link to your internal anchor text on one single page), reviews, and spelling correction (misspelled options plus the rightly-spelled option). Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that Google wants to add ads to Search Suggest. Ugh.

On the other hand, we're still wondering about the post counts we see in the SERPs and how inaccurate they seem. JohnMu, we're counting on you to help us figure this out.

Finally, some sitelink URLs are cut off and some people want to know why. In these particular instances, it seems to be related to a period in anchor text (or title tag). Apparently Google thinks that's the end of a sentence even though it refers to ASP.NET or VB.NET. Whoops.

Watch Your Videos on Google Maps
Cool stuff for videophiles: find more about a specific geographic region using Google Maps now via YouTube. You can now get a lot more information about a specific region with Google Maps's integration of YouTube. Search for something famous and look at what Google/YouTube offer you. Cool stuff.

[On a separate note, yesterday I realized that YouTube gets way too much attention and Google property GrandCentral is languishing. How about Google think about these other awesome properties that really can have potential? Or maybe Google can let someone who wants to invest their time in the property take the reigns on it instead. Please?]

Yahoo's 90 Day Data Retention Plan
Yahoo has decided to retain data for 90 days which is way shorter than other search engines. This will put pressure on Google, perhaps, but I don't think people will switch to any specific search engine for a data retention reason. Surprisingly, nobody is buzzing about it like they were last year.

Google AdWords Editor 7.0
Google took advantage of a holiday month to release AdWords Editor 7.0 but it doesn't come without bugs. That might be why nobody is really talking about the new release -- 6.5's release was announced, a lot of people downloaded it, and it was also laden with major bugs.

Google AdSense Not Faring Well Lately
There are two negative reports about Google AdSense lately. The first is that Google AdSense is targeting the wrong ads to sites -- including children's sites -- and people are pulling out of the program. The second is that the Google AdSense team is supposedly sending out holiday cards that look no more fishy than spam. Nobody wants to even come close to the emails. I'm not sure what's happening there but Google's desire not to embrace publishers because they appear to need money is starting to upset people a lot.

Cuil is Not Comment Spamming
Cuil says that they are not spamming your blog comments but some people believe that they may have hired someone to do their dirty work. In fact, why would anyone go such lengths to make the search engine look so bad (unless, of course, they WERE hired?) I don't know, but something smells fishy.

Does the ALT Attribute Improve Search Rankings? YES
We polled you and you said that the ALT attribute improves rankings. Well, 20% of you didn't agree with that, but the rest of you did. I'd love to know if either side has empirical evidence for backup.

That's all. So much for holiday cheer this week. Maybe next week. :)

Is Social Media Really a Viable Link Building Option?

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:37pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Michael Gray has written a great piece at Search Engine Land on how stories promoted in a social media site have actually translated to higher rankings. He takes a bunch of unpopular domains (e.g. not Forbes, Jalopnik, or other known car sites) and shows how their rankings have improved after the particular stories have been submitted to a site like Digg. Then he looks at the keyword rankings for each of these stories. It becomes obvious that social media is an alternative to link building but that it's imperative to use your keywords that you want for ranking in the Digg submission.

Of course, there are links to be gained, but there's obviously a lot more -- direct sales, awareness, and then some.

So why is it that you haven't tried social media marketing yet?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Does Google Throttle Domain Traffic?

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:26pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

If you get a really high ranking on Google, should you see less traffic? A WebmasterWorld user says that he's getting much higher rankings than before (increases to the first page from page 11) and he's still not getting a traffic boost ("I'm now getting traffic from hundreds more great keyphrases -- but the total traffic at the end of the day is the same as it has been for the past three months.") The thought is that Google is not giving him that boost (but why?)

Some say that this is because even great rankings for very popular keywords do not necessarily bring great traffic. The user argues that his popular keywords ARE bringing him traffic (and they are GREAT keywords), but he's still not sure. The suspicion lies in a correlation between Google AdWords and organic results, but there's absolutely no relationship between the two.

It's still an open ended question. My thought would be to have a good look at analytics and compare the before-after results of the rankings change.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Analysis of Sphinn Front Page Success to Determine How to Get There

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:14pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

The Searchlight Digital blog has a detailed analysis of three weeks of Sphinn frontpage success. The analysis takes a look at the top contributor and the categories in which the stories became popular.

From looking at that data, the conclusion (besides being a power user) is obvious:

If you want to kick ass on Sphinn, there are specific topics you should be writing on, namely SEO, social media and Google.

Well, that may be true, but the Sphinn discussion says that the other sections (e.g. Usability) have less submissions overall so there's a higher percent change that the usability stories will frontpage versus a SEO submission (among submissions in the same category). At the same time, those topics don't have submissions in them because there's a lot less interest compared to more general topics.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 18, 2008

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Yahoo to Retain 90 Days of Search History

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:47pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

Yesterday, the blogsophere was abuzz with news that Yahoo will be retaining data for 90 days. At Search Engine Land, Barry explains that "[t]he data policy is not just inclusive of their search data but also their page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks."

The industry has been pretty quiet about anonymizing data since June 2007. But this new announcement, which shortens the length of data retention by more than a year compared to other engines, is a bit eye-opening. It's also perceived as a great move on behalf of Yahoo and one that will put pressure on Google to do the same thing.

Well, it's a great move on behalf of Yahoo if they actually remove all query information after 3 months (and not just IP information). After all, I can't help but think about Thelma Arnold who was identified by her search behavior and not her actual IP location.

What, then, is Yahoo retaining after 90 days and what is Yahoo scrapping? We don't know. Do you?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld. More blog discussion is on Techmeme.

Only Whitelisted Sites Can Display Videos Within Google Reader

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:27pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

If you're hosting your blog on wordpress.com and are embedding video in your blog post, don't expect for it to show up in Google Reader.

That's what Google employees confirm in a Google Groups thread. According to Mihai, a Google rep, there's a whitelist that sites need to be added to in order for their embedded videos to actually play within Google Reader.

So in case you were wondering, apparently you need to request to be whitelisted. The policy isn't exactly clear on how you get your site added to the whitelist, nor is it indicated whether this whitelist is publicly accessible. I suppose that just means that you need to be on top of Google Groups (for now) in order for Google to consider your site whitelisted.

(Surely, there's got to be a better way...)

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Cuil Says it's Not Cool to Comment Spam

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:09pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Spam

Is Cuil, the new search engine that seems to have lost momentum, trying to bring brand awareness back to the forefront by adding spam comments to blogs? That's what I'd say -- after all, they spammed my blog:

And that's also what forum members have caught. A Sphinn submission points to a blog post where it's obvious that I'm not the only one who was a victim of the Cuil spam. Even WebmasterWorld forum members are a bit shocked.

On my flickr screenshot (click the image above for the link), Brad from Cuil writes the following:

Hey Tamar, it actually isn't us (Cuil) posting the spam. We are as against spamming as you. We'll be doing a blog post later today to clear things up.

And just as promised, the Cuil team has written a blog post to publicly inform the community that it's not them either.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: 12/5/08 - Google's Frugal Christmas, Popular 2008 Searches, Ninja Day

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 5:51pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Welcome to December, where all your holiday wishes should come true. Hopefully you're finally recovered from last week's turkey (though if it were up to me, I'd have some more. Too bad I didn't eat at home!) And hopefully you also gained some money during Cyber Monday if you're an advertiser (or got a great deal if you're just a smart shopper). Now that it's Friday, check out this week's news in search:

Google: Cheapskates
I'm in 100% agreement with Barry that Google is stingy and obnoxious about not sending their advertisers -- those who made Google millions of dollars -- tokens of appreciation for the holiday season. How about you realize that their contributions are valuable and reward them in kind? Chances are Google is making a lot more than any individual advertiser, and I'm sure they'd appreciate the goodwill from Google. Heck, I know they would.

Meanwhile, Some People are Lucky
Google may have canceled gifts for most advertisers, but some got Google gifts. Doesn't that make you even more jealous that Google only seems to care about a subset of you? Seriously.

At Least the SEM Industry Cares for its Own
Let's face it, this economy sucks. A lot of people are being affected and a lot of people are just being cautious even though there's probably nothing to worry about. A layoff as reported in the industry turned into a support forum for those who have been similarly impacted. It's nice that people care about others in this industry.

Have You Seen Google's Webmaster Tools Today?
Google has updated its Webmaster Tools with some consolidated settings and more control over your crawl rate. We have some screenshots in case you're too lazy to log into Webmaster Tools yourself, but you might want to check it out. It's cool. Promise. (It doesn't replace lost holiday gifts, though.)

Google Fixes iFrame Spam Classifier
Matt Cutts acknowledged earlier this week that Google had a bug when classifying iFrames as spam. The cool part is that it's fixed. The cooler part is that Barry found this in a Google Groups thread. I don't blame him when he says that he loves finding gems deep in forum discussion; that's why it's fun to check out forums. Of course, it's also fun to check out our reporting of the forum discussion on Search Engine Roundtable.

Google Blog Search to Fix Blogroll Links
It was reported earlier that the Google was indexing content that wasn't part of blog posts, like a blogroll. Google has said that they'll remove this content. It's not happening immediately, but it's on the company's radar.

Google Webmaster Help Group Moves to New Forum
It's about time, but the Google Webmaster Help Group has finally moved over to the new format Google Groups forums. Now it'll be even harder for Barry to track who is writing on which threads! Guys, give us back the blue G for Google representation and let us track our favorite forum members. Please? I asked more than once already. :)

Cyber Monday Rocked!
Any Google AdSense publisher or Google AdWords advertiser seemed to have fared well this Cyber Monday. Lots of clicks, better Quality Scores -- what more can you ask for?

Google Monetizes Image Search
Google is testing ads on image search, it's reported. I noticed Michael Gray blog about it. It's ugly. But hey, it's what Google does to make money for your holiday gifts. Oh wait.

Google Contractors Fired, Results Get Spammy
After it was determined that Google got rid of 10k contractors, ironically (but probably not related) we're noticing that Google AdSense ads are pretty spammy lately. I wonder if there's less manpower, or maybe the issue is that there's less motivation.

I HATE SEARCHWIKI
We had a poll asking how interested you were in Google's SearchIcky application. It turns out that most of you hate SearchWiki. Almost 83% of you don't want it. So hey, when is Google going to make it optional and something we can turn on? Matt Cutts, you there?

Popular Searches for 2008 Revealed Across Three Engines
Google, Yahoo, and Ask revealed some of their top search terms for 2008. I thought that Google's Product Search data was most significant. It's cool to see that everyone wants gadgets. I'm not surprised; it's what I'd have searched for too!

Today is Ninja Day
Most ninjas think in black. Search Engine Roundtable thinks in black on a yellow background. We're celebrating the Day of the Ninja today, so be sure to do something stealthy like a ninja. K?

Speaking of which, do you think the pirates can beat the ninjas?

Yahoo VP Qi Lu Replaces Kevin Johnson's Vacancy at Microsoft

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 3:56pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Since the end of July, there's been a vacancy at Microsoft as Kevin Johnson moved on from the company. The New York Times reports that Johnson's vacancy is finally filled: Qi Lu, a former Yahoo executive, has taken the position.

In selecting Mr. Lu, who will become president of the money-losing online services group in January, Microsoft chose an executive with deep technical knowledge over others with more advertising and media experience. He will be leading the company’s challenge to Google, which dominates the search and online advertising businesses.

Suspicions with hiring technologist Lu have to do with Microsoft wanting to be more like Google. Maybe they're right.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google and Yahoo's Ad Deal Ended Because of Anti-Trust Concerns?

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 3:31pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

We reported on November 5th that Google and Yahoo ended their ad agreement. We only knew what the Google Blog (and other news outlets) told us: the government didn't seem too happy about the agreement and advertisers were concerned.

In the past 24 hours, though, it's come to light that there was a lot more than just a "governmental concern." The truth of the matter is that the United States Department of Justice was "three hours away" from filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to CNET.

Now what? Well, Google's decision to pull away was "shrewd." And they think it's smart that Google pulled out, whereas Microsoft's past history shows that they wouldn't back down.

MS rarely back down. Thats why they got such a bad reputation- they were swallowing a multi-million (dollar/pound/euro- take your pick) DAILY fine about publishing "complete and accurate technical specifications" and still fighting.
G still enjoys public affection. It would be seriously bad for them to lose this publically annointed halo. MS never cared what people thought of them- as long as people BOUGHT their product, by hook or by crook

At the same time, though, some wonder why there was a concern about monopolies anyhow. After all, Google and Yahoo are considered competitors.

At the same time, there's a problem with the government's approach, according to one individual.

If the government knew anything about running a business, they wouldn't be operating with a close to $1 trillion annual deficit.

(In comparison, Google is doing a lot better.)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 4, 2008

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

How Do I Use Sphinn?

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 3:42pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Sphinn is a little over a year old now and the Problogger blog has a tutorial for beginners on how to take advantage of the highly popular Internet Marketing social news site. The article is broken down to history, how to get started, how to navigate the site, and how to submit an article. Some pitfalls are discussed, but ultimately the value of Sphinn is seen:

For users, the benefits are being able to locate internet marketing themed posts that hopefully have some value and can add to your internet marketing knowledge. For industry writers and bloggers, one of your stories being submitted and going hot on Sphinn can bring your site exposure and traffic.

Everyone knows that a site like Digg and StumbleUpon, being that they're both not as niche sites, can give you traffic. The question, though, is "is this targeted traffic?" Most people (and even the commenters on the post) don't realize that this is the biggest and most valuable type of traffic because people are specifically seeking out articles that address Internet Marketing and Search.

But in the meantime, while Sphinn rocks in its own regard, there are also conversations of raising the bar. Right now, it's fairly obvious to regular users that you need 22 votes to hit the front page of Sphinn. The problem is that this system can be gamed -- and yes, there's one guy who keeps asking me for Sphinns even though I wrote this for him over a year ago. Thus, it's currently being discussed on Sphinn to raise the number of votes to 30 so that higher quality stuff rises to the top and the low quality and gamed content doesn't make it.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and Sphinn.

Webmasters Report December 2008 Google SERP Changes

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 3:36pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

It's December, the last year of 2008, and webmasters have started guessing what's up with Google this month once again.

New sites are fluctuating with their rankings; one webmaster reports that his new sites (2 months old or less) are showing up in the top 10 and then 12 hours later, they're not even in the top 1000. It seems that this is a cycle. Some say it's just a sandbox.

Another observation relates to sitelinks. It seems that there are questions regarding sites that have sitelinks in Google's results. Do those mean that those pages are refreshed more often? Crawled more often? Not necessarily; getting sitelinks means you're a more "popular" site (you have more attention), but having sitelinks isn't a factor. The former brought upon the latter, after all.

A third observation relates to a "disconnect" between index pages and inner pages of sites. These pages were never linked together in the SERPs. Tedster expounds upon this idea and says that he observed that the second results from a domain aren't always indented. Sometimes, though, they're indented too much.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 3, 2008

Posted: December 3rd, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 18, 2008

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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: Google Launches Mobile iPhone Voice Application

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 4:13pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Guess what, iPhone owners? The Google Mobile Blog has some great news for you. Google has released an iPhone application with voice recognition that will return searches formatted for your phone. This eliminates the need for you to have to type any queries.

Barry has illustrated how this works:

Cool, isn't it? Most people do think so. One defines this move as "cutting edge technology," though I'd have to attribute that to Apple's superior iPhone rather than Google. Jill Whalen is looking for an iPhone application that does voice recognition dialing; you'd think Google would have thought of that!

All in all, the application has been very well-received.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords Tip on Negative Keywords

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:54pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

AdWordsPro Sarah is not done giving Google AdWords subscribers great tips. In yesterday's tip #8 on Google Groups, Sarah tells us about how to take advantage of negative keywords.

She explains that if you are using a negative keyword like -fast blue, any keyword iteration that utilizes both words will not show up, including terms like "blue fast". Essentially, consider an "AND" operation. Therefore, if you use a key phrase like "fast car mercedes," and there's no mention of "blue," an ad will show. But with the inclusion of "fast car mercedes blue," the ad will not show because both terms are included in the negative keyword.

On the other hand, if you had a negative keyword like "-fast blue", which is a negative phrase match, you won't get ads that show "fast blue" in the actual keyword list. But if you had an ad like "fast green blue", it would show up.

Sarah goes through examples for negative exact match also.

Understanding negative keywords and how they are applied in different scenarios should help you get an understanding of how to maximize your campaign and make sure to generate the most targeted impressions.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Is Yelp.com Paying for Positive Comments?

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:32pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Yelp.com, the review site, is reported to have been engaging in some shady activity with business owners. In one example quoted by the linked article, a business owner was told by telemarketers that if she paid $300, reviews can be rearranged where the negative reviews would be essentially placed "below the fold." However, Yelp doesn't actually allow that.

At Cre8asite Forums, it's suspected that Yelp.com's employees may even have a hand in writing bad reviews for local businesses to encourage them to purchase into the paid program. A pretty shady operation, don't you think?

In fact, if telemarkers engage in a practice that Yelp obviously approves of (they're reading from a script, after all) and Yelp gets a negative review by business owners for actually engaging in these shady operations, is it legitimate for Yelp to remove those negative reviews? In another article, a business owner states that her negative review about Yelp itself was removed by Yelp.com. (But wait, she can't remove her own negative reviews, so why doesn't it work both ways?)

Is this practice extortion? Is Yelp.com legit? Is it time for a new company to take over and do it better and ethically without greed of money being on the mind?

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 17, 2008

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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 Tests "Skip Intro" Link in the SERPs

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 4:32pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Today, gabs spotted a new feature in Google.co.uk that lets you skip through the splash screen of sites. Using this query, you can see a similar result to this:

Search Engine Land spotted this in June, and it looks like Google isn't done testing this out yet. Further, the "Skip Intro" link isn't very visible, so it'd be interesting to note how many people actually have seen this but never actually clicked on it (probably because they overlooked it).

It's a nice addition, but indeed, I think the "Skip Intro" link would need to be more prominent to be useful.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

State of Washington Sues Search Engine Optimization Firm

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 4:14pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Legal Issues in Search

NetworkWorld reports that the State of Washington has sued an SEO firm for a variety of infractions, including making claims that they can increase traffic to clients' websites, falsely claiming affiliations with other marketers, making claims that customer service representatives are available for any calls (though they never returned calls), failing to provide refunds, continuing to bill credit cards of customers who have canceled, and failing to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor.

In the past four years, 90 complaints have been lodged against the company, which uses the name Visible.net.

Is this lawsuit a good thing? A few people are a bit worried. How many SEOs promise a lot but deliver below expectations because competitors overdeliver and the algorithm changes [drastically], despite all that you've done? It can happen. While some say that this is a plea aimed at snake oil sellers, if a client is unhappy with legitimate SEO work, what's to say they won't consider you a snake oil salesman?

On another note, how come nobody has sued those companies that send you mailers claiming to be your domain registrar and wanting to renew your domain for a few years (at least to my knowledge)? Like these guys. Seriously -- I'm sure there are more than 90 complaints against those people.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Is Social Media Marketing a Productive Use of Your Time?

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 3:43pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Peter Da Vanzo poses a question on SEOBook asking if social media marketing is a waste of time. In it, he adds a few qualifiers including traffic (is the traffic to your page to see a monkey riding a bicycle worth it?), an uncontrolled message, a concern about the ability not to measure branding, the level of interaction isn't clear, it takes time, it's stupid and is a useless distraction, and it's difficult to scale.

This all may be true to an extent. EGOL recounts his own experience being Dugg: when the page was submitted to Digg, it had no inbound links. Within a few weeks, though, it had several hundred. Three years later, it's still on the top of the Google SERPs.

That said, it's not completely a waste of time.

I should add that this industry is very focused on Social Media Marketing as getting Dugg on the front page. That's not all there is to SMM.

One important thing to note, as shared by forum member glyn:

The thing with Social Media is the moment you get too specific with your advertising you scare the user base away.

Forum discussion continues at Crea8site Forums.

Yahoo Search Marketing Now Lets You Block 500 Domains

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 3:27pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

The Yahoo Search Marketing blog has announced that those utilizing the Sponsored Search account functionality can now block 500 domains instead of the standard 250.

While this is helpful--after all, the number of blocked domains has now doubled--there's a concern that Yahoo is still sending "garbage traffic" to YSM users (from Yahoo search partners). One mentions that 500 blocked domains is not nearly enough. One mentions that he wants to block all non Yahoo domains.

On the other hand, one forum member says that he hopes that Google sees this as a challenge and also ups the number of domains that can be blocked.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and Search Engine Watch Forums

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 14, 2008

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 10:00pm CET 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.

Weekly Search Buzz RoundUp - 11/14/08: Great PubCon Keynotes, Liveblogging Dispute & Veteran's Day

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 6:30pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Guess what? The "con" part of PubCon is over and the guys are preparing to head to the pub later today. But alas, I'm back in New York -- like Barry, I took the red-eye. It's 11AM EDT (or 8AM, whatever) and I'm all confused about where I am and how I got here. But moving on...

PubCon Keynotes Rocked
I had the pleasure to liveblog the George Wright keynote at Pubcon. He talks about how, with a $50 budget, he made a viral phenomenon. It's pretty impressive to hear that kind of reinforcement when you have business objectives, don't you think?

The following day, we liveblogged Satya Nadella of Microsoft. They launched Project Silk Road, an API that looks pretty promising.

I'm Not Giving Up Liveblogging, Even if Barry Says I Should
There's a jerk on the Internet who wanted to get attention, so he blogged that we should stop liveblogging because our reporting is inaccurate. Then he says that he's upset because he has "liveblogged erroneously." Well, sorry that you suck at liveblogging, John, but that doesn't mean you have to attack two of the greatest livebloggers this industry has ever had. Meanwhile, the blog post that this John dude wrote evoked some heavy emotions and Barry is running a poll. Should we stop liveblogging? Answer us. And if you say "yes," identify yourself with a comment on the thread so that we livebloggers can burn you in effigy.

Why is Google Using Blog Comments--and Not Public Forums--to Communicate with Webmasters?
Do you find it annoying when you report a problem on a blog post and Google chooses to respond on the blog and not in an "official" channel? Does it irk you that Google doesn't appear to use its own internal blogs to communicate these "bugs" or observations with the rest of the community? To some, it does. But for Google, it makes a lot of sense. Why should they worry an entire webmaster community if only some people are being impacted? What does this mean for you? Keep being active in the blogs, baby!

Google
Finally, after all this time, Google has finally released an SEO guide. It's a 22-page PDF with all this useful information, or so I hear (no, I didn't read it yet either). Now when is Google going to talk about linking?

Googlebot Won't Answer Your Calls if You Ignore Him
I have no idea why someone would block Googlebot and then realize later that this was a stupid decision and try to reinvite Googlebot back into his life. However, some guy does want to do that. How do you tell Googlebot to crawl your site again? The idea is to send signals to Google that you're interested in reigniting that flame: get more links, submit a sitemap, and whatever else you can do to call your site to Google's attention.

YouTube Sponsored Ads Broken
Isn't it nice when YouTube launches a new feature but it doesn't actually, erm, work? Barry tried to play with YouTube sponsored ads and got an internal error. What gives? (I think it has something to do with a Mac.)

Deleting Your Google Sitelinks May Not Remove them from Google
Apparently, a webmaster has discovered a bug in Google. When deleting his sitelinks, a webmaster realized that Google kept them intact. Five days later, the deleted sitelinks are still listed on the search engine. Hrm.

Argentina Doesn't Honor Free Speech
It sucks if you're living in Argentina and want to learn about a prominent figure. It seems that Argentina prefers censorship rather than allowing content to be discovered. Search engines were forced to comply with this legal measure, and well, I'm glad I live in America.

Veteran's Day Comes and Goes
With PubCon in our faces, many forgot that we celebrated Veteran's Day on Tuesday. Google forgot to honor people in the Coast Guard and eventually updated their logo. Dogpile and Yahoo joined in the fun too. Of course, so did we!

No Video on Sunday
Barry got a new MacBook Pro and I think he wants to play with it instead of making our video for Sunday. You'll just have to wait for him next week (sorry Sam!)

Is it Worthwhile to Buy a High PageRank Domain and 301ing it?

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 3:13pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

What happens if you want some good link juice to your domain? You may engage in the practice of buying a site and 301ing it to your old domain. In yesterday's PubCon session, we even talked about buying sites for maximum exposure and minimum risk. But the question is really: will you get juice by doing this?

At a High Rankings Forum post, member Randy claims that Googlers say that the "trust" of the site gets reset upon a domain transfer and that you won't get the PR value. At the same time, how is Google to know that you have bought a domain for this purpose? That said, Randy says it's 50/50.

If you have experience in this area, the comments area of this post is waiting for your insights.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Do You Need Enrollment in the Google AdWords Professional Program to take the AdWords Exam?

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 3:11pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Google has a requirement -- at least, the site says so -- that you need to be enrolled in the Google Professional Program to be considered for the AdWords exam. But is it really required?

AdWordsPro thinks so (but unfortunately isn't 100% sure). I think that if it says it's required, it probably is.

The question is: is Google really strictly enforcing this requirement? Search Engine Roundtable readers: do you know? Have any of you ever tried to register for the exam (which is paid) and had the course enrollment requirement be an obstacle?

Let us know in the comments.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Gmail Adds Video and Voice Chat

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 2:56pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Want to see who you're talking to over your IM? You may want to use iChat or Skype, but now, Google Talk can support voice and IM chat. You can find out more.

For those who are dependent on Skype (and perhaps 3-5% of my friends actually use the service consistently), it's nice to know that Gmail will probably fill the void for the remaining 95-97%. Many forum members found that Skype's functionality was limited (you needed XP SP2, for example), so the Gmail solution should work pretty well.

That said, the actual integration of these new features hasn't come without its criticisms. One person expressed his disappointment that Google has not installed a folders system and he considers that important. (I see the point and I agree that Labels alone are NOT the suitable replacement. A future Gmail Labs feature, perhaps?) Other tweaks have been requested within Gmail that would make the *mail* experience a more productive one.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums

Super Session : Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 2:11am CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008 Las Vegas

One of our most popular PubCon sessions, this event is also known as the Search Engine Smackdown.

Expect a "State of the Engines" address by the leading search engines of today. Yahoo, Google, Ask and Microsoft will all run down the current status, features, and fresh offerings of their respective search spaces.

Related blog entry from a few years back:
http://www.pubcon.com/blog/index.cgi?mode=viewone&blog=1156867200

Moderator: Brett Tabke
Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Sean Suchter, VP, Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering, Yahoo!
Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft

Nathan Buggia:
State of Live Search - what does it mean for publishers? We've talked about themes of live search - deliver best search results, simplify key tasks, and innovate in the business model.

Best search results: it's all about relevance. We've made a lot of progress. Does a query answer your question? We've been tracking this for 4 years. In the past year, we're in the same ballpark - not exactly like Yahoo/Google but very similar. Some queries we're better on but some aren't perfect. It's about freshness of content and depth of content.

Specific improvements: improving the crawling performance - compression and if-modified-since. We create less load on your server and do a more efficient job of crawling. If your resources are gzipped, we take less bandwidth.

Standardization of REP rules - these are a core set of rules for robots exclusion protocol. It's easier for publishers can specify the policies for searche engines. These rules are shared. MSNbot has adopted the common set of rules: now we support regular expressions.

We continue to invest in sitemaps. They can be hosted anywhere. There's a lot of flexibility for publishers. It also helps understand canonicalization issues.

There's a significant increase in crawling capacity.

We also realized that the best search results isn't about algorithmic improvements. It's also about providing tools: Webmaster Tools. We offer: troubleshooting tips. We took a list of the top issues that Live search encountered when crawling websites - 404 errors, too many parameters, blocked by robots, and unsupported content. There's reporting being provided around these and even filtering. Next week, we'll launch a new feature about malware. We scan every page and see what spawns a malicious process; those pages are flagged and cannot be clicked on in the user experience of Live search. Publishers can find their own links in the tools; they can also get a list of outbound links that are also infected.

We also provide a lot of tools around ranking. Information is provided on Static Rank, dynamic ranking within site, backlinks, and penalties.

There are also some issues on the community forums with a 3 day turnaround.

Another tool launched about a year ago is the adCenter Excel Keyword Research tool. It gives you access to an API that gives you keyword data for Live search - demographic and monetization information.

Simplify key tasks:
- The future of relevance? We found that there are many use cases for when people come to search engines. Sometimes they're doing navigational queries. Sometimes people come to search engines and don't know what they want. These are exploratory scenarios. We provide richer media in the search results in addition to 10 blue links. Also, deeper pages may not be related to the search experience but the topic. As a publisher, there's more surface area on how to reach customers with specific content. Some of this is video, structured content (products, reviews, and more information about your website). This is expanded into Hotmail and other properties as well.

Innovation in the business model:
We're talking about the Cashback/adCenter scenario.

We also have Project Silk Road that consolidates things to increase engagement (enhances the seite with Live search results/customizes 404 error pages with the error toolkit, and create rich user experience with Virtual Earth and silverlight), generate traffic (optimization of site with the tools, deep content partnerships that increase distribution, and enhanced ad format solutions), and drive insight (how your website performs and your customers. Rich site statistics, monitoring, and optimization)

Within that, there's the Live Search API. We asked a lot of our partners about what they needed in an API. Publishers wanted to be in control of the results of the API. Now, you can reorder the results, skin results and ads to match your website or application, and filter out 300 ad providers that don't make sense (competitors, aren't good for your audience, etc.)

The technical aspects of the API also needed to meet business needs:
- The query limit is removed - now unlimited
- Rich query language - site operators that you've seen in the past (e.g. site:). You can alter how dynamic ranking relevancy favors freshness, accuracy, or whatnot.
- Many types of content - web, news, images, encarta answers, spelling. Different corpuses in the backend are now accessible.
- Implements all standard protocols (REST, JSON, RSS, SOAP) - they can use the API any way that people develop.

Sean Suchter:

Yahoo is trying to get rid of the 10 blue links.

Limited choice: three players dominate the maket. Neither site owners or searcher can exert influence, so Yahoo is trying to address it.

Search Assist feature is being worked on to make the best possible search queries.

Right now, Yahoo is looking to move from "to do" to "done" - getting to the answer by reducing frustration, trying to structure information from the web directly, etc.

One example is the music player integration- "Play the web" in Yahoo Search

He shows a SERP that shows many initiatives: rich media modules (video and headlines), deep links, and news federation.

The other big area is about the ecosystem. We're really trying to create a community around search (think PubCon). We're trying to set up incentives for everyone - Yahoo and end users. A few ways to do that: opening search (SearchMonkey) - coming from outside in. What does this mean? Yahoo wants to move from a simple presentation to a more useful structured presentation when appropriate for the task the user is trying to accomplish (not uniformly, not for all queries, not for all users). For site owners, this helps the users get right to the answers. The traffic should increase in quality. It hasn't hurt clickthroughs to your site. It will increase loyalty and engagement.

There is a lot of success with the SearchMonkey ecosystem. A lot of properties, including People magazine, Wikipedia, Trulia, WebMD, and more are utilizing it.

Another innovation includes BOSS, a big initiative - build an open search service. The idea is to open the platform completely. Trying to be a principal search engine is a hard thing. You need hardware, data, and more. So the idea is to open it up completely so people can interact with the query handling and crawling and use it directly. The goal is to have high quality search experience to be relevant, comprehensive, fresh, and well-presented.

Some examples: 4 hoursearch - it was made in 4 hours by guy who said he paid $10 for pizza and beer. It's very straightforward and a different type of search presentation. Another one is PlayerSearch which is more specialized (like SportsCenter). NewsLine is another with a cool layout of how the news are presented. Finally, Tianamo is a 4th - it presents the data in this somewhat mountain format. It's a landscape of queries and things surrounding them in a visualization.

Matt Cutts: State of the Index.
What has happened in 2008 and what should we expect in 2009?
- Google Chrome is a wicked fast browser
- Google Android is an open source operating system

There's other stuff too - better machine translation, better voice recognition, Google Suggest, improving personalization and universal/blended search

There were a lot of small things: 2001 search index, video and voice chat in Gmail, ability to track the flu (by finding out who is searching for the flu/cough/cold symptoms on Google!) - it's really cool.
- Why is this interesting to webmasters? You don't have to do this with flu. You can look at Google trends in general and even check them for websites.

Google Ad Planner slices and dices by demographic.

Let's drill down: what have we done for the webmaster? We're taking PDFs that are images and are running OCR on them. We're crawling flash better - pulling out text of transitions of Flash files.

2008 Webmaster Launches. Look at pinkberry.com/mobile versus redmangousa.com/ on your iPhone. Only one works. Google is working to understand these flash files that aren't showing up on your phone.

Google has gotten better at keyword spam and gibberish. We have also provided some extra tools. For example, there's a tool that shows who is linking to you who is linking to a 404. You can also make your 404 better with 14 lines of JavaScript. This code by Google suggests pages that might be useful on that site.

There are a few other things:
- Adavanced segmentation of Google Analytics
- On demand indexing for Google Custom Search Engine - Google will reindex up to 10 pages within 24 hours.
- webmaster APIs for hosters and Gdata
- translation gadget for your website. If you have Chinese visitors and you write in English, the site can be translated into Chinese.

Webmaster Communication - it's huge so far. We've had 3 chats so far with 700 people dialing in on the most recent chat. We're blogging more, including more videos, and there are now blogs in different languages. If you register your site and you have malware or are caught for spam BEFORE you register, those messages will be waiting.
- Yesterday, Google came out with a 30 page guide on SEO 101. This means Google values SEO.

2009 Blackhat trends:
- jeevesretirement.com was bought by Ask.com. Ask forgot to renew it. Jeevesretirement.com was bought by porno people. People grab expired domain names and take advantage.
- Illegal hacking will become more common.
- Blackhat moves toward the outright illegal - DNS subdomain hijacking. Without getting DNS resolvers update, it can be hacked. Do we want to do stuff that gets people in jail?

Conclusions - blackhat SEOs will continue to veer toward the outright illegal, SEOs need to decide risk tolerance, Google will keep communicating efforts with webmasters, and Google will provide tools to help webmasters

Community Hacking - 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 12:50am CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008 Las Vegas

Link-baiting is a topic that makes some people snicker when they hear it. However, the complexities and subtleties are a fascinating combination of clever copywriting and strategic placement. Did you know that there are 12 types of links? Moreover, there are eight types of link bait to get those 12 types of links? That means there are 96 different strategies to get links. This session will look at the eight and the twelve.

Moderator: Andy Beal
Speakers:
Todd Malicoat, Independent Marketing Consultant, Meta4creations, LLC
Ian Ring, Application Developer, IGLOO Inc.
Bill Hartzer, Search Engine Optimization Manager, Vizion Interactive
Jane Copland, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOMoz

Bill Hartzer:

Link baiting specific sectors: target a group in your sector/topic, tell them what they want and what they need to know. Point out the industry problem (e.g. my funniest PPC mistake)
- search for "keyword" at search engine. Find companies biddibng on word "keyword." Copy the list of keywords from the spreadsheet, paste into PPC program.

Target sites that link out - research those sites. Blogstorm tracker, Technorati, and more are good tools.

Find linkbait that worked. Don't always reinvent the wheel. Research your topic in social media, find URLs that have gone popular, create a unique twist for similar linkbait, write an update to the previous article (link to the previous with new developments), watch for press releases in your industy for studies, research, and other news. Set up Google and Yahoo alerts for news.

News works well as linkbait: be able to respond to breaking news (set up a blog or page ready for the article). Post quickly. Submit to social sites. Go back and edit/update Add pictures/photos/logos/screen captures. This strategy helps you get the market share of links and is good for organic search.

Linkbaiting Techniques: problogger.net - tools, quizzes, contests, be first, scoops, expose, awards, lists, humor, make someone famous, create belonging/community, design, rants, controvesy, attack, shock, research and statts, give something away, resourcefulness, cool factors

Social media, linkbait, and search are all coming together. Create new linkbait on your site consistently. Participation is key - daily voting, commenting, and submitting.
Linkbait + social media = market share of links and getting noticed
If you get links when being noticed, you'll be successful in organic search.

Jane Copland:

Everyone can publish content online. It's low cost, high visibility, and easily digestible content.
Blogs imitate familiar old media - the banner, the sidebar, and the lead article. Their success is partly a result of the familiar nature.

Different types of blogged content achieve different results: shes shows illustration for some sites that have 2500+ digs with 27 external links. One had 900 diggs and 131 external links. It varies.

These multiple types of blogged linkworthy content exists as:
- "The Gimmick" - it helps to be drunk
- Light content lists - footer post - it's easy
- The OMG ticket (URLs ending in 0 - see on seomoz.org) - it's harder, and it doesn't help to be drunk
- Heavier content lists - it doesn't help to be drunk
- In-depth articles and case studies - which shouldn't be launched on a blog.
It's not a good idea to decide which type you're working with before you start writing.

It's never a good idea to launch viral content that isn't in a visible area.

SEOmoz has rewritten blog posts and 301d past links over to the new page.

Enable comments, because sometimes your readers are more interesting than you are.
- However, disabling comments have its place where comments are inappropriate.

Link building achieves 3 main goals:
* it adheres to traditional ways that content is distributed
* it invites interaction
* it's easy to spread becasue people can subscribe to blogs.

Todd Malicoat: awareness, sales, and revenue

Quick Digg primer: a lot of people read Digg and they have the power to put links to your site. You can either get a consultant or build up your own account.
- Get an optimal name - alpha sort organization
- Adding the right friends - they digg upcoming a lot, submit a lot, digg your stories. But don't do more than 5-10 a day. You'll want to reevaluate your friends.
- Find good stories quickly
- Submit good stories and ask for help

Some linkbait will bomb!

Have a friend submit your story.

Linkbaiting hooks: attack, humor, contrarian, news, resource, etc.

When you launch, if it doesn't bomb and it hits Digg's frontpage, you don't want your server to melt. Cache your content, host images on another host, search for the Digg/slashdot effect (and fix your server). Email friends and allies. Use sites as "jump off" points for other sites.

Don't have 25 social media buttons on the bottom of your blog post.

Reddit is similar to Digg - gives you less traffic but it's valuable.
StumbleUpon has a toolbar and brings traffic.

Ian Ring: Optimizing Conversion using Genetics
CSS styling can affect the clickability of links. Testing and optimization will increase your site's reevenue. Do you know if your current stylesheet is eleiciting optimzal user behavior?

Optimization algorithms: trial and errots, multivariate testing, hill climbing, simulated annealing (e.g. making the font size bigger, smaller, incrementally changing things until optimized), genetic algorithms

Introduction to genetic algiorthms - some are more optiized for environments.
- Metaphor: the page is the ecosystem, the page elements are living organizsms, a hyperlink is a species, a well-adapted organism thrives in its ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem is comprised of fit organisms.

How do you do it? Survival of the fittest.
- What is fitness? It's anything you can measure: clicks, purchases, subscriptions, sales leads, registration - these are all measures of fitness.
- Fitness is easy to measure. It's the number of times something good happens.

In biology, chromosomes affect fitness. Brown eyes are better optimized than blue/green eyes. On your website, you probably want to optimize for brown eyes.
- The chromosome that determines this is the CSS stylesheet.

CSS is a link's DNA: it could be an image, a graph, a link.
You may have 3 bits for a font size or 24 bits - if you're testing another interface element, you may have another set of genes - hue/saturation/etc. Properties of CSS stylesheets can be turned into a binary string that can be stored, manipulated, and moved back into a CSS stylesheet.

CSS can be expressed as a binary string:
A chromosome is a string of 1s and 0s. Define the genome: it's the map of placement of the genes that appear in a chromosome. You'll need a table to assign positions of the DNA to the genes in the CSS.

Create a template: inject genetic values into the template. You need functions to transalte binary chromosomes into CSS. Replace variables in the template with values from the DNA.

onPageLoad(): choose an organism; convert into CSS; if user clicks, increase organism's fitness. Increment organism's age. Do this until the end. After that, it's time to mate, spawn, and die.

Genetic variance via mutation and crossover: flip from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0.

You need a lot of things - databases, web pages, server side languages, and more!

Conclusion: unpredictable successes, continuous optimization, and no maintenance.

Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies

Posted: November 13th, 2008, 11:33pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008 Las Vegas

This is a follow up to last year's highly popular linking session.

The panelists in this session are experts on linking and will take a critical look at linking strategies including outbound link optimization, outsourcing link building, old-fashioned linking via directories, and hiring an in-house link developer.

Moderator: Chris Tolles
Speakers:
Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting
Rebecca Kelley, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOmoz
Roger Montti, Founder and Owner, martinibuster.com
Greg Hartnett, President, Best of The Web

Eric Enge: some ways to use social media as a link building strategy

Think big! Companies can be like Blendtec.

Social News Sites: the opportunity includes tens of thousands of visitors but the traffic sucks -- but there's also the opportunity for links

Match the Digg demographic
13-28 year old males
They like Google, Apple, novel technical thing, open source, Gmail..

Some other tips:
- Study what has worked before
- Write a compelling title
- Write an interesting description
- Vote for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
- Make sure you stand out!

Case study: a website that has a restroom photo.
Was it successful?
2/3 of a year later, it has 159 links. It's prominent in Google results.
- But ask: is it helpful or relevant?

Authoritative content can win: for example, how to solve a Rubiks cube that was posted on a howto website.
Why did it go hot? It was relevant to the audience - Rubiks cube had a resurgence a year ago among high school/college males. There were other great articles that predated it. It was authoritative and unique.

Was it a success? Yes.
- Fits theme of site, content was credible, still has 147 links 2/3 years later, does rank for Rubiks cube related search terms, term gets 40-50 searches a day.

One more example - 45 excellent blog designs on the front page of Digg.
It was more successful and here's why: fit the theme, credible content, 1160 links more than 1 year later, it's relevant, authoritative, high rankings, and there are 645 searches per day!

Doing this for yourself - interest the audience, be authoritive, reflect well on your business, use titles targeted at BIG search terms - it needs to be in the article title and the Digg submission title (those are in anchor text)

Another case study:
Sports stock market - fantasy players would buy/sell players and see trends. They became social media powerhounds - how?
- They created great apps primarily on Facebook targeted to sports fans
- March Madness app with 150k users, Fantasy Football app with 350k users - there are apps for every sports team - 6m-7m users!
- They also succeeded by integrating ads into the environment.

Why is this link building?
- Got a link from mlb.com, a PR7 page; ESPN, TechCrunch, Google, Battelle Media

Success story: They built content that built their reputation - authoritative, right image for company, related to business. They matched the demographic.

Rebecca Kelley:
Traditionally, link building sucks! It's repetitive, time consuming, risky, and there is low ROI.

But we need links - links are votes, they give you better rankings. You will want high quality links, not low quality links. Links bring traffic.

Strategy #1: Find brand mentions - find people talking about you who don't link to you. Ask them for a link. Go to Yahoo SiteExplorer; do a search like "etsy.com" linkdomain:etsy.com -site:etsy.com

Strategy #2: Identify broken inbound links. Use Google's Webmaster Tools Crawl Error Sources, COntact linkers and ask them to fix the link.

Strategy #3: Take advantage of broken links to your competitors.
- Search for things that are "no longer available," or "no longer offered [keyword]"
- If the product is discontinued, contact the site's owner and see if they're willing to link to you instead. Contact sites linking to the broken page.

Strategy #4: Find out who is linking to your competitors. Try Yahoo! Hubfinder.
- Find out who is linking to one site and who isn't linking to other sites. Ask for that link!

Strategy #5: Take advantage of confirmation emails. Customers who like you will comply. Links are editorial and relevant. It's a scalable strategy.

Strategy #6: Embed links in widgets, badges, and banners. Create a quiz, poll, shareable content. Offer embeddable tools and programs. Include a link back to your site.

Strategy #7: Create some linkbait - brainstorm content ideas and host it on your site. Promote the content via social media sites, forums, blogs, etc. Profit!
- Identify linkbait opportunities - research your sector's link worthiness; discover the big players in your firled; target social media/social news sites.
- Analyze current trends
- Don't neglect your own industry.

Handy resources
- linkhounds.com/hub-finder/hubfinder.php
- seomoz.org/linkscape
- seomoz.org/backlink-analysis
- quarkbase.com
- siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
- google.com/webmasters/tools

Blog posts:
- seobook.com/art-pitching-email
- searchengineland.com/lands/link-week.php
- seomoz.org/blog/long-list-of-link-searches
- seomoz.org/blog/a-long-list-of-competitve-link-searches

Greg Hartnett: link building via directories
- A directory is not a paid link. A paid link successful transaction results in a link on the page. A successful transaction on a directory is a review.
- A directory is not just a link farm. Link farms are a collection of links that are on a page that are categorized haphazardly without editorial discretion. They're created to manipulate search results.
- How can I tell a directory from a "directory?" Good directories have a history, contain great resources, have populated categories, are designed for the user, add lots of sites and not paid submits.

What kind of traffic can you expect? Not the Digg effect.
Can I list my website multiple times? Yes, it's called deep linking.
Is the Yahoo Directory worth it? Yes - it's an aged, trusted domain and the primary hub for internet mapping.
Is the ODP corrupt? No.
Which directories are considered the most trustworthy? Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, Business.com, Librarians Internet Index

How do I ensure my site gets listed if I go and pay these review fees? Follow the rules. There's no guarantee of listing, read the direcotry guidelines, good titles and descriptions, and beef up your content.

Where can I submit my blog?
- Yahoo and DMOZ have categories
- BOTW blog directory - blogs.botw.org
- Search Engine Journal has a list
- Lee Odden has another list

Roger Montti:
- Traffic and links with pop.

.edu links are popular but they're not special.
- The page may not be authoritative, they may be link farms, and they may be poorly linked to.

Tips you can use:
- Industry heavyweight backlinks: check backlinks from the most important companies in your sector
linkdomain:example.com site:.edu [keyword]
- e.g. sponsors, donors, benefactors, events
Bronze sponsorships are cheaper than the diamond ones and you can get a good link regardless.

Use the following with your product/niche keywrods and .edu modifiers: hotlinks, bookmarks, links, directory, resources. Pay attention to what kind of sites the targets are linking to - if they're only liking to govs and edus, they may not want to link to a commercial site.

White Hat Black Hat strategies: almost every blackhat technique can be turned to white hat by using nofollow or rendering link with javascript. Blog widgets, counters, calculators, and wordpress themes.

Reputation Monitoring and Management

Posted: November 12th, 2008, 11:17pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008 Las Vegas

This session will look at methods for monitoring, managing, and influencing your reputation within the blogosphere and press. If you are not talking with your customer base, your customer base will be talking about you.

Moderator: Todd Friesen
Speakers:
Jessica Berlin, Social Media Manager, Cirque du Soleil
Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

First up is Lee Odden.

Why is online reputation management (ORM) important?
Your customers, prospects, and competitors are online. People pissed at you are online. The future of your company is online. There are comments, blogs, reviews, and more -- you need to be aware of this.

How important is knowing about dissatisfied customers, brand de-vangelists, brand champions and evangelists? You should know about these people -- brand evangelists can be armed with tools to talk more about you in a positive light.

How is it that your online reputation is influenced? One is through search. ORM is about "search engine results". Another influence is social media - you can ask people for advice and feedback about a particular location, business, or whatever. There's also mainstream media - are you getting press coverage that's positive and negative? Do you have a handle on the top people in these channels?

Search engines = reputation engines.

Lee shows several examples of PayPal, Walmart, and Target.

What's going on and how can you monitor your ORM?
- Free: Google Alerts, TweetBeep
- Small Biz: Trackur
- Enterprise: Radian6, BuzzLogic

Short term ORM: SEO and social media displace SERPs
- Make brand optimization a process in the organization
- Brand optimize all digital assets: text, images, audio, and video
- Optimize aross departments: PR, Marketing, HR, investor
- Result is more branded SERPs

Long term: identify, qualify, and engage dissenters
- Is there merit to the issue?
- If not, offer facts and ask for correction
- If yes, offer to discuss
- Be ready to respond via the blog
- Results can be loyal brand fans

Tactics:
- SEO
- Social media - listen to channels
- Encourage media relations results to get your company written about; online PR

Push messaging out - outreach via wire service, networking, pitching, RSS
Pull messaging - optimized via press release, newsroom, social media, and media coverage

91% of people use Google.com to get updates for subject matter experts. They also use social media.

Who is doing it right? eBay and Dell. Look at their results -- very clean. They're doing it with subdomains; blogs, Wikipedia, etc

Takeaways:
- Be proactive. Don't wait until it's too late. Monitor conversations, optimize content, do digital asset promotion, and watch analytics

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
...until somebody writes about it on Twitter."

Andy Beal is up next.

There are many components of reputation management and most people are concerned about what shows up on Google. Even if you're not ready to engage, you should monitor of what's being said about you so that you can build a reputation to fix product flaws and be ahead of the competition.

He wrote "Radically Transparent," an awesome book on ORM.

Why monitor? Product ideas, keywords for your campaign, news, articles, blog sentiment, product recalls, scandals, client opportunities, industry trends, customer comments

What to monitor: company name, product name, executive names, CEO, competitors, partners, industry, news, product launches, stocks, patents, services, customers, press releases, reviews

List of tools:

Industry news: moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html, Yahoo news

Mainstream news: news.google.com

News Buzz: digg.com

Upcoming news: google.com/trends

Blog posts: Technorati.com, blogsearch.google.com

Blog comments: backtype.com

Blog conversations: blogpulse.com/conversation - note: if you see people talk about you, follow that blog and the conversation as well.

Blog trends: blogpulse.com/trends

Bookmarks: delicious.com/popular

Photos: flickr.com

Videos: video.google.com

Tags: keotag.com

Forum posts: boardtracker.com

Twitter: search.twitter.com

Changing information: wikipedia.org

Customer reviews: epinions.com

Email updates: google.com/alerts

The untrackable: compernic.com, $50/year

One stop shop: trackur.com, $18/month

Last up is Jessica Berlin who works with Cirque de Soleil. They are always listening to customer discussion. Cirque was founded in 1984 by street performers. The mission statement is to evoke the imagination, to evoke the senses, and to evoke the emotions of people. There are 40k employees from 40 countries, 17 shows around the world. 80 million people have seen the show and close to 10m of those saw it last year. In Vegas, there are 6 production shows.

Customers talk a lot about the show - from the purchase of tickets until they leave the theatre.

What are they looking for online? People writing about the experience -- it could be anything (ticket purchase, concession stands, etc.) What do they like, dislike, and is the information accurate? Who are the evangelists and influencers? What else do fans want -- how can they remain connected to the brand?

Influence ripples: bloggers who write can get blogged about again - mainstream media can pick it up.

Regular monitoring: Google Alerts, Trends, TEchnorati, blogpulse, trendpedia, wikio, twing, twitter search, tweetstats, buzzlogic, youtube, and social networking sites

They just launched Criss Angel: in 2.5 years, they realized that things are completely different. People start writing about the show instantaneously. One local paper came out with an article about people who hated the show. They employed deiworldwide to generate buzz about the show and to spread information about the ticket purchases.

Shifting PR practices: things have changed. Beforehand, embargoes were honored for critics/journalists. But now, they don't use embargoes - everyone is a content producer. Bloggers are treated like members of regular press. They have a smaller readership, but it's a targeted readership.
They have social media releases. Make it easy for people to share information, builds community by allowing feedbakc, and SEO is link building.
A two way conversation build trust.
Newsworthy things are happening daily: Twitter, Facebook, etc.
EAsing of PR guidelines
Brings us closer to the journalist
Trust in employees - they are brand ambassadors and can spread news.

How fans can help: there are fan sites. Beforehand, they were afraid of these fan sites. Not anymore.
MySpace works very well. Artists have fan pages with 30k friends. They work with the people who run the page and give them information - having those accounts building the reputation for Cirque.

Encourage conversation: they give journlists, blogers, and consumers tools they can use. There are also exclusive content on branded channels (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook). They also have quizzes, widgets, and games (for example, getcirqued.com/quiz - how do you know which show you want to see?)

Build a good reputation:
- Transparency: customers appreciate when brands are open and hnest
- The better the relationship is, the easier it is to communicate problems/handle a crisis
- Listening improves communication

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 24, 2008

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 11:00pm 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.

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp - 10/24/08: Google Analytics Integrates AdSense, First Click Free Program Discussed & Yahoo Rolls Out Search Marketing Features

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 7:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

The holidays are over and Barry and I are back -- for real. In the flesh. We even have a video recap on Sunday if you tune in.

Google's First Click Free Program Discussed
A week ago, we learned a little more about the First Click Free program in Google. In essence, First Click Free allows you to protect your content (say, if it's subscription based) while still getting the full benefit of being in Google's index. Some webmasters are wondering about how this is working, with some worried that this is no different from cloaking. Others think that it's unfair that the savvy internet surfer will be able to pretend to be Google to get on some private sites. Whatever the case may be, it's definitely an interesting development.

Google Analytics Now Integrates AdSense
We asked and Google delivered. Google is slowly adding AdSense integration to Analytics users. It looks great and hopefully we'll have screenshots of the process and outcome in action soon.

Google Hosted a Webmaster Chat, and We Have No News for You
On Wednesday, Google hosted a Webmaster Chat. This is the third one but unfortunately none of us were able to listen since it was the holiday. Google will likely publish an edited version in a week or so, but it's just not the same.

Google Integrates Product Images In Sponsored Results
Barry notes that AdWords shows product images in searches. If you look at the illustration he provides, you can see diamond rings when you expand the ad. How much does it cost to sign up?!

You Can Get a Quality Score of 10
We have highlighted yet another successful experiment on how to get a quality score of 10. The idea is to really minimize overhead -- focus on very target keywords (no more than 3 per campaign) and write very targeted landing pages.

Yahoo Search Marketing Rolls Out Desired Features
The Yahoo Search Marketing team announced some new features that will enhance the YSM experience with regards to targeting They are country/city targeting, and language targeting. People are happy and that's always a good thing.

Google AdWords API v13 Released
Just in time for the holidays, Google AdWords API has released a major update with some enhanced features. They are also offering 20% more API units for free through January 15.

Google Webmaster Tools Errors Reported -- but Fixed Now
Earlier, we saw some issues with Google Webmaster Tools reporting 0 indexed URLs, though the issue seems to be fixed. Gotta love the glitches.

This is a Glitch I Don't Like: Google Terminates Accounts
Loren Bakers Gmail account was terminated over the weekend. As someone who is pretty dependent upon my Gmail account, that just sucks. He wrote a plea to Google to revisit the issue, but I'm curious to know why it keeps happening. Seriously -- what's the issue here, Google?

IM Broadcast Launched: Internet Marketing Video Portal
If you like videos and you like internet marketing, you'll love the new IM Broadcast site, which was launched earlier this week. Very talented minds were behind this launch, and it has a ton of potential, so I'm happy. Maybe I'll start watching video too!

I want the Google Webmasters T-Shirt
Google has sent out very cool t-shirts for Webmaster Tools users, and I want one. How do I sign up?

Have a great weekend!

IM Broadcast is a YouTube for Internet Marketers

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 5:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Search Topics

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal teamed up with two great guys, Jordan Kasteler and David Snyder of Search and Social to launch IMBroadcast, which is advertised as the "first ever UGC video site dedicated to the Internet Marketing industry."

If you've taken a look at the site already, it really appears to be one of those sites with a ton of potential. Since as you know, Barry loves Video Recaps, I bet this is right up his alley too. At Cre8asite Forums, forum member Barry Welford also sees the potential. Many forum members think there are still opportunities to add text to the video, and that's still true. But there are opportunities to enjoy video as-is too--and we're not talking about from the perspective of search (not yet, at least).

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums and Sphinn.

Google Labs Adds Canned Responses to Gmail -- and Emoticon Support is Now Here!

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Google's Gmail is getting more and more interesting features. First, I heard via Mashable that Gmail Labs has added support for canned responses. The Official Gmail Blog writes:

If you're sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.

As I mentioned in the subject of this post, Canned Responses is only available if you actually turn on the feature in Gmail Labs. Head on over to Settings on the top right hand corner of your Gmail account, click on the Labs tab, and then Enable Canned Responses. Then, whenever you reply to a message, you'll see your Canned Responses; you can add as many as you want.

Given that I use Lifehacker's Texter to help me with canned responses, it's nice to know that Gmail cares and I could do without Texter -- which is helpful when I'm composing a message on a computer that doesn't have Texter installed. This is a much welcome change.

But that's not all Gmail has whipped up for us this week. A day later, we found out that Gmail now supports humor and emoticons, as seen below:

The Official Gmail Blog explains more. To be frank, I'm surprised it took this long. Still, it's nice that they finally included emoticons. Now how about converting my :) to an actual smiley face?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

And Yesterday's Google Feedburner Subscriber Drop Was Brought to You By...

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 4:18pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Cynthia at Google Groups must be a new FeedBurner user. After all, Feedburner has seen regular drops in subscriber count (maybe once or twice a month) and even ran into a zero subscriber count issue with some users earlier.

But Cynthia dropped 300 subscribers yesterday, according to her FeedBurner count (which makes her lucky, because I dropped 700+). What could have possibly been wrong?

From Google FeedBurner's team, Matt S. informed us that there were issues with FeedBurner and Google Feedfetcher. Naturally, when you get a drastic drop in subscribers, it's no reason to be alarmed; it happens way more often than it should.

Personally, I think asking my peers on Twitter is a great way to be kept abreast of the situation. :)

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 23, 2008

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 11:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

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

Recent Google PageRank Discussions & Observations

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 5:24pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

Michael Gray explains why PageRank sculpting is important. He explains that Google has downplayed the use of PR sculpting but it seems that it's working pretty well for some people. Using an analogy with two very different cars (one, an old shoddy car; two, an expensive powerhorse) he says:

The links on your website are touch points between your website and Google’s crawling and indexing spiders. Much like cars not all websites are the same, not all websites have the “horsepower” to take advantage of tactics like nofollow and pagerank sculpting. The key is figuring out if you are closer to the Ford Gremlin or the Ferarri Enzo and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

Indeed, many forum members agree that PR sculpting is beneficial especially for small sites where you can drive the link juice to the proper pages.

In a second thread, PageRank is dissected by Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal. Ann summarizes a WebmasterWorld discussion about the Graybar and how the PageRank toolbar, if gray, can mean two things: either the site is broken (not SEO'd) or the site is penalized. She also discusses some myths and truths regarding the gray bar. Some items of note include the fact that the gray bar is not equivalent to PR0, it actually doesn't mean the site is deindexed/penalized, it can indicate improper behavior, PR can change with no impact on performance, and more.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn (PR sculpting) and Sphinn (PR myths).

Yahoo's Q3 2008 Earnings Announced

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:58pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Yahoo has released its Q3 earnings report with some interesting observations. First, the earnings this quarter are $1,786 million, which is a a 1 percent increase compared to $1,768 million for the same period of 2007.

Currently, fifteen thousand employees work for Yahoo (though layoffs are being reported), and some forum members wonder why. Most importantly, they wonder why Yahoo's CEO is still in play especially given the huge missed opportunity with the Microsoft deal. Here's one statement about the poor direction of Yahoo:

Yahoo, IMHO is terribly mismanaged to the point that it no longer is credible as a search engine or directory as search results are severely lacking.

There's still hope, though, as some people say. Yahoo needs to be a lot more innovative. The question, probably, is: how?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords API Version 13 Released

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

AdWords API Advisor informs us via Google Groups that Google AdWords API v13 has been released. Though mentioned in the release notes, the these new features include enhanced geotargeting options, ability to retrieve only active campaigns/ad groups, campaign budgeting suggestions, new report types, mobile image ads, quality-based bid/Quality Score support, and more.

On a somewhat related note (but not really), the AdWords API Blog announces that in time for the holidays, Google is offering a bonus of 20% more API units at no additional cost through January 15.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Rolls Out New Features

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:29pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

YahooPete has written on three of his usual forums to let us know that Yahoo Search Marketing has come out with many desired features. They include:

* Country-level targeting
* City and zip-level targeting
* Targeting English-speaking US and Canada Internet users

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog goes into these changes in more detail.

As forum members are writing, these are changes that they really appreciate.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums and DigitalPoint Forums.

Where Did the Phrase "Search Engine Optimization" Come From?

Posted: October 14th, 2008, 3:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

In August of 2006, Rohit Bhargava coined the term SMO for social media optimization. Now search engine optimization has been around a little longer than that, but where did it come from? According to Bob Heyman, in a guest post on Search Engine Land, he did.

Bob explains that it was 1995 when the name came to mind. Once upon a time, a rock band created a website with a URL that couldn't be recalled without pulling it up in the SERPs. Unfortunately for the rock band, however, the official web page for the band was on page 4 of the SERPs. Bob explains that after that call, he resolved to make search engine rankings a priority, and thus, "search engine optimization" was born.

So why, then, is Jason Gambert claiming that he coined the phrase SEO in 2007? Give it up, Jason.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

This post was pre-written and scheduled for publication on October 14th.

Has The Economic Downturn Resulted in an Google AdSense Downturn?

Posted: October 14th, 2008, 2:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Are you a Google AdSense publisher who has taken a hit from the recession? A few forum threads, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at DigitalPoint Forums, discuss the impact of the economic crisis on money earned through the Google AdSense program. What have publishers noted?

Some publishers haven't observed a thing. The behavior is expected with no indications of decline. On the other hand, though, there are a few publishers who have spotted some decline, though they have no idea about whether to attribute the financial crisis to it. Some have seen reduced click-throughs, and a small percentage of folks are actually making more money.

Where are you at?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

This post was pre-written and scheduled for publication on October 14th.

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 13, 2008

Posted: October 14th, 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 Allow Ads that Mock Suicide?

Posted: October 13th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Michael VanDemar blogged about apparent Google AdSense insensitivity as it relates to the recession. He says that there's a possibility for the suicide rate to skyrocket, just like it did in the Great Depression. Thus, he's a little disturbed by a Google AdSense ad for Woot.com which said the following:

"Before you jump out of
that window, why not spend your
last remaining dollars at Woot?"

Naturally, Michael has found that quite offensive and tasteless, and many users agree. It's possible, though, that Google missed this one for removal. I think it may be questionable, but I understand the sarcasm in Woot's usual marketing messages and this is no exception.

Should it be removed? You tell me. Take the poll.

Forum discussion continues at . And a hat tip to Gary for spotting this as well.

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 10, 2008

Posted: October 11th, 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.

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp - 10/10/08: SMX East Coverage, Google Monetization Tactics & Yahoo Web Analytics

Posted: October 10th, 2008, 6:14pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

After a long week of conferences followed by a holiday, we're back for just 2 more business days until another 2 days of holidays kick in. Enjoy us while we're here!

Google Giving More Snippet Data
Searching for articles on Google is now showing content attributes in the results. You can see articles that have more than one author or you can see the author of the article.

Google Reverts PageRank Data
In case you're wondering why your PageRank has been fluctuating like mad lately, it's probably due to the observation that Google is reverting PageRank values. That or you're looking at the PR from another data center. Regardless, most people don't really care. ;)

Make Money from Google Maps with AdSense
So you're searching for something and find it using Google Maps. You may also find another targeted result that you never anticipated due to Google AdSense's integration into Google Maps. Who didn't see that coming?

Google's Attempts to Make More Money with Affiliate Marketing
Google has seen success with Amazon and iTunes, and they want to eat some cake too. That's why you'll see that Google is now an iTunes and Amazon affiliate. Surprised?

Google AdSense for Games
More ability to monetize is seen with the announcement of Google AdSense for games. If you have a popular site, you're game (no pun intended) to be considered. It's in beta, now, though, but if you want to make some dough, go for it.

Don't Use Google AdWords Editor 6.5.0...Yet
Google AdWords Editor 6.5.0 was released but not without a slew of problems. There are errors, slowness, and more. If you haven't upgraded yet, don't.

Microsoft adCenter Upgrade in Fall 2008
We're actually in Fall of 2008, so in the upcoming weeks, we should expect a big Microsoft adCenter update to give more billing/payment options, campaign management simplification, report analysis, and more. Stay tuned!

Google's Search Results Coming in RSS Format
It's taken them years, but Google will offer its results in RSS format so that you can watch for scrapers and all that other good stuff. Can we say "huzzah?"

Linkage Data Provided by SEOmoz
SEOmoz has launched this comprehensive tool called Linkscape that has crawled 30 billion pages to provide detailed linkage data. This tool has received a lot of kudos and I'm sure you'll like it!

Ask.com Loses 3D, Goes to "Less is More"
This past week, we've heard reports that Ask.com has redesigned their page to eliminate the complex 3D interface and to give less information. Is Google responsible for this? It's possible, since Ask.com is looking for money above all else.

Yahoo to Offer Web Analytics
Yahoo's acquisition of IndexTools means Yahoo Web Analytics. The tool is being rolled out on a limited beta and is free. Yahoo Web Analytics boasts real time tracking which many people are looking forward to. I can't wait to try it myself!

SMX East
As I mentioned, we were at SMX East this week. What does that mean? Well, I'm sure you saw our conference coverage. If not, here you go -- enjoy!

SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals

Search and Reputation Management

Ad Agencies & Search Marketing

The Ten Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing

What's New With Video Search Marketing

Social Media Marketing for Newspapers and Magazines

What's New With Local Search Marketing

Search Marketing For Newspapers & Magazine

Search & The iPhone

Search Integration: Are We There Yet?

Googleopoly

Enhanced Listings

What Is Ethical Social Media Marketing?

Personalized & Customized Search
What Is Spam?

Internal Linking Tactics

Keynote with Google's Tim Armstrong

Tools, Glorious Tools

A Day In The Life Of A Successful In-House SEO

Thanks again to Marty Weintraub for his guestblogging!

Administrative Note: No Video This Weekend
Due to the holidays, our next video recap is not going to occur until October 26th. You'll just have to read us!

Microsoft and Facebook Partner for Search

Posted: October 10th, 2008, 4:41pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

The Live Search blog announces a partnership between Facebook and Microsoft for search and ads. You can now either "Search Facebook" or "Search the Web" using Live.com. Additionally, adCenter ads will be delivered alongside those search results.

So far, it's good to integrate search on Facebook with search on Live.com to prevent opening a second tab/browser to perform searches. However, as one forum member points out, this looks like an attempt for Microsoft do dominate the search realm.

Other implications of this search partnership will relate to the personal information Facebook has about you and how Microsoft should probably leverage that with this search integration. I'd admit -- if I'm searching on the Web using Facebook, I'd definitely want more personalized results than generic SERPs for any random query.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and High Rankings Forums.

Search and Reputation Management

Posted: October 6th, 2008, 11:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2008 East

What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? Depending on the situation, there are a range of tactics that may help. This session explores the issue.

Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers:
Veronica Fielding, President and CEO, Digital Brand Expressions
Jordan Glogau, Partner, Internet Reputation Management
Simon Heseltine, Director of Search, Serengeti Communications
Michael Jensen, Co-Founder, SoloSEO

First up is Veronica Fielding. She talks about proactive reputation management - how to fortify yor brand before there's an issue that arises. She recommends to develop a game plan before there are problems and having something in place if a problem were to arise. It may not prevent the information to trickle to the surface but it can help you address issues and leverage them for the issues that may be causing your brand a problem.

There are 3 essential considerations:
- Determine which content sets and chalnels you will use, in what combinations, and how often: SEO, social media, and paid search are part of this mix.
- Prepare your messaging and be consistent. Make it channel-appropriate. You don't want to be Digging information that doesn't wor. Weigh your options for Facebook elements. Your myspace page should be different from Facebook because of the different audiences.
- Determine how frequently you will check in and talk with your audiences.

Implementing your SEO portion of the plan gives the search engines time to find and index the relevant content on your site and on other sites that link to yours.
Having paid search ads gives you realtime placement if a problem arises and quick adjustments make the copy relevant for off-setting negative inforamtion.
Leveraging indexable social media adds to the numbero f quicj spidered sites that can be drawn upon to come to your brand's aid. It's also a forum for transparent dialogue with your brand's stakeolder.
Use Wikipedia prudently. There may already be an entry for your brand so don't get caught tinkering with the content. Address yur concerns on the article's "Talk" pages.

There are key social media sites to consider:
- Your brand's blog
- LinkedIn
- Twitter
- Facebook
- MySpace (for consumer, not B2B)
- YouTube
- Flickr
- Rollyo - create your own search engine
- ZoomInfo (name may exist, but you should claim it)

B2B strategies:
LinkedIn: consider making it for the company as well as for key exectives whose names may be searched in association with the company
Facebook also helps

Simon talks next about reputation management and what people look at. Some people don't always look for their name and they don't actually see that there are negative results. If you look at the SERPs for reviews, you may not even see everything -- think about reviews for products. Sometimes you may find things in blogs or forums, the latter which may not even be indexed.

From this, you can learn how people are talking about you and what they are saying. You need to analyze the sentiment and to see whether things are positive or negative. "The biggest disaster since Titanic" - is that positive or negative?

Who are the influencers? You need to find out where the discussions happen so that you can concentrate your resources. If the sentiment on Facebook, for example, is neutral, and the sentiment on MySpace are positive, you may want to contact MySpace fans to speak to your evangelists.

Find out what people are saying and where they are saying it. How do you do it?
1. The ghost of the recent past. Get Google and Yahoo alerts and check your email to find out about specific key phrases.
- Twitter is similar - do TweetBeeps, for example.
- RSS feeds are your friends.
- Digg and other social voting sites are similar.
- Sites like zevents
- Wikipedia lets you subscribe to RSS
- YouTube has RSS
Most social sites have RSS
2. The ghost of the actual past
- Top end - big brands - TNS Media Intelligence and Nielsen BuzzMetrics
- Open SOurce - Nonprofits - The BuzzMonitor

When you look at it, RSS feeds only deliver updates and new information.

Client study with a medical group -
- getting about 50-75 notifications per day
- historical buzz monitoring recovered over 150,000 listings, so use old data too!
Use a tool!

Monitor your buzz - get a baseline with a deep scan into the past and continually monitor to the recent present.

Michael Jensen talks about reputation management for local businesses.

Local is a unique space becasue of ratings and reviews, but beyond that, it's everywhere. It's in the SERPs, social media, there are search engines devoted to the local space (Yahoo), directories (Yelp), and more. There are also mobile apps (GoodRec is an iPhone application). There are also local niche sites (Andy's List for contractors).

Ratings and reviews; a customer's first impression. If you search for a dentist, who are you going to call and who aren't you going to call? Visual elements really do help with regards to choosing the desired local provider.

Art of persuasion: do you read reviews before you go somewhere? He asks the room and almost everyone raises their hand. Reviews can be very persuasive, both positive and negative. Enough positive outweighs the occasional negative. You need to push the right button with potential customers.

Every review helps as a vote of confidence. One negative review can have a huge impact if there are only few reviews.

In the future, features that are not necessarily check-boxed are in the terms and text of a review. Search engines said that they don't really use the text much for ranking factors and such.

For monitoring local, there are few things that are available so manual monitoring is helpful. SoloSEO will be working on tools soon!

Be defensive and proactive in the social space - get constant positive reviews in a lot of local sites. There are 2 main barriers: your customers are not motivated and they aren't technically savvy. You should motivate them with a coupon or free gift and make it easy for them to review - tell them where they can review. Check out leavefeedback.org, a tool that he created.

Local business should have a system for getting reviews. Have coupons or cards on hand, train employees to give out, get information or other information.

Be creative - give away free wifi at a local restaurant and when they access it, redirect them to your review site. Have a kiosk. When you're a restaurant, give them a handheld tablet so they can write the review then and there.

Get "recommended." It boils down to SEO. A link is a recommendation. Use the local chamber of commerce, professional associations, related businesses (realtor + loan officer), local events and sponsorships.

On the offense side, average out poor ratings with positive reviews. Create a system and get those reviews constantly. If you receive a poor snippet, surround that with positive reviews. Respond to critical reviews. Update your business listing to reflect changes and improvement in response to poor reviews.

Last up is Jordan Glogau. He talks about the Internet is the Truth Machine - it's a book from 1996 by Jams Halperin. Some invents the perfect lie detector. Once the machine has been invented, it's impossible to tell a lie. Over a period of time, the technology gets shrunken to the size of a wristband. To some extent, the internet has become the truth machine without having a lie detector.

That's not really accurate but it is part of everyday life. The results are not perfect - it's far from it. The results are fast and maybe too fast. It can effect your business like a heart attack.

OMG - Don't Google our name!
- Is it affecting business via sales?
- Can the root cause be addressed?
- Can it be fixed and will it stay fixed?

The first Immortals is another book by Halperin who says that we live forever. The metaphor is that this is like Google and the rest of the Internet.

Evaluate the problem: is it personal or is it about a business? Is it affecting a person or business? What kind of sites? Who is attacking who and why?

Types of sites that can be problematic: review sites, news sites, government, anti-whatever, Wikipedia, social media

How do you counteract and push this down?
- Link building
- Counter blog
- Controversial: link buys
- Wikipedia - build trust with your editor and don't think about it if not!

Active antagonists: what if you have a country club, for example, and you have a disgruntled ex-member? You may have to prepare for the long haul and get your staff involved. You may have to counter all the time.

General tricks and advice:
- Use unrelated links to move down bad links
- Interlink between blogs
- Collect information on links and build a link list on your sites for Google to find
- If the quality of the links/blogs is a concern, you shouldn't use the paid blogging services.

Bad for business - if you don't fix your problem it will never go away.
- Poor customer service will always plague you if you don't address it.

Rep-port: Simple to run, color coded, email reports, and free of charge.

The Ten Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing

Posted: October 6th, 2008, 9:42pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2008 East

Whether you're a CMO - or someone who needs to educate, advise or influence one - this session will educate you on the 10 critical important concepts surrounding search marketing and its role within the entire marketing mix that CMOs must understand in order to be successful. A panel made up of senior level search marketers across a variety of industries, business models, and sizes will share their experiences, advice and perspective on these 10 critical truths and how understanding them has influenced their CMOs.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Panelists:
Michelle Stern, Client Services Director, iProspect
Willie Fernandez Director of Marketing, World Travel Holidays
Jennifer Doss, eCommerce Marketing Manager, Hat World and Lids
Jill Nortman, SEO and Web Analytics Specialist, Allegis Group
Jen Miller, Manager, Delta.com Online Content and Marketing

This session is sponsored by iProspect.

1. SEO is an ongoing process.
Why do CMOs need to pay attention? Search marketing should be an integral part of an entire marketing strategy. It's difficult to communicate the right issues. Enable 360 degree communication.
Jill: SEO is really less of a function and more of a process. It's ongoing - you can't set it and forget it. You need to be involved because the Internet industry is constantly changing. Recently, social media sites are being indexed. Having a presence there is very important, especially to articulating that to your CMO. Blended results are also a new phenomenon - if you aren't keeping up with those changes, you're missing the boat.
Jen: SEM is an ongoing process. Delta marketing is separate from content production. When she manages paid search, she was working with the content group on how to optimize the website. But then they realized that content and marketing are one so both organizations have been combined. It's been a lot more beneficial for them. It's a front-end process. From an organizational standpoint, it was successful, but it took a long time.

2. Being #1 isn't everything and sometimes is not even possible.
Willie: Being in the cruise space today, the #1 term you would want to rank for is the term "cruise." However, from month to month, being #1 not only was causing them to reach their budget quickly but the word wasn't converting well. They decided to scale back and found terms that should have been #1 but weren't. They saw that their budgets were not being stretched out as much and they were finding those other words convert better. In a 4 month exercise, they analyzed 2,000 and scaled back to the point that there was a positive ROI on words that were losing money month to month.
Michelle: In paid search, revenue is really key. Being #1 is not always where it's at. Analyze your keywords and determine what value your keywords are based on ROI. That will allow you to afford the keywords that ought to be in position #1.
Jennifer: We have a very extensive keyword list and a dozen of those are the most efficient. We do rank on those keywords, but like cruises, hats is a keyword that can't necessarily be #1. Look at the multi-keyword phrases and you can rank higher. Because they are specific, they convert at a higher rate. 70% of all clicks come from the first page, so concentrate on getting on the first page and then work your way up. Being #1 isn't as profitable, so looking at where you're ranking and your spend and if you're meeting your ROI goals, maybe the lower positions are a better place.
Jen: You may want to optimize for a one-word phrase but it's too competitive. Think about the top converting/clickthrough keywords instead.

Chris: How much of a challenge do you find addressing ego - "we have to be #1!"?
Jen: It's about education, trying to share strategy and saying that it's about integration with other channels and how they play against each other.
Jill: With PPC, you have to pay to play. Being in position #2 can save you a lot of money. As long as you can remain on page 1 or above the fold, that's something you should also strive for.
Jennifer: Education is a primary element. Directors in our department will ask why we're not #1, but we have to explain budgets and resources to them.

3. The long tail is your friend.
Michelle: Long tail keywords give you more qualified traffic. Also, there's less competition and that increases chances of being visible on those terms. That feeds into the third benefit which is when there's less competition, that equals less costs.
Jen: Mine through the data to see what people are searching for and bid on them.
Willie: We expanded our keyword base by about 10,000 keywords, if not more. We saw that people are searching for something but then they've decided what they want. For example, "christmas cruises from New York" or "carnival cruises from miami" has proven to be very successful.
Michelle: You need to start broad and develop more long tail terms over time based on clickthroughs.
Jill: The importance of analytics is critical before you start bidding on keywords.

Chris: So it seems that analytics and tools are really key.

4. Both paid and natural SEM are crucial.
Jennifer: For us, we want to have as many listings as possible on the results page. 54% of our search revenue comes from our organic listings and 46% comes from paid. Visibility in both increases our brand awareness. In our paid listings, we can control the ad copy but you can't do that as easily with organic listings. We use that copy to promote special sales and offers. You can also control the landing page for these so you can go to higher-converting pages. She did a test and saw that depending on the destination URL, there were higher conversions. Try to find funds to do tests and how being listed might help your organic listings because of the increased visibility.
Michelle: In addition to what Jennifer said, you need to be in paid and organic listings. 70% will click on organic listings and 30% click on paid listings, according to research. You should be in both places becasue there are different types of people. If you're in 2 parts of the page, you'll probably get the click.
Chris: What about a brand lift for being in organic and both?
Jen: When Delta was not visible for brand in paid search, their visits went down. What does that show? There are different customers for different things, as Michelle said. To her point, we found that paid customers are must more shoppers and they're more ready to convert. It pays to be visible by brand. We knew we had to take the risk even though there is obviously a budget issue with this.
Jill: We have found that clicks in our paid advertising usually are those who are the first time visitors to our brand.

5. Customers hear their language, not yours.
Jill: She reads a quote that says that one of the biggest mistakes is that people campaign with the messaging that the company wants to push rather than what people want to hear. The messaging slogan will tie back into what happens online so don't just speak from the brand. Think about the users. She talks about the automotive industry and how in the past, it was about crash data, but now it's a big issue about going green and gas mileage. Why? That's what the people are looking for.
Willie: Sometimes we got in touch because we used industry terms in our ad copy. The bounce rate was through the roof. We couldn't understand why, so we ran a focus group and we started to understand that we were talking amongst ourselves and not to our site visitors. We toned it down and translated the industry terms to pain English and consumer friendly terms. We started to focus on some user-centric terms on other pages - e.g. cruise reviews. After a customer has purchased, they would want to review cruises before they purchase. They build up cruise reviews on product pages. The bounce rates dropped and they saw an increase of conversions by 45%.
Chris: I observed companies using thier own site search tool to identify holes.

6. Web pages aren't the only assets you need to optimize.
Jen: We interface with communications with users, so we need to get our content distributed. We launched a blog, and we use press releases and videos (YouTube channels). How do we optimize these areas? This is obviously important.
Jill: You want to take advantage of content beyond the landing pages, like video. Tag that video, make sure the title is in line with the message, etc. You also want to be there on a paid perspective. But even with branded and nonbranded search, you need to think about social. Those results are showing up. If someone does searches for this, you want to be in the landscape and you want your social ads to show up.

7. Integration is a must.
Michelle: It's really critical to share information so that you can benefit from your marketing campaign. Marketers who are responsible for media plans need to communicate to search marketers to capture demand through search. Search marketing should also communicate.
Jen: We recently had a campaign where we needed to talk to travelers based out of NY. We decided to bid locally and geotarget to NYers. We changed the language for these users. Paid search gives you the opportunity to supplement another campaign to a different audience.
Chris: we've been talking about search and online, but what about other marketing? Do you do any of that?
(Silence.... I guess they need to read the coverage I wrote earlier this morning on integration!)
Jennifer: We don't do much TV/radio, but when we do, it's in conjuction with our vendors. We do special promotions though occasionally.
Jill: There was another session this morning (yay!) that was basically about integration or die. The disconnect was that your message offline may not be the online for some people. 67% of people were motivated to search online for what they heard offline. Nearly 40% of those searchers ended up converting. Who wants a 39% conversion rate? We all do! (If you are a first time SERoundtable reader, go check my coverage from this morning.)

8. Tools simplify everything.
Willie: We have inhouse tools at our disposal that we built that indicated that newspaper ads are a dying breed. We wouldn't have known this without tools. We learn about the long tail keywords, so without those tools, we wouldn't know where to bid.
Jennifer: We have about 10,000 pages and our content is forever changing. We had to manually manage that beforehand, and it wasn't efficient. With the help of iProspect, we put a few things in place, like a Google sitemap, a template that helped us for dynamically generating site optimization tags, and more. Sometimes creating/building tools can take time and development can suck time, but in the long run, it makes us remain up-to-date and current. We don't necessarily have the resources inhouse but thinking about tools does help you become more efficient.

Chris: What do you do to demonstrate the value of ROI?
Jen: We tried to transform our site optimization from the backend to the frontend but transparency of tools and accessibility to those content producers so that people can be evangelists - we don't get guidance from the agency. They can mine the data themselves and find what's relevant. We have analytics tools that are self-service. We all become part of that process and share information.
Michelle: Case studies of what you've been able to do in the past helps to drive the momentum for going forward.

Chris: In this economy, is there new money or do you have to take money away from other marketing efforts?
Jill: Before shutting down offline altogether, in the state of the economy, we're seeing that the budgets are shifting. They're honing in on the return of over campaigns in the past year. There's more efficient spending by shifting funds.
Michelle: We're not seeing anyone reducing search spend and that's because search is so measurable. You have to keep it in an economy like this.
Jen: As long as you get rewarded, you should continue. It's easy to justify.

9. Don't bid solely on branded terms.
Michelle: I would definitely say this. You run the risk of your competitors benefitting. What I mean is that - think about someone searching on a non-branded term. Most people are still researching, so your competitor will get that customer.
Jen: At Delta, we talk a lot about incremental tickets. We don't have content on every single destination we're going to -- yet. In order to have a void, we bid on those unbranded terms so that we can capture that researcher who convert into an incremental ticket, a ticket that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Optimize for that unbranded term as much as possible.
Jennifer: Bidding on the unbranded term will help as much as possible. About half of our revenue comes from the unbranded term search. Sports fans search by their teams, not by the brand name, for example. We pay very close attention to those keywords. I read a retail study that said that 55% of traffic came from nonbranded and 49% of those who purchased clicked on a non-branded term and 12% clicked on both!
Jen: People usually search initially on nonbranded terms but then they actually search on the branded term when they are close to buying.
Jennifer: You need to look at your list and revise/develop the terms.

Chris: There has been in the past during recessions a move away from brands. That would play into this entire thing to have a mix going forward.
Jill: You can always get paid optimization to complement your organic efforts. Sometimes that offsets the cost.

10. You must set goals.
Jill: You need to focus on the goals and then focus on the tactics to get there. Then you need to get creative with your goals - of course everyone can agree on some conversion points but you need to think outside the box, for example, offsite optimization and social. Monitor the number of friends that you acquire each month. The same goes for video. Some videos increase 25% monthly for us even though they've been up for over 12 months. Case studies are another opportunity - keep track of that and make sure you're seeing regular growth. They are really good goals to have.

Search Integration: Are We There Yet?

Posted: October 6th, 2008, 4:54pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2008 East

People have been talking about search being integrated with other types of marketing for ages. How's it going? Is search now second nature when creating an advertising campaign? If not, why not? Thoughts and examples of integration challenges will be shared in this panel.

Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors

Speakers:
Peter Hershberg, Managing Partner, Reprise Media
James Lamberti, Senior Vice PResident, Search and Media, comScore, Inc.
Robert Murray, President, iProspect
Don Steele, Vice President Digital Marketing, MTV Networks

Robert Murray is up first. He asks if we're soccer fans and if we've been to soccer games. In the game of soccer, integration is key. When you have 11 players on the field and they're all united for one common purpose, the results can be inspiring. He equates this with marketing online and offline.

Some background: search marketing does not exist in the backend. Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard to "integrate or die." However it's packaged, the message is simple - integration matters. But what are marketers doing about that? What techniques are they using? If they're not, why not?

He found research from JupiterResearch in August 2007 where he pulled data from consumers - offline marketing on online behavior. 67% of polled individuals were driven to perform a search after they were exposed to some sort of offline messaging. Further, 39% of those people actually made a purchase of a product or service and not just from any company they found in the search results but from the initial company that exposed them to the offline messaging.

This year, they did more marketing between April and June of this year - 289 qualified search marketers completed the survey for 3 objectives:
- to uncover extent to which search efforts are integrated with offline marketing channels
- to reveal techniques used
- if there were any obstacles faced

The concept of integrating search with offline marketing channels is not new. Only 55% of the search marketers polled, however, did this. 34% of these actually integrated with direct mail, 29% integrated with newspaper or magazine ads. 12% integrate with television. However, that's odd - TV is one of the biggest influencers in online search behavior.

If people aren't integrating, why not? 19% said a lack of budget, 15% said lack of human resources, 13% didn't consider it, 11% lacked the senior management buyout. Others said that the offline marketing was separate from online marketing. Some also said that they just didn't do offline marketing.

What techniques are people using when you're integrating? 84% said that they're integrating a web address prominently in offline messaging. 66% said adding the company name. Robert says that this isn't integration - it's coordination. That should be a given. Only 26% are using the same keywords offline that they were using online, which he finds shocking.

What does this mean for you? Some people are put at a competitive disadvantage.

Like a soccer coach, the CMO is someone who works to build a strategic plan that drives towards coordination. CMO needs to make sure that data is shared continuously. You want to reward this behavior in your organization.

If you're a search marketer with a lot of great information, you should share that with your offline counterparts. The offline people should come to the table as well.

Testing is also important: this can save time and money.

The bottom line: we're all in this game to win but the marketers doing the best job integrating search with all other forms of offline marketing will most likely take the cup home.

James Lamberti of comScore is up next.

Are we there yet? He's going to talk about 3 things that are still missing - the all important consumer (and how they're left out of the conversation), measuring the full value of search (most people aren't), and search-driven planning and strategy.

Advertising a la "madman" - 1950-2001 RIP - you give them awareness, they go through the funnel, and they buy. Not anymore, he says. The world is complex - there's eyeballs, then offline media, online media, social media, and friends and family. In the center of this is search. All of this stuff that happens to the consumer and is simple for the marketers is search. comScore pulled up data to show that 17.1 billion US searches occurred. 194 million searchers searched about 8 times. Search is growing double digit numbers off the base of billions of billions of queries.

Most people search based on the brand trademark and brand communication, even graphically, he displays in a slide. As a desired outcome, you're getting people to search. How can I make sure my search marketing catches that activity?

He shows data that says that 55% of generic queries are undermeasured and undervalued. 45% are branded. Therefore, you need to think about the more generic searching. If you're just hanging on your trademarked terms and ignoring generic, you're missing a huge part of your addressible market.

Why are people searching? It's not seeking coupons, it's not navigational - they really want help and information for a purchase decision. Nonsearchers are often looking for promotions versus searchers. They're at a point of influence.

Measuring the full value -
It's not dead. We need data that's familiar to us to get the conversation going. He shows real data that was aggregated across 6 month and 9 million people hit a specific campaign with a reach of 6 million reach. He explains a computer search had a 69% reach because 6 million people were buying computers a month.

If you calculate your ROI compared to competition and you're getting less, you're at a huge disadvantage. Your competitor will have more paid impressions, more clicks, and they will gain share.

He shows multi-channels retailer actual results - multi-channeling - market mixed models. He says that you should provide the right data and the results will show that the organization will need to be spending more money on earch.

4 pieces of advice
1. Establish common ground. SEO marketers want to be talking to offline folks and the CEO - get the types of data that will get them interested.
2. Measuring full value is key. Know what the offline multiplier impact is.
3. Measure search as a desired outcome.
4. Treat organic and trademark as unique efforts: most organizations ignore generic through inappropriate comparisons to trademark. If you under emphasize generic, you ignore a huge part of the market.

Up next is Peter Hershberg about Microsoft as an enterprise brand. Microsoft is in dozens of businesses from Zune to Office to Live to XBOX to Small Business Servers. He is focusing on Vista and the work done with Vista. There are a lot of products associated with the Vista brand and there are also stakeholders. There are also a lot of goals that are conflicting.

How do you approach this problem and how do you deal with it? The first way to do that is through education - there are challenges because there are 5000 marketers with individual search budgets. Therefore, you need to create universal processes for budgeting, management, and reporting to measure success on an apples to apples basis. You also need to compaign metrics to marketing goals.

How do you do this? The strategy is to contribute to a Search Center of Excellence to sehare best practices and processes in search. It's like a forum for all the policies with campaign data and other information. There are training sessions (Search 101) tailored to the needs of each Microsoft department and its line managers. They are recorded and archived online. They also established a uniform 3-phased approach for taking fully integrated campaigns from concept to launch over a 5 week period.

Offline absolutely drives online behavior specifically in the area of search. As high as 80% of all internet sessions begin at a search engine, according to data. Something piqued their interest to perform that search.

Here's a Microsoft and their consumer campaign: some people are seeing the commercials with Seinfield, for example. People are going to start searching if they see the commercials. They need advanced knowledge about campaigns so it makes it possible to predict the unpredictable. They had access to the script so they bought the most obvious keywords including random (shoe circus, worm churro, etc.) If someone was searching for those, it was because they had seen the ad and wanted to know more about it. Keywords that are disconnected from Windows and Vista but resonated from the commercials were included in the campaign. Sometimes the least obvious things drive those searches.

Microsoft and Corporate Communications: active keywords that include Vista as part of a phrase. Close coordination of paid efforts and PR improved Vista caomapgin results - selected related keywords, aligned creative to increase response rates and conversion rates, and coordinated landing pages that linked to articles.

The whole idea of aligning goals with the channel has been mentioned, but the goals for Microsoft were related to reach and frequency to drive to site engagement. Where reach is concerned - how many of my customers saw my message? How often did they see it? For engagement, what did my customers do once they visited the site? This all ties into optimization.

The most interesting thing is that search is driving marketing intelligence. When we think of search, we're aggregating tons of data which is being used in the interest of improving results in the campaign. Search is a realtime focus group and you can analyzizesearch traffic and behavior to gain insite that can influence the entire mix: marketing messaging (emails, banners, onsite), media selection, communications strategy, and more.

How are we able to do this with Microsoft in Japan? Print was the biggest driver of traffic there. They found that this can optimize the banner campaign. The result was a 3x rise in the conversion rate.

The lessons learned
- Educate all stakeholders and understand their roles
- Repeatable rocesses for effectively shaping assets
- Measure success in the search channel - recalibrate goals to match strengths of the channel
- Repurpose search learnings to inform the overall marketing program

Last up is Don Steele of MTV.

Why we market: Branding, Awareness, Target, Interaction/Sampling.

How we market - there are some billboards that he shows that do brnading and targeting and awareness.

They use search for marketing.
* Branding: Search engine space is the new billboard for branding.
* Awareness: Search is awareness for visibility for shows.
* Target: Search also targets as it delivers a timely and fluid message to users who are expressing an interest in it.
* Interaction/sampling: Smart search campaigns should encourage interactive behavior whree a brand is delivering upon a user's expectation

He shows a search for "bill cosby" and how there's a paid ad that shows the Cosby Show on TV Land. It's the only paid link there.

He shows other examples with other related brands. When the Elliot Spitzer scandal came out, a big search was for spitzer jokes. They were able to do very well there.

How can you sell this internally? Well they are a media company and if they're not advertising, they're making a big mistake.
- Core audience
- Reporting
- Self selection
- Evangelism

The biggest challenge is that we can do billboards and search, but these tactics are not equal. You need to talk to people who are self-selectedness - giving people what they're looking for.

Sara asks a question about frequency reach.
Peter says that search is more measurable. But we only pay on a cost per click basis. We're dismissing the value of all the impressions. Back to his Microsoft example, in the Vista campaign, he served 5 billion impressions on MS's behalf. There is no meaningful way to show the reach of impressions.
Sara admits that it's a relatively new phenomenon.

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 3, 2008

Posted: October 4th, 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.

Weekly Search Buzz Roundup - 10/03/08 - Rosh Hashana Edition: Google Turns 10 & Yahoo Site Explorer Revamped

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 6:51pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Happy New Year to those of you who celebrate! This week, the holiday commenced and now we're swamped but we still have to give you our recap. Without further ado, here you go:

Coincidence: Search Updates Around Holiday Time?
As you may have read thus far, we celebrated Rosh Hashana and also noticed that Google PageRank has updated. On a somewhat related note, Yahoo's results are being shuffled and Microsoft may have had its own update too.

Google Blog Search Relaunches
A new version of Google Blog Search has launched and I'm not sure I'm a fan. It now has a more "news" feel that reminds me of Technorati and how every single blog post talks about a single issue versus a search that may be more relevant.

Google Turns 10
Google has celebrated one decade of search and more. Can you believe it's really been 10 years? Well, neither can I. But in case you wanted to reminisce, you can check out the Google search engine from 2001 which actually is rather fun.

Yahoo's Site Explorer Looks Great
Finally, a new verison of Yahoo Site Explorer is live. And it's pretty awesome. It has a lot new data, like number of inlinks/inlink domains, number of pages crawled, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Yahoo's Rip Off?
Yahoo has done some stupid things lately by raising the credit card minimum to $250, which is 10 times more expensive than the previous requirement of $25. Their cost per click has also gone up, phone support is going down, and nobody is happy. Seriously, why are you guys using Yahoo again?

Microsoft's Smart Move?
Microsoft has launched Search Perks, a "get paid to search" type engine. Also viewed as a stupid move, people are wondering why Microsoft has to incentivize the search process. Oh well. Maybe I'll be able to get my husband Forza 2. Only 4000 searches to go. (Heck, I don't even do that using Google.)

eBay
eBay has increased its ad spending with Google after their apparent "breakup" last year. Now, both companies are holding hands again and things are looking up. We may be in a recession or whatever, but people still want to use search engines to find great deals, and eBay is probably delivering results.

Google Request: AdWords Account Change Phone Authorization
After all these Google AdWords account hijackings, I'm wondering why Google is just having employees monitor accounts for abnormalities. That's great, and all, but it'd be great if Google could put some security precaution -- perhaps phone authorization -- in place to prevent the high number of account hijackings.

Next Week: SMX East in NYC
In the NYC area? We hope you signed up for SMX East. If not, we're liveblogging a good chunk of it for you. If so, find us there. But be advised that Jacob Javits center is huge, so good luck to you.

And if you want to look for us in a smaller locale, we'll probably be at the charity party on Monday night. It's a great opportunity to help and network all at the same time!

Webmasters Report October 2008 Google SERP Changes

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 5:20pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

This month, WebmasterWorld members spotted a few anomalies in the Google SERPs:

Some people are spotting some huge numbers (and differences) in results found on Google. For example, they could be performing a search in the middle of the day and find 1 million results. Later that day, the same search may find 2 million results. It's possible that this is because of querying different datacenters (though that number is pretty substantial even to me). It's also possible that this is related to capitalization issues which Barry blogged about earlier today.

Other forum members spot Google deindexing some major pages due to what he believes to be a duplicate meta description. He notices that the same pages will end up coming back though.

On page factors are becoming more relevant versus anchor text, as many other forum members are starting to notice.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

We're Liveblogging SMX East Next Week

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 4:57pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2008 East

In case you hadn't heard (or couldn't guess), Search Engine Roundtable is, as always, liveblogging Search Marketing Expo East 2008 which will start next Monday, October 6th, in NYC.

The conference coverage is not quite finalized just yet, but we're putting finishing touches on it as we speak.

We're also taking volunteer livebloggers, so contact us if you're interested. So far, we've got a helper in Marty Weintraub of aimClear (thanks much, Marty) and we'd love to have you join us too.

Don't forget, if you're not attending the event but will be in the area, you can always meet up with us at the charity event next week.

When Will Google AdWords Prevent Account Hijackings?

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 4:32pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

We've had a careful eye on the multiple Google AdWords accounts that have been hacked, and this forum representation is hardly all of the accounts that really do get attacked. But again, another hapless victim from WebmasterWorld has suffered the fate of being charged too much on Google AdWords and being locked out of his account.

Whatever these guys are doing, they're doing a good job because most of the people I've encountered who have been hacked are actually savvy users. Perhaps they don't have the best passwords (one only wonders), but it's hard to say.

However, this probably won't be the last reports of this. Google, in my opinion, needs to take safety precautions to prevent against this theft.

Maybe it's a good idea at this time to do a phone authorization (with a 4 digit code) for any substantial changes. That should prevent -- or at least mitigate -- the intrusions.

The most recent forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, but you can see our past coverage below:

Increase in Google AdWords Accounts Being Hacked Into?

Google AdWords Account Hacked: False Ads & False Charges

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 2, 2008

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

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

Introducing Microsoft SearchPerks: Get Paid to Search ... Again

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 5:42pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

First, we had Microsoft Cash Back where Microsoft paid you to search the web with live.com. Now, we have Search Perks where Microsoft pays you to search the web with live.com ... well, almost.

The difference between Search Perks and Cash Back are minimal, but the idea behind the new creation is that you get points for every search. Those accumulate and then you can win prizes.

You're limited to IE6 or higher to participate, so Firefox users are not eligible. That's because SearchPerks has a built in toolbar.

It's questionable, though, if this is a good business plan for Microsoft. To me, it sounds like something that can be easily exploited. One forum member says the following to echo that sentiment:

If people are doing pointless searches and meanwhile clicking on ads to max out their "tickets", I can't see it being a good deal for anyone in the long run.

Many people agree and think that Microsoft should stop while they're ahead. But until then, happy searching!

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

How to Diagnose Your Site With Google Webmaster Tools

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 5:15pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

The Google Webmaster Central Blog talks about how you can use Google Webmaster Tools to learn about problems with your site. In the post, JohnMu (yes, that John) explains the variety of issues you can run into when you have an IIS server and are returning the wrong status codes. He also says that you can find out if there are broken links by reviewing the "Web crawl" area of Webmaster Tools and explains that some of these issues are not easily spotted.

John looks into other issues as well, including redirection issues, server unreachable errors, and even if your web site has been hacked. He explains that Google Webmaster Tools can give you more information about this and other common errors.

Want to know more? Check out the post and discuss it over at Sphinn.

Google Lets You Search as if it was 2001

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 5:02pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Want to see the old Google -- probably before half of you were born searching? Check out Google's search engine from 2001, and what Google calls its oldest available index. You'll probably notice that Gmail back in 2001 was a Gnome-based Linux mail client and that YouTube didn't exist. Searching for Barry Schwartz back in 2001 brings back some psychology dude who must've written a book (joking aside, I own the book). Searching for Tamar Weinberg yields no results of the present Tamar Weinberg, but that's probably because I didn't get married (and didn't change my last name) until 2005. However, you can dig up relevant information by searching with my old name, so I consider this pretty accurate for 2001.

Besides that, though, those searching reflect back on a day when Google wasn't dominated by ads and when their rankings (#1) were easier to achieve. Further, it seems that some are trying to leverage this old search engine for competitive research.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Next Week's Charity Party is Coming Up at SMX East

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 4:45pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Conferences

We're gearing up for next week's conference, SMX East, to be held in NYC. If you aren't going, it doesn't mean that you can't participate in the great networking available. With the forthcoming charity party, you can mingle and network too!

Here are the details:

Where: 795 8th Avenue (between 48th & 49th street)
When: Monday, October 6 from 8pm-midnight
What: A charity party where your $50 supports Ronald McDonald house.

Hope to see you there!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 26, 2008

Posted: September 27th, 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.

Weekly Search Buzz RoundUp - 09/26/08: Google Causes Scramble over Dynamic URLs, Google Street View in the Dark & Yahoo APT Launched

Posted: September 26th, 2008, 7:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Happy Friday! Are you ready for the weekend? After this week's big news, I know I am!

Google Doesn't Want You to Rewrite Dynamic URLs
What big news am I talking about? Earlier this week, we found that Google would prefer your domain to be http://domain.com/site.php?id=44&pid=42&gid=22&uid=29249 instead of using rewrites that are more human readable (!), like this: http://domain.com/site.php/tamars-profile-page. Apparently, the change is because Google wants to understand the parameters to understand site structure. But at the same time, I have a hard time liking this change especially since Google is supposed to take pride in user-friendliness. I understand Google needs to learn, and they can do so without targeting SEMs. There are plenty of unoptimized sites Google can look at. Don't you agree?

Google Messes Up Indian Exchange Rate, Owes Advertisers Money
According to a screenshot provided by a Google India AdSense publisher, Google has screwed up the exchange rates. In India, $1 is 46.555 INR. However, Google has made it so that $1 is equivalent to 1 INR. Feeling slighted? You're not alone. My thought is that it'd be fixed soon, but in the meantime, if you're one of the affected individuals, just hold tight.

Google Integrates More Properties into Search
Google Book Search has apparently been migrated over to the regular search results. It may be a test at this time -- it's hard to say. Will people click on these results? Well, will you?

Submit Your Reinclusion Requests as Many Times As You Want
Okay, the title of this section is a tad misleading. If you have been penalized from the Google directory, you should submit a reinclusion request. If Google doesn't respond, keep working at it. Eventually someone should get to you. Speaking of which, we're running a poll to see how long it took for Google to acknowledge your reinclusion request and currently it seems that it takes more than 3 months. That's a bit frightening but is all the more reason why you should try to avoid being penalized in the first place.

Google AdWords Accounts Get Hacked Into
More and more spammers are seeing the appeal and ease of getting huge clickthroughs and impressions when using Google AdWords. You don't have to wait for pages to be crawled. If you make a high enough bid, you're usually on the front page of Google on the sponsored side. This is probably why people are hacking into AdWords accounts where they can: it makes some people rich. Well, keep in mind that you can protect your Google AdWords accounts by following some basic security procedures (and then some).

Poor Quality Keywords Will Raise Your Minimum Bid
You want to rack up some incredibly high charges on your Google AdWords accounts? Don't optimize your campaign. Advertisers have seen $100 minimum bids which often means that the quality of the campaign is low. Optimize, optimize, optimize!

Are You Making More Money in AdSense This Year?
With a huge recession affecting a ton of people in the world, are you making more money this year in AdSense than in 2007? We're running a poll. Hint: it's close.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta has New Features
There are a list of new features to be introduced into Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta including the ability to spot and remove duplicate keywords and a variety of bug fixes.

Google Maps Street View in the Dark?
I'm not sure if this was intentional, but Google Maps Street View comes in two flavors: nighttime and daytime vision. The former is hardly helpful if you actually want to see where you're going. In fact, the clarity of the map image I spotted really needs work. Feature request: Google, can you please actually review the quality of images?

Yahoo APT Launched
The we-still-don't-know-what-the-acronym-means Yahoo APT advertising tool has been launched. It has some promising features, such as a larger ad inventory, a large audience, technological innovations, and more.

Lisa Barone is Going to NY
YES! RustyBrick is happy to announce its newest hire, the very talented Lisa Barone, who is leaving California and is moving eastbound. Oh, wait. Yeah, Lisa is coming to the east coast, but we're not exactly sure where yet. (Thus, in case you didn't catch it, this is a joke.)

The New Year is Next Week
In case you weren't paying attention (and most of you aren't, but that's just fine!), this is the last week of the Jewish lunar year. The year 5758 is drawing to a close and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, will be celebrated next week. What does that mean for you, our valued Search Engine Roundtable readers? Well, that means that Barry and I will be out of touch on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, but that doesn't mean we're going far -- we have already prewritten several blog posts that will be scheduled for the days we're offline. They won't be breaking news, but they will be informative and should help you with your search engine marketing strategies. We hope to have our other authors blog the newsworthy stuff, so stay tuned.

Shana Tova!

Google Moderator Goes Live

Posted: September 26th, 2008, 4:35pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Yesterday, I went through a bunch of my feeds and saw Matt Cutts announce a new toy from Google, Google Moderator.

The idea behind Google Moderator is that questions are asked to a group of participants and these people can vote upon the question. Sounds like a social site to me. ;)

Barry suggests over at Search Engine Land that this is a bit like Yahoo Suggestions, and he may be right. But Barry also mentions that Yahoo Suggestions is specific to Yahoo feedback, and users can go crazy with Google Moderator -- it's not limited to anything.

Pretty cool tool. Check it out.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Are You Addicted to Social Media? Take the Quiz

Posted: September 26th, 2008, 4:14pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Jordan Kasteler recently published a short 14-question quiz asking whether you're a social media addict. Questions range to "do you have more friends online than in real life?" to "do you ask your real life friends if they're members on your favorite social networking site?" to "do you spend more time on social media than your family?" Other questions include "are you afraid to admit how much time you spend on social media sites?" or "do you go crazy when social media sites are temporarily down?"

I'm guilty. According to the quiz, the answer is 89%, though I take offense to such a low number. (Sorry Jordan! When you breathe, eat, and sleep social media, you're a default 100% and you wouldn't be afraid to tell the world. You're also allowed to freak out when other sites -- not Twitter -- go down! When Digg did a few times, I went NUTS.) :)

How do you fare? Take the quiz.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 25, 2008

Posted: September 26th, 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 Reader Keyboard Shortcuts Changed Without Warning?

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 5:48pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

People using Google Reader who rely heavily on keyword shortcuts aren't happy. A Google Groups thread has a few forum members baffled. The documented behavior follows:

I noticed that the "n" and "p" keys, used to scan down and up through the posts in list view, now causes the selected post to move to the top of the view's window whenever pressed. Prior to this, the displayed posts did not move, allowing movement through the displayed posts.

Many forum members echoed this sentiment. Roger of the Google Reader group says that the keyboard shortcuts will be replaced. I'm a bit curious myself as to why the behavior changed, especially since so many people are dependent on keyword shortcuts and are used to status quo, but I'm glad that the Google Reader team has opted to make the changes and listen to the feedback.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Google's Search Query Report Groups Outliers, But Should It?

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 5:32pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

What happens when you're running a search query performance report on Google AdWords and you get the result "2 other unique queries?" What is Google saying here?

According to AdWordsPro.Sarah, the issue is that Google's computers are only able to process so much information and usually they put the relevant information (the higher trafficked keywords, that is) in one category with data. Anything else -- the outlier keywords -- are grouped together and not treated distinctly. To Google, those are the low traffic keywords, and Google denotes them as "other unique queries."

Sarah explains:

I like to think about it like this: If I am running on the keyword 'purple socks' a user might search 'where can I find a new pair of purple wool socks near me?'. This query would trigger your ad, but it is a highly unique search that is unlikely to happen more than once. I usually tell people that, if the keyword is lumped into 'other unique queries', is very low traffic and not a keyword you would want to add to your account. This also helps you figure out which keywords are the right ones to add without cluttering your account.

At the same time, while Google doesn't see it as such, your low traffic keywords may be your best converting keywords, especially if they are long tail keywords. Therefore, perhaps having them in the search query report is useful .

What do you think? Do you think Google should give us a report for outlier keywords?

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Yahoo Advertising Platform, APT, Launched

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 4:38pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

The Yodel Anecdotal Blog talks about the launch of APT from Yahoo, a new digital advertising platform that advertises "quality inventory" and "drive[n] results."

Here are some features of APT for Yahoo, according to YahooPete:

For publishers, this platform is designed to open up access to large demand and help improve yield from all inventory, while simplifying ad management. It is also designed to help publishers create new revenue opportunities by cross-selling with other sellers to increase supply.

Advertisers and agencies will be able reach a large scale of quality audiences across multiple properties on a single platform, and harness insights on those users, helping to drive better performance as they simplify media buying. It will also broaden the offerings that agencies can offer to their clients.

Ad networks will gain access to more audiences and demand--including Yahoo! and the largest ad exchange--in one place, simplify the process of doing business with all of these partners, and expand revenue opportunities.

Partners and developers will be able to easily bring their technologies, solutions and innovations to a vast marketplace, and help all buyers and sellers do business more effectively.

Users will benefit as well, with a more relevant online experience. They'll see better targeted and more engaging ads.

Will you get APT immediately? No -- it's currently being rolled out slowly to Yahoo users and this will probably continue though 2009.

Now guys, what exactly does APT stand for?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld, and DigitalPoint Forums.

How To Protect Your Google AdWords Account

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

As a result of many Google AdWords account hijackings and the false charges that are often associated with such an intrusion, netmeg at WebmasterWorld has suggested some procedures to keep yourself in the clear and away from hackers. The list includes changing your password to your Google AdWords account and changing any associated client account passwords. Following that, especially for AdWords account managers, contact your clients and make sure that they are aware of the dangers of Google AdWords when accounts are being hacked into.

The above steps can help you have a "clear mind" with regards to your account, but the next step is to review who already has access to the account and cleaning out users who don't need to be there (or who aren't active).

Now, review those charges you have. Netmeg says that you should run a report on the account and review all charges to ensure that you know exactly where they are coming from. Do this on a regular basis (weekly, monthly, or whatever).

Since security is important and you definitely don't want to rack up thousands of dollars of charges due to AdWords break-ins, it is important that you have some sort of security strategy in place.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 19, 2008

Posted: September 20th, 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.

SEO News » Items by Tamar Weinberg

Feeds

Items by Tamar Weinberg

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:51pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:25pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 3:29pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 3:06pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 2:55pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 2:46pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:55pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:50pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:16pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 3:08pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 3:49pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 3:07pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 2:53pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: December 24th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:59pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 10:03pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 3:31pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 3:13pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:54pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:46pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 3:38pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 4:30pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:37pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:26pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:14pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:47pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:27pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 18th, 2008, 3:09pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Spam

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 5:51pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 3:56pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Posted: December 5th, 2008, 3:31pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg