1. Bing about web spam - Is your website considered spam?

The official Bing blog recently had a post about web spam. According to Bing's definition, web spam is "unwanted web content that uses overtly manipulative techniques in an effort to fraudulently attain undeservingly high ranking in search engines."

Why is web spam a problem?

Search engines want to return relevant websites on their result pages. If a web spam page is listed in the search results, it will lead the search engine user to a web page that is not related to the query.

How does Bing classify web spam?

Bing classifies spam based on two types of signals: page-level and link-level:

  1. Page-level spam is comprised of shady search engine optimization techniques that are used on-page. On-page spamming techniques include hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages and cloaking.

  2. Link-level spam uses fraudulent linking strategies to improve the rankings of a website in the search engines. For example, this can be done by joining automated link exchange networks or by setting up many domains with automatically generated pages for the sole purpose of linking to each other.

For a page to be labeled as web spam by Bing, at least one of these techniques must be in use.

Does Bing penalize web pages with web spam?

The Bing engineers actively work to detect web spam. When thy find a website that uses spammy optimization techniques, they will penalize that website:

"We penalize those sites with actions commensurate with the egregiousness of their offenses, ranging from rank neutralization (intentionally lowering their organic page rank) to permanent expulsion from the index."

What does this mean for your website?

Although this blog post was written by Bing engineers, it is very likely that Google uses similar (if not more strict) methods to find web spam. If you don't want to risk the position of your website in the search results, you should only use ethical search engine optimization methods.

If you use spammy SEO methods, you might get high rankings on search engines quickly. Unfortunately, search engines usually detect all spamming methods sooner or later and they will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

Spammy SEO methods

If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you'll get a much better performance in the long run:

Ethical SEO methods

Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings. It will backfire on you. Use ethical search engine optimization methods to get lasting results.

If you want to find out how you have to change your web pages so that your website will be listed on the first result pages of Google and Bing for the keywords of your choice.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsU.S. web searches top 10.2 billion in January

Google received 66.3% of all searches, Yahoo 14.5%, Microsoft/Bing 10.9%, AOL Search 2.5% and Ask.com 1.9%. The total number of searches in January 2010 was 10,272,099,000.



 Searchers using longer queries in 2009

"The long tail is getting longer; 1- and 2-word queries are on the decline, while 4- and 5-word queries are rising. Even 3-word queries are down slightly, but not enough (in my opinion) to call it part of the trend just yet. [...] Four-word queries are up 12% since 2007, and five-word queries are up 16%."



Google Google AdWords now offers "bid ideas"

"We're adding more functionality to the Opportunities tab with the introduction of bid ideas. Bid ideas, based on bid simulator data, will help you raise or lower your bids on specific keywords to improve your AdWords ROI.

Whether you wish to decrease overall costs or increase traffic to your website, customized bid ideas can help you determine exactly which bids to adjust to make the most of your advertising budget."

Editor's note: You have to be careful with Google's tips that have an effect on your bids. Further information on how to optimize your AdWords ads can be found in the AdWords eBook.



 The trouble with Google's Yellow Pages experiment

"Google has begun to mix organic search results with 'sponsored' search results. Prior to this, the results were separated. Sponsored links were always on the right, and the main search results were 'organic,' they were listed on how relevant they were to the query -- not because of payment."



 DMOZ 2.0 rumored to launch at end of March

"There have been many reports and rumors about the forthcoming Open Directory Project overhaul, dubbed DMOZ 2.0. [...] This may lead to the development of additional tools that could help editors analyze websites and identify higher quality sites based on common non-dmoz data metrics."



Search engine newslets

  • The giant mess of mixing Gmail addresses with Google Buzz/profile names.
  • A new Buzz start-up experience based on your feedback.
  • Google acquires Aardvark.
  • Google tests a new Google News homepage.

1. Double talk: do search engines understand your web pages?

You have a beautiful website with great products, great guarantees, many comprehensive pages and great customer service. Unfortunately, Google and other search engines won't give your website high rankings.

There are several reasons why search engines do not list websites although they look great and offer quality content:

1. Your web pages are meaningless to search engine spiders

Search engines use simple software programs to visit your web pages. In general, search engine spiders won't see anything that is displayed in images, Flash elements, JavaScript (except for a few exceptions) and other multimedia formats.

If the main content of your website is displayed in images or Flash then your website can be totally meaningless to search engines. If your website navigation is pure JavaScript then chances are that search engines won't find the pages of your website.

Your website will look like a single page site although it consists of many different pages.

Solution: Check your website with IBP's search engine spider simulator to find out how search engine spiders see your website.

2. The HTML code of your web page contains major errors

Most web pages have minor errors in their HTML code. While most search engine spiders can handle minor HTML code errors, some errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages.

For example, a tag at the top of your web pages could tell search engine spiders that they have reached the end of the page although the main content of the page has not been indexed yet.

Solution: Verify the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP demo version (IBP main window > Tools > HTML Validator).

3. The HTML code of your web pages doesn't contain the right elements

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords then these keywords must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.

There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings. All of them should be in place if you want to get high rankings.

Solution: Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you in detail how to edit your web pages so that they will get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines for the keywords of your choice.

4. Your web server sends the wrong status codes

Some web servers send wrong status codes to search engine spiders and visitors. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the "200 OK" code.

Some servers send a "302 moved" or even a "404 not found" response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.

If your web server sends the wrong response code, search engine spiders will think that the web page doesn't exist and they won't index the page.

Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator mentioned above to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not "200 OK", the spider simulator will return a warning message.

5. Your robots.txt file rejects all search engine spiders

If your robots.txt file does not allow search engine spiders to visit your web pages then your website won't be included in the search results. Some robots.txt file contain errors and search engine spiders are blocked by mistake.

Solution: Check the contents of your robots.txt file. In general, it is not necessary to use a robots.txt file if you don't want to block certain areas of your website.

Search engine spiders must be able to understand your web pages if you want to get high rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines. The tips above help you to make sure that search engine spiders see what you want them to see.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Spam attack: Google search results manipulated?

"Alwil Software, maker of Avast anti-virus products, says it has uncovered a network that serves hundreds of fake links through hijacked Web sites to cheat Google search algorithms. [...]

One part is a network of at least 70 hijacked sites that attackers have filled with more than 500 links each. The links are only detectable by search engine bots, and they lead to hijacked Web sites that attackers want to boost in search rankings."

Editor's note: Check your web pages with IBP's search engine spider simulator to find out if there are unwanted links on your pages.



 Google adds new features to real-time search

"We recently launched real-time search with Russian and Japanese, the first of the languages we plan to support. We want to bring you this functionality globally, so stay tuned as we add more countries. [...]

Starting this week we officially added MySpace content to real-time search. Now you can tap into the pool of news, photos and blog posts that MySpace users have chosen to publish to the world."



 Survey: does Google make us stupid?

"I feel compelled to agree with myself. But I would add that the Net's effect on our intellectual lives will not be measured simply by average IQ scores.

What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."



 Google announces enhanced local listings test

"These enhanced listings allow business owners to highlight an aspect of their Local Business Center listing that they think best reflects what they have to offer their customers.

The business owner can choose to enhance the way their listing appears in search results by including a link to point customers directly to photos, videos, website, coupons, directions, menu or reservations signup."

Editor's note: these enhanced local listings cost $25/month and they mix paid and unpaid listings in Google's search results. It is currently only available in San Jose and Houston.



Search engine newslets

  • Twitter traffic up 9% after Google real-time search launch.
  • Google's latest Buzz privacy changes enable possible new exploit.
  • Bing masking MSNBot as Internet Explorer or a rogue bot?
  • Discussion: Google changes the site search command for image search.
  • Can having dofollow comments on your blog affect its reputation?
  • Google countersues haircutter company that brought on AdWords lawsuit.
  • How to improve your Google rankings with Dilbert (comic strip).

1. Is your website exploited by proxy hijackers?

Proxy hijacking is a problem that started several years ago. For several months, it looked as if Google had solved the problem. Last month, some webmasters reported that their website was hijacked by a proxy and that the position of their own website declined in Google's results.

content thief

What is proxy hijacking?

Proxy hijacking works like this:

  1. Google's web crawler Googlebot visits a website, for example www.theshadyproxy.com.

  2. The domain www.theshadyproxy.com does not have any content. Instead of providing its own pages to Googlebot, the proxy scrapes your website in real-time. This is usually done by adding the URL of the other website to the proxy URL: www.theshadyproxy.com/scrape/yourdomain.com
  3. Googlebot thinks that the contents of your website are actually the contents of www.theshadyproxy.com.

  4. Your website will be removed from the search results and the proxy page will get your old rankings.

How to check if your website has been hijacked

Perform a Google search for a phrase that is unique to your page. You should use a sentence or word combination that only appears on your page and nowhere else on the Internet.

Put the search phrase in quotation marks. For example, if you want to check if there are duplicates of this page, you could search for the following phrase on Google.com:

"Ultimately though, what matters the most to me is control. I have a simple rule of thumb, which is that I don?t put data somewhere that I can?t get it back."

If there is more than one web page in the search results (your page), examine the other web pages. If some of them are an exact copy of your web page, you might have found a proxy that has hijacked your web page content.

What can you do to protect your website against proxies?

Some people recommend that you should block unknown IP addresses in your server configuration. However, this is very risky. Chances are that you'll also block Google and other search engines.

If there's a small error in the blocking code, your website will disappear completely from the search results because search engines won't be able to index your web pages. There will also be problems when the search engines use new IP addresses for the web crawlers.

For that reason, we recommend that you monitor your website with a service like CopyScape. If you find a proxy server that steals your content, you can block the exact IP address in the .htaccess file of your server.

Google has made great progress in fighting proxy spam in their search results. If you find a proxy server that steals your rankings in Google's search results, report it to Google. Chances are that this proxy server will disappear from Google's results.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Is Google cloaking results to Firefox users?

"I discovered this morning that Google is cloaking results based on either your user agent or possibly based on the extensions you are running in Firefox. [...] Some people confirm my results while others are seeing the same thing in FireFox and Chrome."



Yahoo The steady, efficient decline of Yahoo

"Yahoo?s strategy seems more like 'ready, aim, aim, aim, aim?' [...] Yahoo will continue to shrink as sites are sold off and shuttered, and CEO Carol Bartz works on those efficiency gains. But this is no longer even close to an exciting company that thrives on chaotic creativity. Yahoo?s foundation is rotten. They have no plan to get back into the game. Or if they do have a plan, no one knows about it."



 Tsunami blackhat SEO begins

"Unfortunately, as Graham Cluley regularly blogs, any breaking news topic tends be exploited by hackers who use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to lure people to visit their malicious pages. [Saturday's] news of a large earthquake in Chile seems to be no exception.

The second link in my search results for the most popular trending topics on Google seemed suspicious. [The web page] ultimately redirects your browser to a domain known to SophosLabs as a malware repository."



BingBing adds your search history to auto-suggest

"Autosuggest now supports suggestions from your query history. [...] 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week! Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile. You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online ? over many days ? to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase.

With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off."



Search engine newslets

  • Study: web portals become important news sources.
  • Discussion: Twitter users don't click on Google AdSense ads.
  • Twitter's ad plan: copy Google.
  • Google's Matt Cutts: Should we create a mobile version of our site? (video)
  • Matt Cutts: How will Google search work with pages built with GWT? (video)
  • Google CEO Eric Schmidt circa 1986.
  • Rupert Murdoch ready to sue Google?
  • Google, Microsoft spar on antitrust.
  • Why Google pushed Buzz out the door before it was ready.

1. Top 5 elements that you need for high rankings on Google

Getting listed on Google's first result page is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately, many webmasters still do the wrong things to improve their rankings.

It's not possible to get top 10 rankings on Google by focusing on a single strategy. Getting listed on Google requires you to work on all elements of your website. Here are the top 5 factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results:

Ranking factor 1: website accessibility

It doesn't make sense to optimize your web pages if search engines cannot access your web pages:

  • Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors then many search engines won't list your website.

  • The HTML code of your web pages should be error-free and your web server should return the correct response code. The contents of your web pages should be readable to search engine spiders. Details can be found here.

Before you start to optimize your web pages, check if search engines can read your web page content. You can do this with IBP's spider simulator. Double-check your robots.txt.

Ranking factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant websites in the search results. Your website shouldn't be a collection of random web pages. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be related.

Your web pages should show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. All pages of your website should be linked. If possible, web surfers should reach any page of your website with a maximum of three clicks.

The links and the directory structure of your website should make it easy to search engines to categorize the contents of your website.

Ranking factor 3: keywords

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you won't succeed with your campaign.

  • Optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. The more pages of your website you optimize, the better.

  • Start with very targeted keyphrases that consists of many words, for example "find inexpensive hotels in brussels".

  • When you have top rankings for these targeted keyphrases, proceed with more general keywords such as "hotels in brussels".

  • When you have top rankings for these keyphrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as "hotels".

In general, targeted keywords have a much higher conversion rate than general keywords, i.e. you will get more sales per visitor with "find inexpensive hotels in brussels" than with "hotels".

Also think about the type of visitor that you attract with a keyword. Are these people interested in information or do they want to buy?

Use IBP's comprehensive keyword tools to find the keywords that will work best with your site. You can find further information on how to find the correct keyword type in the IBP manual (PDF).

Ranking factor 4: content

Your website won't get high rankings on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other websites.

Separate your website from the rest by creating unique and trustworthy content. Write your own articles about the topic of your website, publish them on your own website and make your website a useful resource.

Ranking factor 5: links from other websites

It is not possible to get high rankings on Google without having links from other websites.

The more links point to your website, the more likely it is that your website gets good positions in Google's search results. The links to your website should be from trusted websites.

If a web page that links to you is related to your own website then the effect of that link on the search engine rankings of your website is higher than the effect of an unrelated link.

It also helps if social bookmark websites link to your website. If many people bookmark your website on social bookmark sites, then this is a sign that your website might deserve high rankings.

A small error in one element can destroy your effects in all other ranking elements. For that reason, it is important to use the right strategy when optimizing your website.

Detailed step-by-step instructions and checklists can be found in our free search engine optimization eBook.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Eye tracking study: users largely blind to real-time results in search

"The study [...] seems to assert that real-time results so far have limited impact or appeal. While there?s enormous hype and coverage among tech-insiders about 'real time search,' the public doesn't really understand (or perhaps care) what the fuss is all about."



Yahoo Yahoo releases desktop tool for PPC management

"If you?re an advertiser running more than one campaign, you will probably welcome the new Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop, a free offline tool that lets you spend less time on the tactical details of campaign management, and more on increasing your return-on-investment."



 Your Google Business listing is at risk

"You need to watch out! I was just reading the Google Lat Long Blog and they?re telling people to edit YOUR Google business listing. This is really, really, bad. [...]

It?s so simple to claim these listings and even though Google is advertising like crazy too many businesses are leaving it up to some random visitor to edit their Google business listing?"

Related: A new way to edit places on Google Maps



ShoppingOnline shopper intelligence study released

"Overwhelmingly, consumers depend on one resource more than others to help them shop online?search engines. 3 out of 5 shoppers said that they always or often use search engines when shopping online. More consumers use search engines than they do coupon sites, retailer emails, consumer reviews, or shopping comparison sites."

Editor's note: If you want to get buyers, make sure that your website can be found for the right keywords.



Search engine newslets

  • Does the PageRank of Twitter profiles matter? (video)
  • The crazy things cities do to get broadband from Google.
  • Statistics for a changing world: Google Public Data Explorer in Labs.
  • News is a lousy business for Google too.
  • Yahoo loses exclusive T-Mobile USA search deal to Google.
  • Google may review EU drives, won't drop Street View.
  • Google tests TV search service.
  • comScore releases January 2010 U.S. online video rankings.
  • Google in 20 years (humor).
  • Studies of web searches offer preview of hiring trends.
  • Facebook ads: "Keywords" will change to "Likes and Interests" this week.

 

anna Marketing your Site with the Mailing List Service
By Anna Love
Newsletters and Emails are a great way to keep your user base and visitors up to date on your websites latest trends, promote your products, or send news & updates. Opt in email provides just another touch point to remind people to come back to your website.

Best yet, you can start developing your own mailing list with Bravenet, at no cost! The Mailing List is an amazing tool and its super quick and easy to use too!

The service allows you to build your subscriber list from your website by collecting email addresses from people that opt-in to receive your newsletter. Implementation is a simple copy / paste code, just like any of the other Bravenet Services.

Once your members subscribe it's simply a matter of creating a newsletter to send whenever you like - and Bravenet makes it easy to create a beautiful newsletter and sent it out to all your subscribers with one click.

The Mailing List Service features an amazingly easy to use builder that allows you to send your newsletters with no messy code required. That said, if you want to customize it further there is also the ability to send custom HTML emails. You have total control and complete customization with the HTML option. On top of all that, there is also the ability to add a Plain Text version of your newsletter, for email clients that do not accept HTML.

Even better, the service keeps track of all your newsletter sends with email statistics. You can see how many of your subscribers are opening your emails, and learn from your stats as your prepare to send your next newsletter.

In short, sending newsletters is a great way to interact with your visitors. Telling them about new products, updates or even a friendly hello reminds people to come back to your site and check it out. If you upgrade to the Professional Mailing List service your ads will be removed, you can have more subscribers and can send up to five newsletters per day!

Take a proactive approach to reaching your audience! Encourage people to come to your website! After all, more visitors can quickly equal more revenue.

Don't Delay, get your Mailing List Today!

1. A new Google penalty? What can you do against it?

Webmasters in online forums reported an unusual Google behavior. New web pages of some sites are indexed with a longer delay. Is it a new Google penalty? Or is it just a bug that affects only certain websites?

What is the exact problem?

The websites that reported the problem were used to immediate inclusion of their pages in Google's search results.

If your website has a certain number of inbound links and if it has been indexed by Google, Google usually indexes new pages very quickly. That does not mean that the new pages get high rankings for any keyword but that the new pages can be found in Google's results if you search for the exact web page title or other unique elements that appear on the new web page.

These websites that were used to immediate inclusion now observed a 7 day delay for new website content:

"My blog has been afloat for almost 1.5 years, was always indexed by Google fast and smooth, and was ranked pretty high by main keywords in its niche. However, it's been several weeks that Google seems to have stopped indexing my new posts. [...]

It seems as if [Google is] applying an algorithm like 'posting day + 7 days' or something when indexing my new posts."

Is this really a new Google penalty? What can you do against it?

Many of the web pages that have the 7 day indexing problem are Wordpress blogs. There are several theories why these blogs aren't indexed as quickly as before:

  1. The affected websites all seem to use the same SEO plugin for Wordpress that screws up the code and prevents Google from indexing the website pages correctly.

    If you use an SEO plugin, consider if you really need it. These plugins don't do real SEO. They hide certain pages on your website from search engine spiders and they allow you to edit the header information of your web pages. This can also be done through the regular Wordpress interface.

  2. Although the new blog post wasn't listed for 7 days on Google, the index page of the blog was listed in Google's search results.

    As the index page of a blog often shows the latest blog posts, it is likely that Google uses the 7 day delay for the blog page because the post can only be found on the blog index page during that time.

  3. Some of the affected blogs publish press releases on their websites. As the same press release can also be found on many other websites, Google might return the first publisher of the press release in the search results and discard all other pages with the same content.

  4. Other affected websites seem to be AdSense scraper websites. These websites have very little unique content and they have been built to attract visitors that then click on the AdSense ads on the website.

  5. Some of the affected websites installed user agent sniffers on their server. These programs return different pages to different user agents (human web surfers, Googlebot and other bots).

    Using such a script on your server can easily prevent Google's indexing robot from indexing your website and it can be misinterpreted as a spamming (cloaking) attempt. This is very similar to the SEO plugin problem above.

It looks as if the 7 day delay might be related to two different website types: websites that use server scripts that return different pages to different user agents and websites that contain little or no unique content.

The 7 day delay for blogs that display the content both on the blog index page and the blog posting page is not a penalty but a Google feature that prevents duplicate results.

Google robotIf your website is a Made-For-AdSense scraper website then it's probably time to think about a new business model. Google might give these websites lower rankings in the future.

If you use bot blocking scripts or other server scripts that change the content that is delivered to visitors of your website then you should make sure that you're not accidentally blocking Google. It's better not to use these scripts at all.

If you want to know how to get your website on Google's first result page, take a look at the success story below.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google[Google's] Matt Cutts interviewed by Eric Enge

"The number of pages that we crawl is roughly proportional to your PageRank. So if you have a lot of incoming links on your root page, we'll definitely crawl that. Then your root page may link to other pages, and those will get PageRank and we'll crawl those as well. As you get deeper and deeper in your site, however, PageRank tends to decline. [...]

Typically, the 301 Redirect would pass PageRank. It can be a very useful tool to migrate between pages on a site, or even migrate between sites."



Google announces microdata support for rich snippets

"By using microdata markup in your web pages, you can specify reviews, people profiles, or events information on your web pages that Google may use to improve the presentation of your pages in Google search results. [...]

Marking up your content does not guarantee that rich snippets will show for your site."



 Top 5 moments from [Google CEO] Eric Schmidt's talk in Abu Dhabi

"There are many, many things that Google could do, that we chose not to do. [...] Google is collecting a staggering amount of information about who we are, what we?re thinking, and even where we are. [...] It was quite the effective moment that showed we still trust government less than we trust Google. But should we trust either?"

Related: Six delusions of Google's arrogant leaders.



GoogleGoogle '99% certain' to shut China engine

"In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving."



Search engine newslets

  • Facebook reaches top ranking in US.
  • Apple's spat with Google is getting personal.
  • How Google works.
  • One analysis of the Google Buzz mess.
  • Google news tax could boost local papers.
  • Microsoft's Bing to sponsor the Simpsons.

1. Official Google statements about ranking factors

Last week Google's Matt Cutts gave an interview in which he revealed some things that will help webmasters to better optimize their websites. Here are the most important things that Matt Cutts said in the interview:

1. The more relevant links you have, the more pages of your site will be indexed

Matt Cutts said that the number of pages that Google indexes from your website is roughly proportional to the PageRank of your website. That means that more pages of your website will be indexed if your website has many inbound links.

Google does not have an indexation cap, i.e. they will index all pages of your website if you have enough inbound links. Remember that the PageRank that Google uses in its ranking algorithm is not the PageRank that is displayed in Google's toolbar.

2. Slow servers can cause problems

If Google can only crawl two pages at any given time due to a slow server, Google can set some sort of upper bound on how many pages they will fetch from that host server. This can be a problem for websites that are hosted on shared or slow servers.

3. Duplicate content can cause problems

"Imagine we crawl three pages from a site, and then we discover that the two other pages were duplicates of the third page. We'll drop two out of the three pages and keep only one, and that?s why it looks like it has less good content."

As mentioned above, Google will index your web pages based on the PageRank of your pages. If you have duplicate content, some pages of your website will be discarded and you'll waste ranking opportunities.

Matt Cutts also indicated that if you link from one page to a duplicate page, you can mess up your PageRank. Google also tries to pass the PageRank and other link signals from the duplicate pages to the original page.

If you use the rel=canonical tag on your web pages then the pages needn't be exact duplicates but they should be conceptual duplicates of the same product, or things that are closely related.

"It's totally fine for a page to link to itself with rel=canonical, and it's also totally fine, at least with Google, to have rel=canonical on every page on your site."

However, Google does not always obey the canonical tag:

"The crawling and indexing team wants to reserve the ultimate right to determine if the site owner is accidentally shooting themselves in the foot and not listen to the rel=canonical tag."

4. Affiliate pages don't get high rankings

If a website is an affiliate website that is very similar to other pages (only with a different logo, etc.) then this page won't get high rankings.

If Google detects an affiliate link than this link won't pass any PageRank power.

5. Redirects work but they don't pass the whole PageRank

If you change your domain name and redirect old pages with a 301 redirect from your old page to your new page then the link power will be passed to your new domain name but the overall power of the links will decrease. 301 redirects do not pass the full PageRank.

6. Low quality pages can cause problems

"If there are a large number of pages that we consider low value, then we might not crawl quite as many pages from that site, but that is independent of rel=canonical."

If you have a lot of web pages with thin content then Google might stop crawling your website. Matt Cutts also suggested that it might help to be wordy:

"You really want to have most of your pages have actual products with lots of text on them."

7. PageRank sculpting and website navigation

Google does not want you to sculpt your website for PageRank reasons. The best way to pass link power from one page to other pages is to have a good website navigation.

"Site architecture, how you make links and structure appear on a page in a way to get the most people to the products that you want them to see, is really a better way to approach it then trying to do individual sculpting of PageRank on links."

"You can distribute that PageRank very carefully between related products, and use related links straight to your product pages rather than into your navigation. I think there are ways to do that without necessarily going towards trying to sculpt PageRank."

8. You still shouldn't use JavaScript links for your website navigation

"For a while, we were scanning within JavaScript, and we were looking for links. Google has gotten smarter about JavaScript and can execute some JavaScript.

I wouldn't say that we execute all JavaScript, so there are some conditions in which we don?t execute JavaScript.

We do have the ability to execute a large fraction of JavaScript when we need or want to. One thing to bear in mind if you are advertising via JavaScript is that you can use NoFollow on JavaScript links."

9. Google does not like paid links

Matt Cutts said they Google doesn't want advertisements to affect search engine rankings.

They might put out a call for people to report more about link spam in the coming months. Matt Cutts said that Google "does a lot of stuff" to try to detect ads and make sure that they don't unduly affect search engines.

If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should use search engine optimization methods that lead to lasting results. Don't try to cheat Google.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Map IconsGoogle tests sponsored map icons

"This new feature helps local business owners promote their physical location on the map via an easily recognisable logo, and therefore connect with a larger audience. Advertisers will pay to have these sponsored map icons appear on the Map instead of a generic icon, helping to generate awareness of their locations among the millions of people who visit Google Maps every day."



Why Apple won't be launching a search engine any time soon

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board. Plenty of Google employees proudly showed off their iPhones. All seemed fine as the two companies took on their common enemy, Microsoft. [...]

If Apple's so unhappy with Google, maybe it needs a new search provider? Unfortunately, the only real alternative would be Microsoft's Bing. So who does Apple hate less these days, Google or Microsoft? That might dictate the choice it makes. But then again, how about some sweet revenge? Why doesn't Apple build its own search engine and take on Google!"



 Twitter and news and media websites

"So where are all those Twitter.com visitors going? As illustrated in the chart below, the majority (60%) are going to Social Networks and Entertainment sites (mainly photography and video sharing sites)."



WashingtonHow probable meanings may influence search engine rankings

"When someone types 'George Washington' into a search box, they are probably more interested in the Revolutionary War general and President than some random George in Washington. A search for 'Washington Hotels' is more likely looking for lodging in Washington than hotels named Washington. [...]

Probabilities, in addition to ranking signals based upon things such as relevance and quality and link analysis, may play a role in what pages show up where in search results."



Search engine newslets

  • Google and partners seek TV foothold.
  • Google: A new approach to China.
  • Bing releases a new app for the iPhone.
  • Google search now supports Haitian Kreyol.
  • MoD will not act over Google images.
  • Google's lobbying machine still cranking in 4Q.
  • Google is hiring bond traders.
  • Google Italy & privacy: not what you might think.
  • Google's God complex (humor).

1. Pimp your links: how to improve your existing backlinks

Getting links to your website is one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google and other big search engines.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult tasks. Do you make the most of your existing links? It's often much easier to improve your existing backlinks then getting new links to your website.

Pimp your links

1. Correct links that point to your old domain names

If you changed your domain name in the past, chances are that some people still link to your old domain name.

Of course, the links to your old domain name should redirect to your new domain with a 301 redirect to make sure that the links aren't lost. Unfortunately, links through 301 redirects do not pass the full link power to your website.

For that reason, contact the webmasters who link to your old domain name and ask them to link to your new domain. This will increase the effect of the links on your website rankings.

2. Correct links to broken pages on your website

Check your website statistics and redirect all links that go to a non-existing (404) page on your website to an existing page on your site so that the visitors aren't lost.

As above, it's even better to contact the webmasters who links to the non-existing pages and ask them to change the links.

3. Try to improve the link texts

When you're contacting other webmasters to tell them that they link to your old domain name or to a broken link on your website, you can also suggest new link texts for your links.

If the links to your website include the words for which you want to get high rankings in the link text, your chances of getting ranked for these keywords increase.

4. Suggest other relevant websites

This might sound like a strange advice but it can help your rankings: when you contact a webmaster and ask for a link, you might also suggest other websites that are related to yours.

If the website that links to your website links to other websites that are related to your website topic, it's more likely that search engines will find your website relevant to that topic. Details about this co-citation effect can be found here.

5. Check the links on your own website

If you want to see certain pages of your website in Google's search results, these pages should also be linked from your own website pages. If a web page is hidden in the navigation of your website then it's less likely that this page will get a good position in Google's results.

Your website should have a clear and logical navigation that emphasizes the pages that you want to see in Google's search results.

High rankings on Google are the result of good inbound links and optimized web page content. Our popular website promotion tool IBP helps you to get both.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleGoogle introduces new features

Real-time search:

"As of today, real-time search is available in 40 languages. Now when you're visiting family in Puerto Rico, or if you speak German and live in Switzerland, you'll be able to see live updates from people on these popular sites as well as news headlines and blog posts published just seconds before. [...]"

Google Suggest for local search:

"Now when you search for a city name, we'll show you popular query refinements for places in those cities. We've found that people like to explore several places during a trip, so when we show one point of interest, we'll also show you related points of interest."

List for Google Bookmarks:

"With lists, you can sort and categorize your Google Bookmarks or starred search results. Once you've created a list, you can share it with specific friends or make it publicly visible and searchable."



Many 404 errors on your website don't hurt your rankings

Google's John Mueller commented in a discussion forum on a website that has many 404 pages:

"Having a large number of 404's on a site is generally not a problem for us, especially if the 404 page helps the user to find related entries within your site [...]

Using a 404 (or perhaps, if you're certain that the page will be gone forever, a 410) is a good idea because it helps us to remove the old entries from our index over time."



 Google (lack of) Buzz

"Despite massive interest on its launch day, Google Buzz has quickly seen its momentum dwindle to practically nothing. [...] While public interest in Buzz, as defined by searches, has become inconsequentially small, current short-social-media king Twitter has seen consistent interest."



Safe BrowsingGoogle Safe Browsing practices guilt by association

"How your Web site can get tarred with the malware brush -- and why there's little you can do about it. [...] Say you run a small Website that served some malware-laden ads delivered through a third-party ad network. Google then brands you as a malware/virus site. Suddenly your pageviews drop through the floor and your users head elsewhere."



Search engine newslets

  • Matt Cutts: are there any negatives to generating a short list of related posts? (Video)
  • Google shutting AdWords reseller program.
  • Google denies revenue sharing for Android Mobile Apps.

1. Why buying links is not a good idea

Google's Matt Cutts recently made a new announcement about paid links. Buying links is a very hot and controversial topic among webmasters. Should you buy links to increase the position of your website on Google? Do paid links help your rankings? Are there any risks?

Can you increase your website rankings by buying links?

Yes, you can. Links that point to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results.

If you buy backlinks, you can quickly get high rankings for your website on Google. However, that's only one side of the medal.

If buying links works, why shouldn't you use it for your website?

Buying links is against Google's terms of service: "Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts recently announced that Google has been working on new algorithms and tools to detect paid links.

Google has a report form for paid links. If one of your competitors finds a paid link that points to your website, he might report it to Google.

Google actively searches for paid links and it's likely that they will detect all paid links sooner or later. While you can get away with them for some time (that's why paid links work for some time), your website will be penalized as soon as Google finds out that you tried to game the system.

Buying links leads to quick results and strong penalties

If you use spammy SEO methods such as buying links, you will quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

Spammy SEO methods

If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you'll get a much better performance in the long run:

Ethical SEO methods

Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings on Google. It will backfire on you.

There are better ways to get inbound links

As mentioned above, the links to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results.

For that reason, it is very important to get as many good backlinks as possible to your website. The quality of the backlinks is more important than the quantity.

You can get links from related websites, links from blogs, links from social bookmark websites, links from Internet directories and more. The link manager in IBP helps you to get these links.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleGoogle PageRank update for April 2010 with Google Caffeine ?

"Its happening as we speak, actually started off yesterday night and is probably underway. What?s interesting is that last few days many websites have noticed that there were a sudden dip / fluctuation in organic traffic and there are strong speculations of Google Caffeine being rolled out. There have been no mentions on this from Googlers though."



Apple may build a search engine to shield iPhone data from Google

"Data Apple collects about users from its vaunted iPhone is so valuable that the company must build a special search engine just to keep Google from gleaning insight from that data. [...]

We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company's App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google's search engine."

Related: '70% chance' Apple builds its own search engine in the next five years



Google services on the iPad and tablet computers

"We've been working hard to optimize our services for the new format - larger touchscreens, increased portability, rich sensors - and we?d like to share some information about our progress so far."

Related: Meet the Google iPad



UnlikeGoogle tests "not entirely unlike" feature

"As of this morning, Google is delivering the new design to me again and I noticed something different after doing a search on my name. [...] At the bottom of the new column it shows an unconventionally named, 'Not entirely unlike' result. [...]

The notion that many public figures on the web frequently reference each other or at least cite common concepts and resources may very well be supported by the connections listed above. Also I would note this is not the same as the 'Related searches' that often show at the bottom of the search results."



Search engine newslets

  • Major Internet companies team up for new privacy laws.
  • Bing improves Bing Maps.
  • Greenpeace: Google, Microsoft and others need greener data centers. (PDF)
  • ?Suicide? query prompts Google to offer hotline.
  • Google, Facebook prepare for political ad bonanza in midterm elections.
  • Discussion: what is the most important part of SEO? (IBP can help you with all parts).

1. It's official: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor

Last Friday, Google announced that they started to use site speed as one of the 200 signals that influence the position of a website in the search results:

"As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. [...]

We've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites."

Will your website rankings drop?

Google's Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only some websites:

"Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don?t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that 'We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.'

The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change."

slowWhile 1% does not sound much, it can be a problem if your website belongs to the pages whose rankings will drop.

At this time, Google's new site speed signal only applies to visitors searching in English on Google.com.

How to keep your web pages listed in Google search results

There are several things that you can do to improve the speed of your web pages:

  1. Choose a fast and reliable web host with a good connection to the Internet. A "cheap" web host could cause problems.
  2. Combine external JavaScript code files into one file. The fewer files the server has to request, the faster your web pages will load.
  3. Compress your JavaScript code to make the JavaScript file smaller.
  4. Combine external CSS files into one file and compress your CSS files.
  5. If your web server supports it, enable gZip compression (your web host can do that for you).
  6. Use as few images as possible on your website and compress your images. Most graphic tools enable you to choose the compression rate when saving an image for the web.
  7. Put tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets at the end of your web pages.

The faster your web pages load, the more visitors of your website will be able to see the contents of your pages. Web surfers are impatient people. The average web surfer wants immediate results.

Page speed is not Google's most important ranking signal. The end of Google's page speed announcement contains a very important sentence: "While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page."

speed

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsHitwise: Ask share of searches increases for fourth straight month

"Google accounted for 69.97 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending March 27, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 15.04 percent, 9.62 percent and 3.44 percent, respectively. The remaining 69 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.93 percent of U.S. searches. [...]

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were flat between February 2010 and March 2010. Searches of eight or more words increased 1 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - also were flat from month to month."

Editor's note: make sure that searchers can find your website.



Entireweb.com launches a new search engine

"We are proud and excited to announce that the new search engine at Entireweb has now been launched and is available."



Overture founder launches Tweetup, "Adsense for Twitter"

"Idealab, the incubator behind the company that invented search engine marketing as we know it today, is launching a new startup that they say is applying some of the same business mechanics to the Twitter stream. The new startup is called Tweetup."



StatisticsComscore: February 2010 U.S. search engine rankings

"Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in February with 65.5 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (16.8 percent), and Microsoft Sites (11.5 percent). Ask Network captured 3.7 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.5 percent. [...]

Americans conducted 14.5 billion searches in February, down 5 percent from January. Google Sites accounted for 9.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.4 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.7 billion), Ask Network (540 million) and AOL LLC (358 million)."



Search engine newslets

  • Google acquires mobile search provider Plink.
  • Universal search features in Google Suggest for mobile.
  • Opera: Google owns mobile search.
  • Apple removes 'Google' branding from iPhone 4 Safari keyboard.
  • Google accused of YouTube 'free ride'.
  • A new look for Bing shopping.

1. The effect of latent semantic indexing (LSI) on your website rankings

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a technique that is used by all major search engines nowadays. Does your website take this into account? How does it influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

What is latent semantic indexing?

    LSI means that a search engine tries to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. For example, Paris and Hilton are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, Tiger and Woods are associated with golf.

    To find out which other keywords Google finds related to a keyword, search for a keyword and add a tilde in front of it. Google will mark the related keywords in bold on the result page. It seems that Google finds the word "Nokia" related to "phone".

How can Google match keywords with certain concepts?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word Paris and the word Hilton then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of data that allows them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

If you want to be listed for certain keywords, you must show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. There are several things that you can do to increase the relevancy of your website for a topic:

1. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords

    If you're targeting the search term "used cars" you should also create pages that are relevant to the keywords "auto", "suv", etc.

    The more pages of your website are relevant to a certain topic, the more likely it is that your web pages will be listed for keywords that are related to that topic. Make sure that your keywords appear in the right elements on your web pages.

2. Get links from semantically relevant pages

If you're selling cars then the "Cars" web page that links to your site should not be about the movie. Links from topically related pages will be semantically beneficial to your site.

A link to your website that comes from a page that contains links to other web pages that deal with the same topic has a greater effect on the rankings of your website then a link from a page that links to totally different pages and your site.

For that reason, it is important that you try to get links from related websites. It is also very important that you submit your website to the right category in Internet directories. If your website is listed in the wrong category, this can have a negative effect on your rankings.

3. Use a meaningful site architecture

Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.

Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

4. Find out why other pages rank higher than yours

If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. If you want to prepare your website for advanced search engine algorithms then you have to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.

In addition, it's important that the links to your website come from topically related pages so that search engines put your website in the right context. Our website promotion tool IBP can help you with both.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

SearchUpdating Search

"We need to reimagine the role of search engines and their sources of data. [...]

The sheer amount of real-time data presents unique challenges for search. Because a lot of the data is nonauthoritative, noisy, or spammy, search engines need to build trust models that can determine what data is important and influential."



Google announces several improvements

"We rolled out a version of Google Suggest that is tailored to specific metro areas in the U.S. You may notice that the list of queries beneath the search box will seem more locally relevant than it used to. [...]

Another improvement we made recently to the spelling system is auto-correction. If you search for [aiprt], rather than showing you a link on your results page that says 'Did you mean: airport' we'll take you straight to the results for the corrected search. We auto-correct when we're highly confident in our correction in order to get you the information you're looking for that much faster."



Google starts using Aardvark for help support

"Most Google services offer Help guides, but there?s almost never a phone number or email address to contact an actual human (which isn't surprising given that most of these services are free). Aardvark could serve as a good compromise for Google, adding a human touch without the need to set up phone banks of support personnel. Aardvark isn't yet featured on all Google Help pages, but I suspect we?ll see more of these links if it performs well."



Google PlacesGoogle renames Local Business Center to Google Places

"Google is rebranding its Google Maps listing service for local businesses as it continues to try to organize - as well as sell ads against - a seemingly inexhaustible supply of local search results.

Google's Local Business Center will henceforth be known as Google Places, the search giant plans to announce late Monday. All in all, it's mostly just a name change, although Google plans to roll out a few new features for local merchants that have claimed their 'place page' on Google Maps."



Search engine newslets

  • Should I spend time on meta keywords tags? (video)
  • Google Ad Manager is upgrading to DFP Small Business.
  • What's bugging Google investors?
  • Spam suspect uses Google Docs; FBI happy.
  • Google's unorthodox press release raises questions.
  • Google as 'good guy'.

1. Four steps to great keywords (without keyword tools)

Most people use a keyword suggestion tool when they try to find new keywords for their campaigns. While keyword suggestion tools are good, they should not be the first step in your keyword research activities.

Before you use a keyword suggestion tool, ask yourself the following questions:

    keyword research
  1. What problems can your product or your service solve?
  2. Which questions do potential customers ask?
  3. Can you offer unusual solutions?
  4. Which products and services do you offer?

As you can see, the products and services that you offer are the least important. A person with a headache might not now that the Shiatsu that you offer will help them. They even might now know what Shiatsu is and if they know it, they might not be able to spell it properly. The same applies to all other services and industries.

For that reason, it is important that you focus on the first three points before using your products or services in the keywords.

1. What problems can your product or service solve?

In this example, the problem that your product or service can solve is a headache. Create a list of words that describe the problem:

headache, racking headache, migraine, vicious headache, splitting headache, megrim, constant headache, etc.

2. Which questions do potential customers ask?

People type different things in Google's search box when they try to find a solution to their problem. Here are some real queries that have been done on Google (use IBP's keyword suggestion tool to find keywords that are searched by real web surfers):

  • why does my head hurt
  • why does my head hurt when I cough
  • how to get rid of migraines without medication
  • how to get rid of migraines when pregnant
  • why can't i concentrate on anything
  • why am i so tired
  • etc.

The problem that your product solves creates certain circumstances (fatigue, temper, concentration problems). Address these circumstances in your keyword phrases.

The problem can also be connected to another factor (for example migraine and pregnancy). Create keyword phrases that are related to these factors.

3. Can you offer unusual solutions?

Most people will take a pill when they have a headache. In this example, you offer a solution that many people don't know about (Shiatsu). The following phrases would work for you:

  • get rid of migraines without medication
  • get rid of headache without pills

The unusual solutions that you offer can also be used in your AdWords ad copy and on your web pages. For example, you might create web pages around the following topics:

  • How to get rid of headaches without using Aspirin
  • An unusual way of healing migraine without medication
  • etc.

4. Which products or services do you offer?

Of course, you should also use the names of the products and services that you offer in your ads and SEO campaigns. In this example, this would be:

shiatsu, shiatsu massage, etc.

When you try to find new keywords, tell a short story that describes the problem and the solution: "A person has a racking headache. The person cannot concentrate because of that headache and the person is tired. Instead of taking a pill, there can be other solutions. That solution is my Shiatsu service."

By doing this, you'll find many keywords around which you can create new web pages and PPC ads. Of course, you can also combine this method with keyword suggestion tools.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleDoes Google limit the site: search operator? (discussion)

"These newly uninformative site: results have now been with us for many months and in the last few weeks the distortion seems to be intensifying.

It is heartening that Webmaster Tools reports higher numbers in many cases - but does this mean Google won't be showing accurate numbers to anyone but those verified as responsible for the website?"



Word War III: Google vs. governments

"In how many ways did Google respond to this week?s letter (PDF) from the data protection authorities of nine countries criticizing the company?s approach to privacy? [...] I think we?re getting closer to what Google really feels. The tone is tetchy. The underlying message is clear: Google would like the letter?s signatories to go forth and multiply. [...]

Google will become a regulated quasi-utility. It?s easy to suggest why this should happen, but profoundly difficult to imagine how. Yet where there?s a will, the political elites will eventually find a way."



How Google is reverse engineering page dates

"In recent weeks I've noticed a disturbing new trend in Google SERP?s: Google has become much more aggressive at trying to reverse engineer the publication date of a post/page. [...]

Here are some methods I've seen them use: Full format dates inside the main content of pages, dates in the comments, when no other date appears on a page and decoding dates in URL's."



NewspapersHow not to sell links on your newspaper site

"I looked at where some of the links are featured, and sure enough, a list of totally unrelated sites. Paid links. [...]

Now say I see one of my competitors in there? I could just report the site for selling links and my competitors for buying them [...] Everybody knows selling links is against Google TOS whether you listen or not. AND if I did buy links in footers like this (which I don't), I wouldn't be happy there was an email to 1000 seo companies telling THEM my clients was buying links."



Search engine newslets

  • Privacy issues? Google engineers leaving Facebook in droves.
  • Google adds Google Earth to Google Maps.
  • Google changes the way they work with advertising agencies.
  • Google's Matt Cutts about basketball, Star Wars and search questions.
  • Google Places quality guideline update.
  • Long-term prospects hang over Google's results.
  • Google has over 1 Million AdSense advertisers.
  • Yahoo services will be pre-loaded on Samsung devices.
  • Google Maps: browse local businesses in Street View.

1. Eight things you can do to show search engines your most important pages

How can you get search engines to display the web pages with the best conversion rate in the search results and what can you do to to make sure that unwanted pages are not listed?

Depending on how your website's navigational links are structured, some pages can get higher rankings than others. Here are eight things that you can do to guide search engines to the most important pages of your website:

1. Make the web pages easy to find

Make sure that the most important pages on your site can be reached with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more important is that web page.

2. Link from your own pages to your own pages

The easiest way to get related links to a web page is to link from your own website. Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all pages of your website that are related to that page.

3. Use the right keywords in your navigational links

If you want to see a certain page of your website on Google's first result page for the keyword "blue widgets" then the links that go from other pages of your website to that page should contain the keyword "blue widgets".

This does not guarantee that the linked web page will be listed for that keyword but it increases the relevancy of the page for the keyword.

4. Use absolute links on your website

Do not link to mypage.htm but to www.yoursite.com/mypage.htm. If other people scrape your web page contents, you'll get backlinks from these sites.

5. Use the nofollow attribute

Add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren't important for your search engine rankings. For example, your privacy policy page or the web page with your terms and conditions probably needn't be listed in search engines.

6. Remove unnecessary links

The fewer links you have on a page, the more important is a single link to another page on your site. Remove unnecessary links from your web pages.

7. Exclude irrelevant and duplicate pages from indexing

Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing. If search engines don't have to parse your unimportant pages the other pages of your website will get more attention.

8. Recover lost pages

Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages on your site. You might want to use the link checker that you can access in IBP to check your links.

Optimizing the links on your own website improves the position of your web pages in search engines. In addition to optimizing the links, you should also optimize the content of your web pages to make sure that Google and other search engines list your website for the right keywords.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleGoogle adds several features to the search results

"this week we launched a search refinement that calls out brand names related to your query in a single line above the rest of the results. [...]

Starting this week you'll see a small keyboard icon next to the search field on both the Google homepage and on the search results page when using Google in one of 35 foreign languages. [...]

Now, for queries where we think sites similar to the first search result might be helpful, a small block of similar sites will appear at the bottom of the results page. Clicking on the 'Pages similar to' link at the start of the block will take you to the full list of similar pages."



410 response codes get your pages out of Google more quickly

Google's John Mueller commented on that issue in a forum discussion:

"We will generally retry 404s a bit more frequently than 410s, but we will still retry them especially when we find new links to those URLs.

A 410 will generally result in us removing a URL faster from the index (since, as Phil mentioned, a 404 can be a temporary state by design; something which we've also found to be the case in practice as well). [...]

So if you can, using a 410 for URLs that are really permanently gone is a good idea, but it is not a requirement; a 404 will generally be seen similarly over time. If at some point those old URLs are re-used, then it may take a little bit longer for us to notice that if you have been using a 410, but in the bigger picture it will generally pick up again as well."



Discussion: Google May updates hurts long tail rankings

"Until Tuesday we ramped in around 200k uniques a day - very strong long tail traffic, 65% of the landing pages are the product details. [...] Lost around 25% of power/traffic somehow. [...]

I'm in the same boat, traffic dropped 50% in a few days, 100,000's of long tail k/w. [...]

So, to everyone with the 'long tail traffic algo change' theory, I have joined your club. Further to that, is there a correlation between gbot massively increased activity and loss of traffic, that is, while the traffic is at 10-50% of its usual."



Big brandThe real reasons big brands don't rank

"And there you have it. They wanted to rank for a generic term that won?t convert simply for the ability to say 'we rank for telephone' in board meetings. That's the other type of 'vanity' term. [...]

Any SEO worth their salt is going to go for converting terms first, not the generic informational ones, be it a big brand or a small brand, because that is where the ROI is."

Editor's note: That's very important advice. Optimize your website for keywords that convert best, not for keywords that have the highest search volume.



Search engine newslets

  • Content network performance: Google PR ploy or real?
  • Forum discussion: Google Caffeine is probably live on most Google servers.
  • Why Twitter is the future of news.
  • Matt Cutts video: is a sale page duplicate content?
  • Yahoo Answers servers 1 billion answers.
  • Google AdWords for mobile is fully available.
  • Google compression test?

1. Mayday: how Google's May update will affect your long tail rankings

In an online forum, webmaster discussed their experience with Google latest ranking algorithm update that has been given the name Mayday. If your website gets fewer visitors from Google, the update could be the reason for that.

What exactly has happened?

Many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long (so called "long tail keywords").

Google algorithm update

Some webmasters have lost 90% of their traffic from Google because they cannot be found anymore for the long keyword phrases.

The ranking drop did not happen to spammers. Among the affected websites was a 13 year old site with a Google PageRank of 7 and 400,000 backlinks.

Why did it happen?

It seems that this is not a penalty but a change in Google's ranking algorithm. Google might now be able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. There's a new Google patent that deals with this topic.

Identifying phrases requires a lot of computing power and a lot of memory. A webmaster explained it in the discussion:

"For example, on the assumption that any five words could constitute a phrase, and that a large corpus would have at least 200,000 unique terms, there would be approximately 3.2.times.10.sup.26 possible phrases.

Clearly more than any existing system could store or otherwise programmatically manipulate."

It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages.

The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.

Do you have to change your web pages now?

If you experienced a decline in traffic to your website from Google you might have to change your web pages. For example, if you want to be found for "personal injury lawyer london" then these words should appear in that order on your website.

If you use other variations such as "london lawyer personal injury" then you'll probably get listings for that variation but not for other word combinations.

If you want to know how to get top 10 rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice, analyze the web page that you want to see in Google's search results with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.

IBP's Top 10 Optimizer will tell you how to change your web page so that it will get top 10 rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsSearch numbers for April

"Google lost ~70 bps of search share in April vs. March, while Yahoo! was the main beneficiary, up ~80 bps. Excluding the impact of all adjustments, Google gained ~50 bps of share, Yahoo! was down ~25 bps, and Microsoft dropped by ~20 bps."



Google announces new features

"We introduced a new way to view search results for sites with lots of images. Each result will now include a strip of images from the website, so you can get a better preview of what each page has to offer. [...]

This week, we released a new version of Goggles with translation capabilities built in. To use it, point your phone's camera at a foreign word or phrase and use the 'region of interest button' to draw a box around specific words."



Some Google reviews in Google Maps results are missing (discussion)

"All of my google reviews are gone, I had 134 reviews- but only 97 are showing reviews from citysearch,ratemds, judysbook etc but all my google reviews are gone. Where did they go what happened to them? [...]

In the past, the reviews became 'disassociated' from the 'cluster' of information about a given business but if the business hasn't changed critical information in their Google listing like phone number or business name, they usally are reunited with the business listing over time (2,4,6, or even 8 weeks)."



Maile OhyeInterview with Google's Maile Ohye

"Speed is now a factor in rankings because we?re trying to best serve users, and studies show that users are happier with faster sites and less satisfied with slow sites. More satisfied users are shown to spend more time on the internet. [...]

I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you?ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you?ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site."



Search engine newslets

  • Search engine Teoma is back. But will anybody notice, much less care?
  • Discussion: my client's [Google Maps] listing gets hijacked almost every day.
  • Video: why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ?
  • Google results including KML files and custom map results.
  • WPP wants close probe of Google's Admob buy.
  • Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty.
  • Google: just buy Salesforce already.
  • Google searches for a use for its cash.
  • The Google design, turned up a notch.

1. Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website
anchor

The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google's search results.

For example, if many people use the text "buy blue widgets" to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase "buy blue widgets" in Google's search results.

The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

<a href="http://www.example.com">this is the link text</a>

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:

1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel="nofollow" attribute don't pass the link text to Google. Example:

<a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">great keyword</a>

You can use IBP to find out if the websites that link to you use the nofollow attribute: start IBP, click the "Links" button and click "Check links".

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won't be able to index the link correctly. Example:

<a href="http://www.example.com ">great keyword</a>

In this example, there's a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.

Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google's Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won't consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:

<a href="http://www.example.com/page.htm">great keyword</a>

The web server redirects "http://www.example.com/page.htm" to "http://www.example.com" with a 301 redirect. In that case, it's likely that Google won't use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:

<a href="http://www.example.com">This</a> is an example. The link text <a href="http://www.example.com">great keyword</a> will be ignored by Google.

The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is "This". The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.

If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:

<a href="http://www.example.com/page1.htm">This</a> is an example. The link text <a href="http://www.example.com/page2.htm">great keyword</a> will be ignored by Google.

Links are the most important factor when it comes to getting top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines. Details about how to get links to your website can be found in the IBP manual (starting at page 91).

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

BingBing: is your site ranking rank? Do a site review

"The content of each <title> tag should be unique and directly relevant to the content on the page. Same for the <meta> description tag. And while you're checking, look to see if these tags use some of the targeted keywords for their respective pages (if not, fix that).

Bots use the content in these tags to help define the contextual theme of the pages, and thus by definition, the words and phrases used in these tags to describe the pages are identified as keywords for assessing relevance to those pages."

Editor's note: a much easier way to check if your web pages can get high rankings on Bing, Google and other search engines is to use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.



Google's search market share slips as Bing rivalry heats up

"The company's share of U.S. searches slipped to 64.4% percent in April, down from 65.1% in March, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Yahoo's share rose to 17.7%, up from 16.9%, while Microsoft Bing crept to 11.8%, up from 11.7%. [...]

The roll out of what analysts have taken to referring to as BingHoo is expected sometime later this year. If the launch of BingHoo came today, it would command a 30% market share."



10 things that make search a semantic search

"Are Google?s squared results coming from a real semantic backbone, or is it a good old entity extraction trick anyone, who is capable of copying and pasting lists, could do? [...]

A full capacity semantic search is more feasible in application to vertical topics, especially when embedded knowledge and concept coverage can be attained at a reasonable cost."



GoogleGoogle is going to offer encrypted search

"Earlier this year, we encrypted Gmail for all our users, and next week we will start offering an encrypted version of Google Search. For other services users can check that pages are encrypted by looking to see whether the URL begins with 'https', rather than just 'http'; browsers will generally show a lock icon when the connection is secure."



Search engine newslets

  • Webmasters discuss Google's Mayday update.
  • Google and Intel in web TV launch.
  • Google says it's shipping 65,000 Android phones daily.
  • Google proposes remedies in Italy antitrust case.
  • Google hiring 300 workers to pinpoint bugs in Google Maps.
  • Google Chrome OS coming along quickly, but not ready just yet.

1. Six things you can do to remove bad press from the search results

No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them.

Some customers might write negative comments about your company in their blogs or some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on Google's first result page for your company name?

1. Fix the problem

If people write negative reviews about your company, the first thing that you should do is to fix the problem that caused the negative review.

2. It doesn't hurt to ask

Send the webmaster of the web page with the negative review a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

3. Give web pages with positive comments a boost

If the webmaster does not want to remove the negative review, find websites that contain positive comments about your site.

Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The more links the pages with the positive reviews have, the higher they will be ranking in the search results.

If appropriate, bookmark web pages with positive remarks about your website on social bookmark sites such as Digg and Delicious.

4. Ask for testimonials from happy customers

If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.

5. Add your website to company wiki pages

Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia.

These Wiki pages will also appear in the search results when someone searches for your company name.

6. Make sure that your own website tops the search results

If your own website comes first for your company name then most people will click on your link and don't look further. Use IBP to make sure that your own web site has position 1 in the search engine results.

Removing negative comments from the search engine results can take some time. It's best to avoid negative experiences at the outset by providing high quality products and good customer support.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google employees answer SEO questions

"Duplicate content within your site is generally not a problem, however it always makes sense to try to limit it to a reasonable amount to make it easier to recognize your preferred pages. [...]

Matt Cutts addressed this issue in a Webmaster Central video recently and confirmed that the length of a domain name registration isn't a ranking factor. [...]

Google's quality guidelines are clear on this point: paid links shouldn't pass PageRank. [...] We may treat links across different areas in a different way, as some areas of a page might not be as relevant to the content of the page as others."

Editor's note: If you want to find out if your website has all elements that are necessary for high rankings on Google, check your pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.



The AdSense revenue share

"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. [...]

We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations."



Does buying old domains help your rankings?

"Whatever backlinks dropped domains had won't count toward ranking. Backlinks get reset. This has been the case for several years now. Previous to the change the backlinks would acquire whatever PageRank they formerly had prior to the drop. After the change, which happened quite a few years ago, the backlinks got reset. [...]

Google's Matt Cutts told me: There are some domain transfers ( e.g. genuine purchases of companies) where it can make perfect sense for links to transfer. But at the same time it wouldn't make sense to transfer the links from an expired or effectively expired domain, for example. Google (and probably all search engines) tries to handle links appropriately for domain transfers. [...]

The sort of stuff our systems would be designed to detect would be things like someone trying to buy expired domains or buying domains just for links."



Yahoo's Carol Bartz interviewed

"Yahoo is a company that is very strong in content. It's moving towards the web of one. We have 32,000 variations on our front page module. We serve a million of those a day. It's all customized. [...]

Half of our revenue is from search. The fact that you can crawl the web is a commodity. We're about search, but we're not a search company. We do a lot of things."



Ask.com introduces related questions

"Recently we launched Related Questions, a right rail section where we provide interesting questions that are related to your query. [...]

We take your query terms and search through the questions that other users are asking us, questions that are being asked on the web and questions that are currently being discussed in the news. From these we select and render the most interesting and what we hope will be the most useful questions related to your query."



Search engine newslets

  • Play Pac Man on Google's home page.
  • Google announces Google TV.
  • Yahoo and Nokia announce cooperation.
  • New York Times: Sure, [Google is] big. But is that bad?
  • Google Reader no longer supports MS Internet Explorer 6.
  • California Supreme Court to consider age bias case against Google.

1. New data: how many clicks does the first result on Google get?

Some days ago, Chitika, a search based online advertising network, published some new numbers about the value of a listing on Google. They analyzed a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across their network in May, 2010.

The first result in Google gets as many visitors as position 2-4 combined

"In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.

The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."

Result number 10 gets 143% more clicks than result number 11

"The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low ? that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.

As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position."

Here are the numbers:

Google Result
Impressions
Click Percentage
1 2,834,806 34.35%
2 1,399,502 16.96%
3 942,706 11.42%
4 638,106 7.73%
5 510,721 6.19%
6 416,887 5.05%
7 331,500 4.02%
8 286,118 3.47%
9 235,197 2.85%
10 223,320 2.71%
11 91,978 1.11%
12 69,778 0.85%
13 57,952 0.70%
14 46,822 0.57%
15 39,635 0.48%
16 32,168 0.39%
17 26,933 0.33%
18 23,131 0.28%
19 22,027 0.27%
20 23,953 0.29%

How to judge the financial value of your Google rankings

A number 1 ranking on Google is great but it won't help your business if it is for the wrong keyword. To judge the value of a keyword, you can do the following:

  1. Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select "exact match" and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.
  2. Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks.
  3. With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.

For example, your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have come to your website. Six of them purchased something of your website and the total profit was $500.

That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business ($500 / 200). The 10,000 ad impressions in a week can create a click-through rate of 34.35% (see table above) if you have the number 1 ranking for that keyword.

That means that you would get about 3,435 visitors per week. Based on the average value of $2.50/visitor you would earn $8,587.50 per week or $446,500 per year just with a single keyword.

That is why businesses love search engine optimization.

Being listed on Google's first result page for the right keywords greatly contributes to the financial success of your business. Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to get your website on Google's first result pages for the keywords of your choice.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Matt CuttsGoogle confirms the Mayday update (video)

"It is an algorithmic change that does affect long tail searches more than head searches. [...] It is completely independent to [Google's other algorithm update] Caffeine. [...]"

With the algorithm change, Google uses a new way to decide which pages are the best match for long tail queries. According to Matt Cutts, the change was fully tested and it is not a temporary change.



A comeback for Exalead in the general web search space?

"Things change and in the past few weeks we noticed that the consumer version of Exalead seems to making some sort of comeback which is wonderful. Why?

It will not be all that long until the Yahoo database is no longer available. Exalead does its own crawl as does Yandex.com which launched a couple of weeks ago and is quite impressive especially for an alpha release. So, it?s possible that once Yahoo leaves the crawling biz, Exalead and Yandex.com can provide large unique databases of content each with their own relevancy own ranking algorithms."



LocalLocal Search heats up

"Fewer than half of all U.S. small businesses have websites or advertise on the Net, Nielsen Online reports, even though most consumers search online for local shops and services before picking up the phone or leaving the house. [...]

'Local is a key area of focus,' says Bing marketing chief Mike Nichols. Yahoo! on May 24 renewed a partnership with Nokia to power its maps and navigation services for local listings. On Apr. 20, Google rebranded an older small biz service called Local Business Center as Google Places."



Google testing SERPs without counter and load time

"Just noticed that Google is testing a version of SERP without the number of results and page load time. I only see that version when logged in using my Google account. The total number of results was never a reliable number and it has fluctuated a lot for some of the websites we have worked on. [...]

Does an average user care about the total results? Will it effect how non-power users use Google? What do you think?"



Search engine newslets

  • Yahoo updates image and video search.
  • How Google translates "James Bond" to Chinese.
  • Google's latest launch: its own trading floor.
  • Google Wave is one year old.
  • Android emerges as big rival to iPad.

1. Five things you have to do to get high Google rankings

If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you must do the right things to succeed. You have to work on many different factors to make sure that your website performs better than the sites of your competitors.

High rankings on Google

Step 1: make your web pages accessible

Search engines must be able to access your web pages. If search engines cannot parse your web pages then they will ignore your site and you won't get good rankings. Check the following points to make sure that search engines can access your web pages.

  • Your web server must not return an error code when search engine spiders visit your web pages. If your server returns an error code, search engines won't index your site.

    Your web server should return a "200 OK" code to search engine spiders. You can check the status code that your web server returns to search engines with IBP's search engine spider simulator.

  • You should also check the HTML code of your web pages. While most HTML errors don't cause problems with search engines, some of them can prevent search engines from indexing your site.

    The fewer HTML errors your web pages have, the better. You can access a HTML validator in the "Tools" section in IBP.

  • The content of your web pages must make sense to search engines. Don't use images or Flash to present the main content of your web pages.

    To find out if your web page content contains all the elements that are needed to get a listing in Google's top 10 results, check your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.

  • Your robots.txt file must allow search engines to index your web pages. If you accidentally blocked all bots or all directories of your website (this can happen with a simply typo in the robots.txt file), search engines won't list your website.

Step 2: use a meaningful site and information architecture

A good site architecture shows search engines that your website is more than just a collection of random web pages.

Use folders and logical linking to show search engines which pages of your website are related. Search engines should be able to find out that a group of web pages on your site is related to a certain topic.

Step 3: choose your keywords wisely

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps that determines whether your SEO campaign is a success or not.

It's best to focus on longer keywords for search engine optimization. One word keywords are less likely to convert to a sale and they are also much more competitive. Details can be found here.

IBP's keyword tools help you to find the keywords that will work best with your site.

Step 4: work on your website content

Web sites that only offer articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other web sites will have a hard time to get good search engine rankings.

Try to create unique and trustworthy content that separates your web site from the others.

Write about things you know. If you're an expert in a special field, write as much as possible about that field to make sure that your web site becomes the best resource for that topic.

Step 5: work on your backlinks

Without good backlinks, it is impossible to get high rankings on major search engines. The links that point to your website have a major impact on the position of your web pages in Google's search results.

Try to get as many links as possible from related web sites. The more targeted the link, the more it will help your search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization can be tricky because a small error in one element can destroy all of your other efforts.

Take a look at the checklists in our free search engine optimization eBook to find out how your web site can get top rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other major search engines.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

LongtailUsing Google Analytics to prove the SEO long tail theory

"Anyway I want to know, 'Does a longer keyword actually give a better Conversion rate?' [...] I took 13 Analytics accounts who have either e-commerce tracking or goals set up and set out about exporting the data. [...]

From the data presented it does show clear support that the long tail theory in SEO still exists and it is still right to assume niche keywords will drive a higher conversion although they have a lower search volume."

Editor's note: use the keyword tools in IBP to find good long tail keywords.



 Google PageRank update June 2010

Many webmasters reported a PageRank drop for their websites in several discussion groups. The PageRank of these sites was lowered to zero. Here's Google's official answer to PageRank related problems:

"Don't worry. In fact, don't bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked.

PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner."

Editor's note: the green bar and the number in Google's toolbar is not important. It's important to get high rankings for the right keywords. If you're interested in getting high rankings for the right keywords, make sure that your web pages contain the right elements.



FlashIt's not just Apple: Google hates Flash too

"Google, at the end of the day, also hates Flash. Running an all flash environment is SEO death. Flash websites are simply too complicated for Google's spiders to actually understand. Google sees the internet primarily in text - flash, and other scripts are ignored. [...]

Google has made no effort to improve its searching of flash. Two years ago Google and Adobe announced they were working together on the problem. Since then, nothing."



Google vs Bing vs Yahoo

"Google handles 71% of all search queries in the United States in May 2010, while Yahoo handles around 15% and Bing around 9%. [...]

The changes to search engines from Google and Microsoft are causing some consternation among users, who typically don't like changes to a service like search that they use so frequently. Some users complained that Google is looking more like Bing with the addition of a new navigation bar, while Bing is adding tabs to look more like Google."



Search engine newslets

  • Will using Google Analytics have a negative effect on my ranking? (video)
  • Google now shows your pictures on its home page.
  • Google Suggest now shows spelling suggestions.
  • Yahoo! World Cup schedule shortcuts.
  • Google Maps: updated Google Places management UI (LBC).
  • Australia launches privacy investigation of Google.
  • Bing encourages developers to submit Bing Maps apps.

Important Precautions to Take When Buying a Domain Name

Things to Avoid to Prevent Your Losing Your Favourite Domain Name

by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
 

I recently received a message from a visitor to thesitewizard.com telling me about how he checked for the availability of a domain name, found it unregistered, only to lose it to someone else before he was able to buy it at a later date. This article deals with some of the unsavoury practices that go on in the world of domain names and the precautions that you can take to avoid being victimised.

Domain Name Front Running and Unscrupulous Domain Registrars

Lessons from the Domain Name Front Running and Bad Domain Registrars Scams

  1. As mentioned in my article on How to Register Your Own Domain Name, before you even go to a registrar, jot down a few domain names that you want. List the possibilities and make a decision to buy even before you reach the registrar's page to check.
  2. Only go to the registrar that you plan to buy from. Don't check the domain with other registrars, just for fun. Don't check for the existence of a domain by typing it in your browser window. If domain name front running exists, that query for a nonexistent domain name will be noted. Don't take that risk.
  3. Once you see that the domain is available, buy it immediately. It may be available now, but not a few seconds later (or even less). Don't check and then imagine that the name will be around at some future date when you figure out what to do with that domain name. If you don't have a plan for the domain, don't check it. Or just buy it first and plan later. Whatever the case may be, once you check it, you should regard yourself as having committed yourself to the name. Unless of course you don't really want the name anyway.
  4. If you have doubts about whether one set of domain names is better than another, buy them all (if you can afford it). New domain names are cheap. Second hand domain names (bought from another owner) are not. You can always let a domain expire if you decide you don't want it later. Prices of domain names are now almost universally around $10 USD a year, so it's penny wise pound foolish to save those few bucks now and pay thousands of dollars to a reseller later.
  5. Finally, don't do what a lot of newbies do. Don't post in a forum asking for opinions about whether a particular domain name is good for such and such a purpose. When you do so, you run the risk of someone quickly registering that domain before you can. They may not even want to sell it to you later, since good domain names are hard to think of, and they may want to use it for the same purpose you did when you announced your intentions to the world.

    If you have to ask someone, ask only a person with whom you have a personal relationship, whom you trust. Even better, ask after you've bought the whole kit and caboodle. Then it won't matter which option your friend picks. You'll already own them all.

Don't make the same mistake that my visitor made when he lost his desired domain name. Be aware of the underhand tactics used by some people and take the precautions I mentioned above when buying your own domain names, so that you won't be another victim to the Internet underworld.

Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/.

1. Google Caffeine is live: what you need to know

Last week, Google officially announced that their new web indexing system "Caffeine" is live on all Google pages. What does this mean for your website and do you have to change anything on your pages?

Google Caffeine

What is Google Caffeine?

Google Caffeine is the name for the new method that Google uses to index web pages. In contrast to Google's old method, Caffeine can index new web pages faster:

"Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before."

Google changed they way in which they index the web because they want to show new pages more quickly in the search results.

What is the difference between the old system and Google Caffeine?

Google's previous system updated the search index in batches.

"Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks.

To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you."

With Google Caffeine, Google's search index is updated continually:

"With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index."

That means that new pages will be displayed in Google's search results sooner if they are relevant to the search query.

What do you have to change on your web pages?

Caffeine is not a ranking algorithm update. It does not change the way Google ranks web pages. Caffeine just means that new pages will be shown much quicker on Google's result pages.

To get your own website on Google's first result page, analyze the web pages that currently have top 10 rankings on Google. The pages that now have a top 10 ranking on Google have done everything right to please Google's latest ranking algorithm.

Analyze the top ranked pages and check how and where they use their keywords. Also check which web pages link to the top ranked pages and how they link to the top ranked pages.

Doing this is a lot of work if you do it manually. For that reason, we developed the Top 10 Optimizer. The Top 10 Optimizer automatically analyzes the web pages that currently have high rankings for your keywords and it compares them to your own website.

You will also get detailed instructions on how to change the content of your web pages and the links to your site so that your site will be listed in Google's top 10 results.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsThe latest search engine statistics

"Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in May with 63.7 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.3 percent), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.3 percentage points to 12.1 percent). [...]

Americans conducted 15.9 billion searches in May, up 3 percent from April. Google Sites accounted for 10.2 billion searches (up 2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.9 billion (up 6 percent), Microsoft Sites with 1.9 billion (up 6 percent), Ask Network with 577 million and AOL LLC with 361 million."



Googlers' backup plan ? Ask.com?

"When Google users can?t find what they?re looking for on their favorite search engine, where do they go as a fallback plan? According to a new study by online ad network Chitika, they overwhelmingly shift to Yahoo! and Ask.com. [...]

Of second-search users coming from Google, 49.5% ran their second search on Yahoo!, 30.29% on Ask, 16.4% on Microsoft?s Bing, and just 3.8% on AOL."



John MuellerGoogle's John Mueller about bad links to your website

"In general, bad links like that to your site will not affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking in Google's search results.

Looking at those particular URLs, it seems -- at least for the ones that I checked which were still live -- that your site's URL is only used as text on those pages, the actual links are pointing to other pages.

It's fairly common for spammers to use random text that they found on the web, so I wouldn't worry about this. That said, if you should find actual links pointing to pages on your own site, then I would double-check to make sure that your site is not hacked.

It's sadly also common for spammers to link to hacked pages.. but if you are certain that your pages are ok (if the cached version of those pages is correct, that's usually a good sign), I would not worry about that."

Editor's note: in short, this means that bad links pointing to your website won't hurt your rankings. If you find a spammy website that links to your site, you should make sure that your website hasn't been hacked because spammers often link to hacked sites.



Was the Google Mayday update a complete failure then?

"So, did the Mayday update actually accomplish filtering out this 'low quality' content from the search results? I went back and checked some of Jason Calacanis' spam pages on Mahalo that I had blogged about in the past. Unsurprisingly enough, most of the pages I checked were still ranking just fine in Google."



Search engine newslets

  • Discussion: was there another Google algorithm update on June, 2nd?
  • Google AdWords allows some advertisers to analyze competing ads.
  • Google improves answering questions on mobile browsers.
  • Twitter is down.
  • Yahoo monetizes its log-in page.
  • Google: for three years we may have collected personal data from Street View cars.

Courtnie Fun CSS Tips and Tricks
By Courtnie

There are a lot of neat things that can be done with CSS that you may, or may not, know about. I thought it would be fun to show you a few cool tricks. Use these to spruce up your existing webpage or keep them in mind when designing a new one. Login to your Bravenet account now to start building. This issue of Tips and Tricks is for medium to advanced users who are familiar with HTML and CSS. If you need some help with HTML and CSS coding you can check out our Quick Reference Sheets here.

For the purpose of this Tips and Tricks newsletter I have created demos for you to view. I have left the code samples out of the newsletter, but all the code can be viewed if you view source of each demo. To view source you can right click and then select view source. Feel free to copy and paste our code. Use it as it is or edit it; have fun!

CSS Fixed Positioning

Fixed positioning, absolutely positions an element relative to a web browser. This means that no matter how big or small the web browser the item stays in the same place. The item also does not move when a page is scrolled.

You specify the positioning with the same "top", "bottom", "left" and "right" properties as other position properties.

Using fixed positioning you could place a fun little icon in the top right of your webpage. You can view my demo here; drag your browser window around to see how it positions itself with the browser. I have also linked my icon so you can see how you could use this example to link to another page.

Another fun idea, is hiding a little surprise for people with larger monitors/resolution. Designing websites for people with large screens isn't a good idea because it makes your website hard to use for those with smaller monitors. But, with this idea you could hide an image to the right of your website so users with a larger screen don't just see empty space. Users with smaller monitors will never know. *insert evil grin here* View the demo.

If you view my source you will see I have a left position of 1100px. Meaning only people with a window wider then 1100px will see my image. You may wish to place your image over a little farther than I have - I just wanted most people to be able to view this demo. You could achieve a similar effect by using a really large background image. But this way helps your page by keeping your image file size down; especially helpful if you are using Bravenet's Free Web Hosting. This way also allows you to use a background image different from the image you wish to place to the right. Remember that if you have a smaller screen it may be hard for you to test this demo.

You could use this same idea to position your navigation so it is always visible for your website users. Demo here. If you notice, I have used percent to position my navigation on the page. It will position 20% from the top based on the window size. See how it adjusts when you resize the window.

CSS Opacity

CSS opacity can add a nice touch to a website without adding extra graphics. Use it to place some transparent text over an image. Or make an image go transparent on rollover. View the demo here.

It is important to mention that all child elements of a transparent item will became transparent as well. This can be seen in the demo here. See how the box background is transparent as well as the text. This can make for a simple button effect; making the button look disabled. On rollover you can remove the transparency, making the button look active.

Unfortunately this can also cause some frustrations if you wish for only the background to be transparent. There are some tricky work arounds that are a bit complex and lengthy to try and discuss in this issue of Tips and Tricks. There are a lot of great articles available online that discuss different work arounds. I will just mention that one such fix is: RGBa, but this has limited support; especially in Internet Explorer. A search for "RGBa Browser Support" should help point you in that direction.

All the above Tips and Tricks will work with Free and Paid Bravenet Hosting as well as our easy, drag and drop website builder, Viviti. Hope you enjoyed these tips and can put some of these to use on your website!

1. Six things that you should know about SEO

Most people know that being listed on Google's first result page will bring them a lot of targeted visitors and that they will get a lot of sales through that listing.

Google crown

Unfortunately, some people don't know how SEO (search engine optimization) works and what they can expect. Some webmasters still expect that their website will be listed on Google's first result page after submitting the site to Google. That might have worked eight years ago but it does not work today.

1. SEO takes time

You cannot optimize your website today and expect results tomorrow or next week. Search engine optimization takes time. Search engines have to find your new optimized pages, they have to find the new links to your website, they have to update the index, etc.

2. You must change your web pages

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords, then these keywords must appear on your web pages. It is possible to get high rankings for a keyword that is not listed on your website if lots of other websites link to your website with that keyword. That's the exception, though.

In general, the keywords for which you want to be found must appear on your web pages and they must appear in the right elements on your web pages. For that reason, you have to change the HTML code of your web pages to make it as easy as possible for search engine spiders to parse your site.

3. You need links and you need the right links

Good backlinks are the key to high rankings on Google. Automatically created backlinks usually won't help your rankings and they even might get you banned from Google's index.

As a general rule, the easier it is to get a link, the less is its influence on the position of your website on Google. The links to your website should be from related websites and they should contain your keywords in the link text.

The more attractive your website is, the easier it will be to get good links. Your website should offer linkworthy content that other people can talk about.

4. It's crucial to choose the right keywords

If you optimize the website of a rock band than you might think that it would be cool if their site was found for the keyword "mp3". That might be cool but it does not make sense.

People searching for "mp3" can be interested in anything: mp3 players, mp3 decoders, the latest Justin Bieber song, general information about the file format, etc. If these people come to your rock band website, they won't find the information they are looking for.

Optimize your website for keywords that attract the right kind of people. For example "unsigned rock band" or "rock band london".

5. You must be realistic

Getting on the first result page for a highly competitive keyword such as "mp3" is possible but your competitors will be old and established websites with a lot of backlinks. It is very difficult to outrank these pages.

If you have a website with just a few pages and your competitors have large websites with forums, communities, blogs, etc. then you must improve your website if you want to compete. Search engines want to show the best sites on the result pages.

If you absolutely want to get high rankings for a term such as "mp3", start with less competitive keywords and then proceed to the more competitive terms. Search engines must trust your website before they give you high rankings for very competitive keywords.

6. You must set the right goals

Search engine optimization is not about getting a high Google PageRank (the green bar in Google's toolbar). It is about getting high listings for the right keywords so that the right people will come to your website. The goal of search engine optimization is to increase your sales.

You don't have to be listed for any possible keyword even if they are related to your business. You have to be listed for keywords that will bring buyers to your site. It usually takes some time to find the best keywords for your website. Running PPC ads and tracking their conversions will help you to find the best keywords.

Doing the right things is difficult if you're not sure what to do. That's why we developed IBP. IBP offers step-by-step checklists that help you to optimize your web pages in the right order. IBP offers all tools that you need to get high rankings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. You can download the free demo version here.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

YahooDiscussion: Yahoo testing Bing's search results?

"Results we monitor are looking very strange. Lots of uk, au, in and other worldly destinations mixed in with spammy garbage. Hardly seeing any US sites in results at all. Anyone else seeing this? [...]

The results do not match bing at all. I also noticed some .au and .uk sites in the first page of results. Very strange indeed. I also saw tremendous robot hits today."

Editor's note: although the new Yahoo results do not match Bing's results, this might be a first sign of the change. At this time, it does not make sense that Yahoo revamp their own algorithm. Of course, it could also be a major bug in Yahoo's algorithm that causes the new results.



What?s it like to work at Google?

"A common problem is that it?s easy to become spoiled by all the perks. Several offices have developed distinct cultures of entitlement, and people whine about the quality of the fudge on the free brownies. It?s embarrassing to be around people who have become like spoiled children. [...]

The culture here really values high-quality code. The style guidelines are incredibly strict and people are rewarded for high test coverage. All code must go through code review before the revision control system will even let you check it in. Of course it?s not perfect, but it?s way better than any large company I've ever heard of."



GoogleWhen Google AdWords updates the search numbers

"Starting this morning, when requesting keyword stats using the Targeting Idea Selector, Targeted Monthly Searches is returning a data point for June 2010, but has no count. [...]

This is the expected behavior. The monthly search volume data for the last month only becomes available about a week after the month has ended."



[Google's] Eric Schmidt talks about threats to Google, paywalls and the future

"The internet is the most disruptive technology in history, even more than something like electricity, because it replaces scarcity with abundance, so that any business built on scarcity is completely upturned as it arrives there."

Related: Google's Eric Schmidt: you can trust us with your data



Search engine newslets

  • Yahoo Suggest now supports real-time searches.
  • Google adds video suggestions to "how to" searches.
  • Google phrase search trick no longer works.
  • Google updates the PageRank numbers in the toolbar.
  • When Google doesn't return the most relevant results.
  • At Yahoo, using searches to steer news coverage.
  • Track the Tour de France on Bing Maps.

1. How to tell Google that your website is not about toads

You know what you sell and you know the topic of your website. Are you sure that Google puts your website in the right category? If your website is about shoes, Google still might think that it is about frogs and toads.

Toads

If Google puts your website in the wrong category, it will be very difficult to get high rankings for your keywords.

How to find out what Google thinks about your website

To find out what Google thinks about your website, perform a "similar" search for your domain. Enter the following in Google's search box:

related:www.domain.com/ ~domain.com

Replace domain.com with your own domain name and make sure that there is no spacer after the colon. On the result page, Google will show you websites that it finds related to your site.

If the websites on the search result page are related to your website then everything is okay. If the websites are about totally different topics, then you have a problem and Google probably won't display your website in the search results for the right keywords.

Why does Google put your website in the wrong category?

Suppose your website is about selling shoes. If your site is linked by other websites that link to your website and other websites that are about frogs and toads then Google might think that your website is related to frogs and toads.

It's important that the other links on the web page that links to you are related to your site. If you're listed in the "Shoes" category of an Internet directory then all web sites in the same category are usually also about shoes.

When search engines look at this page and check the links to other sites they will think that your web site is related to shoes. That means that it will be much easier to get high rankings for search terms that are about shoes.

Is your website in the right co-citation category?

The other websites to which your link partners link influence the ranking of your website on Google.

Here's an example: web sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 all link to the web sites A, B, C and D. Although A, B, C and D don't link to each other, Google thinks that A, B, C and D are related to each other because the same web sites link to them:

The effect of co-citation on your rankings

If A, B, C and D are all linked from 1, 2, 3 and 4 they might be related to one another, even though they don’t directly link to each other.

If A, B, C and D are all linked by many other web sites, they have a strong relationship. The more web sites they are linked by, the stronger the relationship.

If you are the owner of website A, you should make sure that web sites B, C and D are related to your site.

What does this mean for your website?

When you build links, make sure that the page that links to your site also contains other links that are related to your website topic. The more pages of the other site are about your topic, the better.

If the link to your website is in a good neighborhood then it will be much easier to get high rankings for your keywords.

The backlink tools in IBP will help you to get more related backlinks to your website. Related backlinks and optimized web page content will bring your website on Google's first result page.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleGoogle: the average web page takes up 320 KB on the wire

"Here are some statistics about the size, number of resources and other such metrics of pages on the world wide web. These are collected from a sample of several billions of pages that are processed as part of Google's crawl and indexing pipeline. [...]

The average web page takes up 320 KB on the wire. Only two-thirds of the compressible material on a page is actually compressed. In 80% of pages, 10 or more resources are loaded from a single host. The most popular sites could eliminate more than 8 HTTP requests per page if they combined all scripts on the same host into one and all stylesheets on the same host into one."



Google SERPS now showing new OneBox

"It appears that Google has rolled out changes to the display of the Local Onebox showing on the main search engine results page. [...]

The businesses website now shows above the OneBox pushing the OneBox slightly further down the page, More Info has become the branded Place Page, directly under the business name, there is an additional large and prominent map pin next the business name, review numbers no longer show when there are less than a certain number."



CSSDiscussion: changing code to CSS killed the Google rankings of a webmaster

"I effectively took my average page size from 80k to 20k (before gzip compression) and the site is lightning quick. Visitors have been super happy with the improvement. Every visitor but googlebot apparently. The day after I rolled this major revision out, I began losing my major keywords. Every keyword was top 10, now I'm gone... not in supplementals - nowhere. Keywords dropped over the last 3 days... today there isn't much left. [...]

I would predict that, in time, you will return to your previous positions. The problem is the waiting game, and the uncertainty that you must be experiencing ... and the financial hit can't be any fun either. During the MayDay slaughter one of my best sites dropped like a stone in a matter of 2 days. I went camping in a remote area of southern Idaho and when I re-emerged into civilization, I found that nearly one month to the day after The Fall, that same site had once again regained all the previous traffic levels. If a similar pattern holds for you, then you'll be back on top again in a matter of weeks."



Innovation: shrewd search engines know what you want

"By giving a search engine some basic demographic information, such as age, gender and educational background, it is possible to boost the engine's chances of identifying user intent correctly. [...]

Recent studies suggest a surprisingly high number of us ? 70 per cent ? use the mouse cursor to help our eyes follow text on screen. Tracking the cursor offers a cheap way to check how people read a search results page ? vital information for companies keen to target their adverts at people who are likely to respond."



Search engine newslets

  • Russian search engine Yandex searches in real-time.
  • Video: is PageRank calculated differently for domains registered before 2004? (answer: no)
  • China renews Google's license.
  • Google secretly invested $100+ million in Zynga, preparing to launch Google Games.
  • Google releases a parking spot app for Android.
  • Google is working on interactive video ads (registration required).
  • Google's logo for the FIFA World Cup final.
  • World Cup search trends.
  • Shorter map URLs are now available on Google Labs.
3. Success stories

"I was one of people who thought that when you submit your URL to Google, it will appear on the first page automatically."

"When I created my website, I knew nothing. Actually, maybe it was a good thing because if I knew how difficult will it be, I would never even start. I was one of people who thought that when you submit your URL to Google, it will appear on the first page automatically. Not even funny...

I did not know what PR means, automatic submissions vs. manual, how to get links, etc. Also, I was and still is on shoe-string budget, so any free information has been greatly appreciated.

IBP has become a source that has been helping me all the way with industry news, trends and ideas as well as monthly updates on my website performance. It's still hard and I have a long time to go, but thanks to your help I'm on first page of Google for my main keywords."
Anna, www.findnewpassion.com



Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

Watch the video

IBP

1. Does Google show the right Sitelinks type for your website?

When Google displays Sitelinks below your website listing in the search results, it's very likely that your website will get more clicks and more visitors. The majority of searchers click on the top 3 results. For that reason, getting more links in the top three results increases the number of clicks that your website will get.

Unfortunately, Google does not always display the right Sitelinks. This article explains how to check your Sitelinks and how to make sure that Google displays the right Sitelinks for your website.

How to check which Sitelinks Google displays for your website

Google robot

It seems that Google only return Sitelinks when they are confident that the search query is looking for a specific site.

If you want to see the Sitelinks for your website, search Google for your domain name without the .com or for any other keyword for which your website is listed on the first position.

For example, if your domain name is "bluewidgets.com", search Google for "bluewidgets".

Which type of Sitelinks does Google display for your website?

If you search Google as explained above, Google will display one of the following Sitelinks below your listing:

  1. Google shows up to eight text links that are identical to your website navigation links. If you see these links, the navigation of your website can be parsed by Google and it divides your website into separate categories. This is good.

  2. Sitelinks that go to random pages on your website. If you get these links, the navigation of your website probably can't be parsed by Google and Google took the pages with the most backlinks for the Sitelinks. This is not so good.

  3. Google does not display any Sitelinks. If Google does not display any Sitelinks for your website then it's very likely that your website is not search engine friendly and that your pages cannot be parsed correctly. This is bad.

How to get better Sitelinks

Google generates the Sitelinks for your website based on your website navigation and based on the links that point to your website.

If Google shows the wrong Sitelinks or no Sitelinks at all for your website then you should work on your website navigation:

  • Avoid JavaScript and Flash navigation and try to use regular <a href> links as often as possible.

  • If you use images for your website navigation, make sure that the images contain alternative texts that allow Google to categorize your links.

If your website has a clear navigation, it will be much easier to get Sitelinks for your website.

Do not use too many navigation links and make it easy for web surfers and search engines to find out which pages of your website are the most important pages. The better a web page is linked, the more likely it is that it will appear in the Sitelinks.

Sitelinks can make your website listings on Google's result pages more attractive. However, they have nothing to do with the position that your website gets in Google. If you want to get high rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice, you must make sure that your website has both optimized content and good backlinks.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Statistics June 2010 U.S. search engine rankings

"Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 62.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent).

Both Yahoo! Sites and Microsoft Sites have experienced gains due in part to the continued utilization of contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together. [...]

Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent)."

Related: Yahoo and Bing legitimately up big



It's official: Yahoo testing Bing results

"Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we'll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic. [...]

Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe."



Google acquires Metaweb

"Today, we've acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone. With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, we're just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better."



Amit SinghalGoogle's Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of

"Google's goal is to make all information universally available, and where data isn't just hanging out on the web looking suave, Amit said Google will create it. That's why we have Google Maps, Google Earth and even Google Books. Well, that's the official feelgood version of why we have them."



Google search: political power

"Google?s aggressive tactics have put it on top of the business world, and now the Internet giant is looking to leverage the high profile and sterling connections of its CEO to achieve similar power in the political sphere. [...]

Google has become such a powerful player in the political and business worlds that most people contacted for this story refused to speak on the record about their concerns."

Related: Our op-ed: Regulating what is "best" in search?



Search engine newslets

  • A new design for Google Images.
  • Yahoo adds many new features to Yahoo Answers.
  • What is the benefit of using the change of address tool in Google Webmaster Tools instead of using a 301 redirect? (video)
  • Chinese search engine Baidu mulling Mobile OS.
  • Google ventures-backed Pixazza raises $12 Million for crowdsourced 'AdSense for images'.

1. How much money can you make with a single keyword?

Search engine optimization is so popular because it enables webmasters to get a great return on investment. High rankings for the right keywords can have a big impact on your revenue.

The following instructions make it clear why it is so important to choose the right keywords for SEO. You can make a lot of money by choosing the right keywords.

How to find the financial value of your keywords

  1. Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select "exact match" and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.

  2. Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks. With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.

Here's a concrete example

  • Your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have clicked the ad to visit your website.

  • 6 of these visitors purchased something on your website and the total profit was $500.

The keyword delivered 200 visitors and 6 buyers to your website. As the total profit was $500, the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business (200 visitors created a profit of $500: $500/200 visitors = $2.50/visitor).

What does this mean for your search engine optimization campaigns?

The average number one ranking for a keyword has a click-through rate of 40% (according to several studies). In the example above, your ad was displayed 10,000 times.

While your ad was only clicked 200 times, you would get 4,000 visitors per week if your website was listed in the regular results on the top position.

As the average visitors adds $2.50 to your profits (see above) you would earn $10,000 per week with that keyword.

That is $520,000 per year with a single keyword! That is why businesses love search engine optimization.

This sounds unbelievable but search engine optimization makes it possible. It's simple maths and it really works.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google removes organic results in local tests

"Yesterday, for the first time, we saw a standard Google web search results page, without any standard web search results. That is, a search for 'car rental nyc' returned a Universal Results page showing a map alongside results from paid, local, and books categories (see screen shot below). Not one standard o