Truveo, the video search site acquired by AOL a few years back, has relaunched. Before we get into the details, let’s be clear: Truveo is not a YouTube wannabe. Their focus is purely on indexing video around the web.

So, now that we have that settled, let’s take a look at what’s changed and then how you can incorporate this fast-growing site into your online marketing and PR efforts.

First up, here’s the before and after:

Before

After

As you can see, they’ve made the focus on search quite obvious.

The results page is laid out in three columns. On the left hand side is a list of sites where results have been indexed. In the middle are the video results, with tabs to sort by popularity and other factors. There are suggestions for search refinement where applicable. On the right is a display ad box with a focus on a particular channel underneath.

But looking at the results, where is the opportunity for search marketers? There’s the display ad box, but no sponsored listings.

Leveraging Truveo will instead involve public relations and viral marketing. Since many of the sites that Truveo indexes are news sites, earned media is key. Additionally, Truveo tracks popular videos shared via Twitter, so word of mouth and viral social media marketing can help with getting visibility on Truveo as well.

The nice thing about those strategies is that the ultimate visibility of successful marketing and PR campaigns will be widespread. Generally, you’ll see a lift in other channels too, if you can manage to get a big media site to cover you. Think of the links – that will be natural! – and the effect they’ll have on organic results!

But why would you focus such intent efforts on Truveo. You’ve never even heard of Truveo. Well, you, my friend are getting closer to being alone in that sentiment as the months roll by.

May was a huge month for Truveo, according to President Pete Kocks. He’s hoping that the new site reflects the video search focus while resonating with internet users worldwide.

“With the launch of the new Truveo.com, we are showcasing the breadth of content discoverable in our search engine,” said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. “With thousands of channels and TV shows in our index, Truveo has long been recognized as a leader in video search technology, and today we are building on that reputation with an improved experience that makes discovering and sharing video content even easier and more personalized.”

That video content is highly popular in international locations. Because certain locales in Europe, the Middle East and South America have access to better bandwidth and because of the extent of Truveo’s video indexing, the site is more easily consumed internationally.

As a result, it comes as no surprise that the relaunch comes with the announcement of two partners: Univision and Tiscali Italia. Both will leverage Truveo’s API to deliver video search on their sites.

Speaking of the API, it fuels the video search on all of AOL’s sites. Considering the extent to which Truveo indexes video content, third party developers would be wise to incorporate the API to provide a nice value add to any site.

Truveo also has an iPhone app as well as a site optimized for mobile web surfers. They’re certainly on the ball and their increasing traffic is showing that they’re offering something that internet users really want: comprehensive video search.

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For those of you using advanced SEO techniques such as PageRank sculpting, you might want to listen up.

Head of Google’s crime spam fighting team, Matt Cutts, put the cat amongst the pigeons last month when he answered an audience question at the SMX Advanced conference about the value of using rel=”no follow” for PageRank sculpting purposes. When asked if it was a good idea to use nofollow when linking around within your site, Matt said no.

NoFollow is a method to annotate a link to say to search engines “I don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, nofollow links don’t pass PageRank.

According to Matt, more than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that links WITHOUT nofollow would flow lesser points of PageRank than before and that links WITH the nofollow attribute would count toward how PageRank is divided up amongst all links on a page.

Seems SEOs and webmasters were getting a little bit trigger happy with their use of rel=”no follow” for Google crawl prioritization and were accidently blocking Googlebot from indexing important parts of their site.

Matt later clarified the issue with his blog post PageRank Sculpting:

“[We] noticed some sites that attempted to change how PageRank flowed within their sites, but those sites ended up excluding sections of their site that had high-quality information (e.g. user forums)… I wouldn’t recommend [PageRank sculpting], because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike. For example, it makes a much bigger difference to make sure that people (and bots) can reach the pages on your site by clicking links than it ever did to sculpt PageRank. “

Danny Sullivan has a great follow up post that goes into more detail here.

So the short story is this: PageRank sculpting is no longer effective as a SEO technique (if it ever was). For the most part, the more links on a page, the less PageRank each link gets. Keep that in mind whenever you’re optimizing your site and when you build new pages.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Google PageRank Sculpting is Dead

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By Chris Long
Reporter, Click

There is no doubt that free technologies, mainly open source software, are proving more popular both inside and outside the computer industry.

Behind this growing acceptance is a non-commercial movement of independent developers that are putting together the open source software that anyone can use.

Paul Allen, editor of ComputerActive magazine, said the defining feature of open source software was that the set of tools and systems were developed by enthusiasts rather than big companies.

But he added it should be treated as "free thinking rather than a free lunch" because it is not always free of charge.

Out of this movement have come fully-fledged programs, such as Open Office for e-mail, spreadsheets, word processing and presentations, and VLC for video, that were put together for free by a community of people.

"The entire source code for the software is made available to the community and anyone can modify it," said Phil Andrews from open source software provider Red Hat.

‘Catching up’

While the core software may be free to download and install, some companies are making money from open source by offering support services. This can be in the form of a helpdesk or more technical aid to troubleshoot problems once the software is being used.

"In the same way that you would take purchase software and have a maintenance contract… we supply a support contract for open source software," said Mr Andrews.

Despite many businesses turning to open source and its use becoming widespread, it remains relatively unknown to the masses of computer users, said Mr Allen.

He said consumers were particularly unaware of the free versions of operating systems, largely Linux, that are available. This could be because many appear in different versions that can look fragmented to those unfamiliar with them.

Beyond operating systems, many do use open source programs even if they may not know them as such.

"On the applications side, programs like Firefox and Thunderbird are immensely popular and are catching up Microsoft in some places," said Mr Allen.

Many of the open source applications have millions of users.

For instance, statistics suggest that there are about 40 to 50 million users of Linux desktops, while Open Office has been downloaded 60 million times since October 2009.

The browser Firefox has been gaining popularity with web users and the organisation behind it claims it now has 270 million users.

Lawful or not

One factor driving the acceptance of open source software has been the success of small form factor notebook computers that shipped with a version of Linux installed.

One pioneer of this approach was Asus whose netbooks originally shipped with Linux and Open Office installed. Now they are just as likely to have Windows XP and Office installed.

Mr Andrews believes the open source community could have made more of that opportunity.

"But when you have someone like Microsoft who suddenly decides they want that market – they have the war chest to take that market," he said.

The growing popularity of commercial applications has driven the creation of open source equivalents – these are often based on other people’s software, Mr Allen said.

"If a company wanted to have compatibility with a certain type of device or service, it has to reverse engineer its standards, so they are actually breaking into the technology".

"Whether or not it’s legal for them to do so, is not for me to say," he said.

When big companies feel threatened by others tweaking their technology, they have been know to consult their lawyers, he added.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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At SES San Jose 2009, I’ve been asked to make a solo presentation to kick of the Search and Community Track. The title of the session is “How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community.”

I’ve been working on my presentation, but it lacked a compelling case study that illustrated how a community organization had used search engine optimization and YouTube video to generate measurable results. I had planned to show examples of videos created by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Monty Python, and Blendtec, but plans have a way of changing.

Then, I got involved with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), a national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization headquartered in Boston.

NACA is organizing a series of Save the Dream events to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, restructure home loans, and reduce mortgage rates. They have already held events in Columbia, SC, Stamford, CT, and Washington, DC. And NACA plans to hold more Save the Dream events in Cleveland, OH, July 17 – 20 at the Wolstein Center; Chicago, IL, July 24 – 27 at McCormick Place; and St. Louis, MO, July 31 – August 3 at Chaifetz Arena.

Although I don’t have my case study wrapped up just yet, I do see one in the making. And it offers lots of lessons to search engine marketers, YouTube directors and entrepreneurs about how to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community.

For example, we issued an optimized press release yesterday announcing that NACA CEO Bruce Marks and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) will hold a joint press conference on Monday, July 6, at the Wolstein Center at 11:30 am to discuss the upcoming Save the Dream event in Cleveland. You can get the gist of the news at NACA and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (Oh-11) Announce Same Day Solution for Homeowners with Unaffordable Mortgage.

But we also embedded a documentary video created by DigiNovations of Concord, MA, in the optimized press release. It provides background on NACA’s Save the Dream program, which has helped homeowners across America restructure and renegotiate home mortgages and home loans they can no longer afford.

Documentary: NACA’s “Save the Dream” – Mortgage Restructuring and Renegotiation Rescues Homeowners

Now, the press conference hasn’t even been held yet — and the Save the Dream event in Cleveland is still two weeks away. But I was stunned yesterday when one Twitter user near Memphis, TN, said “this is fantastic news” but she couldn’t afford to wait, had called NACA and was “on hold” waiting to talk with someone.

I initially tweeted back that NACA will have over 500 staff and volunteers at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, including over 250 counselors providing counseling from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. from Friday July 17 through Monday July 20. Then, I realized that this information wasn’t helpful today, this minute, now. So, I sent her a direct tweet with the cell phone number of the person I was working with at NACA — in case she needed it.

I got a direct tweet back saying, “Thanks for the info… my process is well underway – so I’m all set (I hope!)”

So, something extraordinary is happening. And as I prepare for my presentation at SES San Jose 2009, I hope you won’t mind if I share the story as it unfolds. That’s one of the lessons I’ve already learned: You can’t plan a search campaign and expect the community to wait to respond when you are ready — especially if you are offering an answer to the huge subprime and predatory lending industry.

This is bigger than a case study. This is people’s homes.

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