SEO Firm Blog

Powerset Semantic Search of Interest to Microsoft

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:03:02 -0500

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google Has New Search Within a Search

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:40:33 -0500

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

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

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

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

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

Optimizing a Web Page for Too Many Keyword Phrases

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:36:29 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

Yahoo Testing Images with PPC Ads

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:42:59 -0500

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

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

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

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

How Not To Be Cheated in Link Trades

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:19:24 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO in 4 Simple Steps

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:31:51 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO Guarantees

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:49:06 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google WWW Vs. Non-WWW Issue

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:10:06 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engines Enjoying April Fool's Day

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 12:00:42 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask and You Shall Receive

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:10:04 -0600

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

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

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

Ask Kills Butler with Candlestick in the Boardroom

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:45:17 -0600

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

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

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

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

Search Engine T-shirt Competition Heating Up

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 11:21:18 -0600

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

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

The Great Firewall of China According to Sergey Brin

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:49:46 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google versus the U. S. Attorney General

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:04:53 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

On the Lookout For Next Google PR Update

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:27:12 -0600

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

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

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

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

Good luck on high rankings.

New SEO Contest A Brewin'

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:44:41 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 10:56:08 -0600

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

Yahoo Undercuts Skype In Voip Market

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:16:02 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

Duplicate Content Penalty Fact or Myth?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 10:52:55 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google, Yahoo / Overture and Miva PPC for Publishers

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:16:24 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine Algorithms Keep Evolving - Spam Mass

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:22:15 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

Is Reciprocal Linking Dead? Not Yet.

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:26:33 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

AskJeeves Upgrades Desktop Search - Gets Personal

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:13:35 -0600

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

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

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

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

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

Yahoo Sets Sail On Building Online Book Archive

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Firm) — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 14:44:25 -0500

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

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

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

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