Google recently released it’s personalized search with the inclusion of Twitter tweets. It seems Google has made another milestone in search technology… but wait a minute, one thing Google might have missed is that this could be a recipe for spam disaster.

As Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media points out in a recent blog post, it can be quite easy for someone to spam the results. “The most obvious thing was the ability to real time spam Google’s results.” Just posting a tweet about certain topics and your on the first page of Google!

The scary part in all this is that there seems to be no sort of spam filter to stop someone from having their tweet show up in the search results. In fact I ran my own test to see if I could post something that would show up. I searched Google for SEO and posted a few things in twitter. You’ll see I quickly dominated the twitter results with my tweets! FYI, my twitter name is @gallagherdesign

Although after running these tests I did find a possible spam filter. It seems there is a time limit between tweets that one must wait or Google won’t show your tweet. Also I noticed sometimes Google would only show 1 or 2 of my tweets and seemed to block the rest. Maybe there is hope yet!

Now back to the topic in general… What does this all mean for brands? Well image someone doesn’t like your brand or they are a competitor. They could just sit at their computer or hire someone to tweet all day about how bad your brand is. And what could you do to stop them and what they say from showing up in the search engines? Of course they could always naturally optimize a web page and do the same.

So what about Google’s brand? I noticed there are no Twitter results showing up in the search results when you search the keyword “Google“. Or at least when I searched I found none. In addition it looks like a lot of brands I checked out don’t have twitter results showing up on the first search results page but rather you have to go into the options and click the “latest” link to see them.

Maybe with time Google will also add a Webmaster Tool where you can opt in or out of allowing these types of results to show up for your brand - probably would only be for big brands though like Nike or Walmart. It would be smart for them to add something like that.

Google just announced (10/21/09) that they will include relevant real-time Twitter tweets in their search results! Goggle states that in their quest for providing real-time search results they have decided to include tweets in their results.

How this effects search results:
Apparently only those search results that can be aided by a real-time observation will show related tweets. Google gives an example of searching for snow conditions at your favorite ski resort. So I would image the Google team will come up with an algorithm that will recognize specific searches and then display the tweets. But what I’m interested in finding out is where these are going to be displayed. Are they going to be at the top of the search results or are they going to be near the bottom or on the side some where? I guess we will have to wait and see.

When will we start to see tweets in the results:
According to Google the upcoming months it should be releasing tweets in their search results. Google states “…we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.”

How this effects SEO:
Depending on how and where tweets are displayed in the search results this can have a significant impact in search and SEO. If tweets are displayed in a highly visible search users might be more inclined to read or click on the tweet rather than a real search result. We will have to see a study on this but it will certainly diminish the number of clicks on natural and pay-per-click listings.

So this could impact organic SEO in a negative way. But at the same time it could also help. Users will then be able to simply tweet about a topic they want to rank for and *chirp* their on the first page of Google for a competitive keyword. Then make that even better by adding a link in your tweet back to your site and you then have an effective traffic source.

Hear it from the horse:
To read exactly what Google says about the subject, please review their recent blog post announcing the Twitter and Google partnership: RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!

Don’t forget, follow us on twitter @gallagherdesign

Up until recently I was up in arms over the debate. Could you really be harmed by duplicate content on another site and would that site show up higher than you in the search results? Well those where good questions and I’d seen answers and good argument for both sides, some people saying yes some saying no.

So I sought out a definitive answer to the question. I found that for my own blogs and websites letting people scrap my content has not posed a problem. All of my sites are showing up higher in the search results than the content scraping sites. Then I also looked at the fact that I’m don’t seem to be getting any sort of penalty form Google on this, so looks all good from here.

But the question still remained as this study was only done on a few websites. So I decided to come to the conclusion that the answer to the question might be different for each site. I’d have to test each site I work on and determine if it’s a positive or negative thing for that site. Although to my surprise, today I came across a video by Matt Cutts that can put some, if not all, of this question to rest.

In the above video Matt Cutts confirms that having people scrap your content can actually be beneficial to your site. How..? Links (it’s all about the links), if you have links in the content that someone scraped and those links are linking back to your from the content scraper site then that would count as a link back to your site. So that also means that you should not be getting some sort of penalty for the duplicate content.

Pretty interesting, see I was not sure if Google would count these as link because in most cases it’s a version of your content linking back to your content. But apparently Google gives you some credit for this. Which I actually do see in my link results within my Webmaster Central Account.

So I’d suggest letting people scrap your content but make sure you include links back to your website in your content and that the links have the full website address. You also might do the same with your images in your posts.

Now I guess the only questions remaining are:

1. Is this always true for every site. I’ve heard other webmasters talk about how their site shows up below some content scraper. So I guess you need to make sure you have at least some PageRank and TrustRank, then this should not be an issue.
2. There is still the issue that some people might visit the content scrapers site and not your site for what ever reason. Then if you are making revenue off ads or some other conversion you are losing out. In that case you might still not want people to scrap your content.

What are your thoughts? Let us know by commenting.
P.S. I know if your scrapping our content

This is just a quick post about Twitter issues I seam to be having. It does not seam to be allowing me to login to the home page but I can from other pages using the same exact username/password. But anyways at least I got around that hurdle finally.

Although now I don’t seem to be able to post anything new on Twitter. I’m just getting the loading image when I click the update button on my Twitter home page after typing a message. I’ve even left the page open for a good hour or two and still no working!

So I then came back again and it’s still not working! Ahrrrrrrr, I hate when this kind of stuff happens. I’m not that big of a deal but I’d like to at least update my Twitter page with some of the new posts we’re making on our blog here.

I’ll try again latter and hopefully they will have the issue resolved. I’m guessing it has something to do with the browser through as I’m able to update using a twitter iPhone app. Plus I just saw this posted message on the Twitter status site: Problems with updating from Firefox 3.5. Only issue is I’m not using that version of Firefox but I did just update my version so maybe it has something to do with that.

Again hopefully they will get this issue fixed quickly!

His video (posted below) outlines exactly what Domain Trust and Authority are and how to use them to benefit your site. So what are these things?

Domain Trust - Is the trust search engines put into your website’s domain. If you have a higher domain trust then you site including all pages in your site get this same trust placed on it because it’s all the same domain.

Domain Authority - This is the authority placed on your site’s domain name by search engines. Again this authority effects all pages of the same domain.

Rand outlines the calculation of each of these with the following points, which I agree are some of the important points that make up Domain Trust and Domain Authority.

Domain Trust

1. Who links to you?
2. Who do you link to?
3. Registration info (domain name registration info)
4. User data signals (data from internet users through various sources like browser, analytics, etc…)

Domain Authority

1. Link juice/PageRank
2. Diversity of link sources
3. Temporal analysis (time or how quickly/slowly links are built)
4. Distribution analysis (distribution of links to the pages within your site)

Share your comments and think on Domain Trust and Authority below by posting a comment!

• Twitter - is a free micro-blogging website, or in other words a free social networking site, that offers users the ability to post short messages (usually only 140 characters in length) on their personal page which then can be viewed by anyone.
• Tweet - is the name given to the short updates you can post on your twitter account/page.
• Hashtag - is a tag made of a keyword or term starting with the hash character and is used to indicate a category or topic for a tweet/post on twitter. To use the hashtag you type the hash character and then the keyword/term with no spaces.
  Example: #seosean
• RT - means to repeat a tweet or message from someone else. The tweet/post usually contains the username of the person the message is from so as to give them credit for it.
  Example: RT @gallagherdesign Twitter language defined: http://www.seosean.com
  
• OH - means you are posting something you overheard and is not your original thought.
• @ - the @ symbol disgnates a tweet/post at the user’s username directly followed by the symbol.
  Example: @gallagherdesign I love your site!

For example if you’re URL is redirected using 302 redirection then you’re not likely to be getting all the link juice that you could from any links pointing to your short URL. But on the other hand if it’s a 301 redirect you’re more likely to get all those dofollow links pointing to your short URL counted to the page URL it’s short for. For more info on how 301 redirect effects anchor text check out our post on How To Create A SEO Friendly Redirect.

So any URL shortner that does not do a 301 redirect to your website is not going to be likely that it will pass any link juice on to your full URL page. The other thing to watch out with on many of the URL shortener services out there is that they 301 redirect to something else that 302 redirects to your site. I’ve noticed a few services do this, such as the su.pr even though it’s in beta right now.

One way to check and make sure the URL shortener is actually doing a 301 redirect to your site is to read the headers sent to the browser and see what messages are being passed to them about the redirection. The easiest way to do this is with a tool I’ve found called Check Server Headers Tool. Make sure to look over how it’s redirecting on your own site too. Since some of us have our sites setup to 301 redirect from non www domain address to a one with it, if you use a non www when creating the shorter URL you can have too many 301 redirects to get to your page.

For example:
You have the URL http://www.seosean.com/blog/are-forum-links-any-good
and you want to shorten this URL.

Now I make a short URL http://seosean.com/akes
(I made this with a script I wrote to create and manage short URLs).

Now the short URL may redirect to a www version of my site and then redirect to the page. This can cause problems as Google seems to only follow so many redirects. And if there was an added step in there that made it redirect to some URL shortener service’s domain then to your web page that would be 3 redirections.

The other thing many people have a question on is, do I get credit for the anchor text from the short URL? Answer is yes you do - at least most of the time (that’s basically the water down version of what Matt Cutts said about that).

And on the other side of that I also usually get questions about whether the keywords in the short URL’s count towards the redirected to page? I image you would not get credit for this. Since you’re redirecting your telling the world that the old address is no longer valid and the new one is so I image all things with the old address are discarded and only the new one is counted. So you should only get credit for the keywords in the end URL (the one you redirected to).

The design has a smaller logo for Google next to the search box at the top of the page. And there seems to be extra padding on the left hand side and right hand side for everything except the navigation links at the very top of the page.

I for one don’t like the new design, I actually liked the older one. My guess is the are changing it either as an A/B testing to see which preforms better or they found some users could not see the text on the very left or right hand side of the screen due to their browser and computer monitor (I’ve had this issue before with older monitors, were you can’t see about 5px of the very left and right hand sides of the screen).

Additionally I’ve noticed a few other changes to Google’s search. They recently rolled out with a search suggest that’s embedded in the search boxes at the top and bottom of your SERPs. I know they had this a while back but they took it away and now seem to have brought it back but with different font styling (font is bold for the text you didn’t type in to help you recognize it).

Although all and all this does not seem to effect rankings directly in the search engine, at least so far from my observations. But I’m sure that the search suggest will have an effect on the types of keywords that are searched for. For example I was searching for an item the other day on Google and then click one of the search suggestions just because I was interested in it. Although I still went back and searched for the original thing I was looking for, this type of thing could deter users from one search and making another instead.

There are actually several ways to redirect a website or page. Some of those ways include a JavaScript redirect, meta refresh redirect, 301 redirect and more. Although there are several ways to preform a redirect there is a preferred way to redirect if you want to make sure it’s SEO friendly.

That preferred method is called a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is technique or type of redirecting that tells an Internet browser, search engine or other device that the page accessed has permanently move to another location and your being redirected to that location.

• Why is a 301 redirect preferred?
• How to setup a 301.
• Does anchor text in links to the old page count for the new page?

Why is a 301 redirect preferred?
The reason a 301 is a preferred method is that it indicates it’s move is permanently and not only that, but Google has stated that this is the redirect method you should use if you wish to give a new page the same created from links that an older page had.

The major benefit to SEO by going a 301 is that Google and some other search engines will treat all links from an old page as counting for your new page you redirected to.

How to Setup Your 301 Redirect:
Now that we understand 301 redirects and why they are best for SEO lets dive into how you can setup one. First you’ll need 2 URLs, one the URL of the page you want to redirect from (the old page) and two the URL you want to direct towards (the new page). Next you’ll need to decide on the method in which you want to preform the redirect. There are actually several ways to do a 301.

Here are a few mediums you can do this in:
domain registrar level*
PHP
ASP
.htaccess
and more

I’ve mentioned just a few of the most used mediums above. For more methods and code, check out this excellent reference: How to create redirects

Also it’s important to understand that you can 301 redirect from one website to another. Example you can redirect from http://www.oldsite.com to http://www.newsite.com

For most redirecting I suggest you use .htaccess. Why? It’s pretty reliable, relatively easy to setup, control and edit latter. Although using redirection at the domain registrar level is very reliable too.

Here are my suggestions for redirection needs and medium to redirect with:

How does this effect anchor text from links to the old page?
Surprisingly most anchor text will be attributed and count towards the new (redirected to) page. Here is a short video with Matt Cutts explaining the answer to that very question.

The reports cover more than just impression (number of times your map listing has been displayed) but also cover activity and click throughs to your listing info, your website and even the number of requests for driving directions.

Out of all of that the most interesting is (at least to me) is the driving directions. Not only can you see the number of times someone requested driving directions but you can actually see the zip codes from which people requested them from. And it’s all overlaid on a Google map in your reports area. Although it only goes as deep as showing the zip code from which someone requested directions from it still very insightful. With this data you can find where most of our customer base or potential customer base is coming from. And with that you can then know that area would be good for you to start or improve possible mail or postcard marketing to.

Another very useful feature is the “Top search queries”. With this you can see what the top queries are that people are searching for and your map/business listing is showing up for. Now that does not mean they clicked through to your listing details or to your website but it’s good data as it can tell you what people might be searching for that is related to your business and you might want to gear your map listing in a way that caters to searchers of those keywords.

As well the reports shows a graph of the impressions and activity you’ve had over time. And just like in Google Analytics you can view the data for any range of dates.

Another feature I would be interested in which they don’t offer is to know the number of people that print off or requested one of your coupons. That data would really be helpful as it would show that a person was really reaching for your services or products. And of course if they could match that up with the zip code where those requests came from - now that would be sometime!