SEO - Marketing - Advertising

Important Questions to ask Google

2009-06-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Google,

I have a big client that competes with Molly Maids, this is one that wants to understand Google Local rules fully before they try going into Google Local.

I would appreciate if you can have someone in Google Local help me. As you know I have read all the documents you referred to me, and even wrote a Blog article asking people to read the SearchEngineLand interview with CM.

However there still are some open questions. I will show you an example that will help explain my questions?

So if you do a search for “maid service Camarillo”

http://www.google.com/search?q=maid+service+camarillo&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=1I7GGLL_en

You see C. Molly Maid – a big company, I think a good company…

Then you also can see G. Pro-N-Maid - a very small business, and I am sure also a good company…

So in this case we have a big and small business both not showing any real physical address, no street address, just the city Camarillo, their “service area” .

Is this okay with Google?

I think it should be, unfortunately it is not my decision. lol

Will / should C. and G. in this example be penalized by Google?

And if not will / could this be make a formal Google policy?

E.g. My client is afraid Google may decide something else later and then penalize sites for doing like those above.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Tom Forrest
CTO
HTPcompany.com

Phone: 805-493-4450

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Important Information Regarding Google Local

2009-06-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

By: Tom Forrest
Email: tomforrest@htpcompany.com

Google Local which is part of Google Maps and is a separate department in Google is becoming more and more important everyday to SEO experts, business owners and webmasters in general. I have been following Google since they first started and before there even was a Google Maps or a Google Local. It is amazing how quickly Google Local has taken over from the "Yellow Pages". Almost all of our clients have dropped expensive Yellow page advertising and other related forms of advertising as 95% of their businesses new prospects come from Google Local or regular Google search results. This brings up many questions about what are the Google guidelines for Local. I like to use case studies and a question and answer format to hopefully provide some useful information that will help you increase your traffic and grow your business while at the same time following all of Google's guidelines so you do not receive any Google penalties.

I posed the following questions to Google:

How would a business that services an area without a physical location work with Google Local?

For example: a home cleaning service, a tutor or a piano teacher. None of which might want their address published because they are home based. Yet they offer a legitimate business service in that particular community.

I suggested that these home based clients should purchase a mailing address from UPS, etc. However I do not know Google’s official policy regarding this and want to make sure I advise clients correctly and that our clients also follow all Google guidelines.

What other options do these home based clients have? Since they do not what to show their home addresses on Google for safety reasons.

Google Answers Below:

Google confirmed that the advise I have been giving clients above is correct and that "getting a PO Box was another solid alternative".

Google also said that the following interview with Carter Masian by SearchEngineLand was the best public resource for information regarding my questions.

http://searchengineland.com/interview-with-googles-carter-maslan-about-mapspam-14087

I need to study this in more detail, most business executives and webmasters did not even know about this article so I hope this will help promote it.

The following are a few excerpts from this excellent interview with Carter Masian.

SEL: What about a business that formerly appeared among these top 10 listings and no longer does or wants to appear in those listings, what advice would you provide to such businesses?
CM: The results that appear among the top 10 local listings are based off how relevant we think the listings are to the search terms. Of course, we’re always changing how we determine relevancy. As a result, there’s no one piece of advice we would recommend beyond providing accurate, well-categorized listings and, for those businesses with web sites, following these tips including location kml in sitemap. I can say, however, that spamming Google Maps is a surefire way to remove your listings from the top 10 indefinitely.

This interview is full of good information, I suggest you go to SearchEngineLand and read it carefully. Also my guess is that Google takes some ranking information and exports it to Google Local every few months. I do not think Google Local is an island by itself that creates it's own ranking algorithms from scratch. Of course we will never know as Google rightfully is very secretive about their technology and internal processes.

Thanks to Matt Cutts of Google for helping to facilitate my research of this article.

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Some Interesting Side Notes:

Some people including many Google shareholders think Google is being too generous with all these free Google Local Listings. They believe that Google Local is harming the AdWords revenue and that Google should change how free and easy it is for businesses to list themselves on Google Local. I think Google must think about this themselves and must have decided the current way they are handling this issue is best, at least for now.

Another interesting side note is how the current biggest advertiser on SearchEngineLand is Text-Link-Ads who sell paid links that violate Google guidelines. The ads TLA buys are from Google / DoubleClick . So sometimes I think one just has to smile when they go to a site Google recommends to read an outstanding article and see on the same site heavy advertising for a service that violates Google guidelines :) .

Duplicate Content a very Common Business Owner Mistake

2009-05-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

A very common business owner mistake is to accidentally create duplicate content and be penalized by Google.

Many businesses write articles to help promote their business and think that sending that article out and trying to get it published is a good thing. They also put these same article(s) on their web site and do not realize this is against Google Guidelines. It is not easy for business owners to understand all of Google Guidelines, however as the old saying goes "ignorance is no excuse for not following the law".

The following is what I just sent one of my clients about duplicate content.

Google wants each unique article in one place on the Internet. Other wise they will consider it SPAM and will take your site completely out of Google.

This is the case if you have this duplicate content on your site and on others sites at the same time.

Another form of duplicate content SPAM is where the content is not on your site, however is on hundreds of other web pages. Then these sites could be penalized by Google and the links pointing to your site will not be counted as a vote for you by Google. Furthermore if Google saw massive abuse of the same content being placed on many thousands of web sites they may take even more severe actions to penalize the wrong doers.

Webmasters are Afraid to give out any Links

2009-01-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

By: Tom Forrest
email: tomforrest@htpcompany.com

I read an article by Matt Cutts of Google and decided to try out Google Knol. This is a beta product by Google and is supposed to feature articles by experts on many different topics from rabbit hunting to search engine optimization. The article that was here can now be found at:

http://knol.google.com/k/gototomcom/why-webmasters-are-afraid-to-give-out/1e6zag6lzbyuw/1#

I am not sure how well Google Knol will work and this is my first test of it. What I am hoping is that many more people will see my article on Knol then would normally see it on my Blog. I will report back on the results after three months.

Please feel free to email any comments to me at: tomforrest@htpcompany.com and I will post them here. Even if you totally do not agree with me I will still post your comments, as I am into freedom of speech, one of the greatest benefits of being an American.

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Big Yahoo Scam the Federal Trade Commission has just Ignored

2008-12-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

*

By: Tom Forrest
Email: tomforrest@htpcompany.com

Yahoo puts in paid sponsored results in with the free merit based non-sponsored results for every search results page. This is why in my opinion Yahoo is misleading and deceiving consumers and is violating Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations. Please read the background and details below.

I was contacted by some major news organizations about my previous article and they asked me to cut out the nerd talk so they could understand it better. Below is that non-nerd version.

I am angry that the incompetent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ignored the biggest Internet advertising scam of all time. It has been perpetrated by Yahoo for many years now.

Some people have reported this Yahoo scam to the FTC. However 99% of the general public do not know and understand what Yahoo is doing. Once people do understand it they think that it is wrong what Yahoo is doing and that the FTC should not allow it.

Do you understand the Yahoo Scam?

Do you know what Yahoo is doing?

I mean at a very basic level, 99% of people do not know and that is why it is so wrong and evil. Yahoo puts in paid sponsored results in with the free merit based non-sponsored results of every search results page. This is why in my opinion Yahoo is misleading and deceiving consumers and is violating FTC regulations. Even though they have separate sponsored (paid) and non-sponsored (free) sections on any search, some percentage of the so called merit based non-sponsored (free) results are really sponsored (paid).

From the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
"Advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers."

So if Yahoo does not tell consumers a search result is paid for and Yahoo deceives the consumer and pretends like the paid search result is there based on merit only, then Yahoo advertising is not telling the truth and is misleading the consumers. Then if the consumer makes a bad decision based on Yahoo's deception, isn't that wrong?

Yahoo is deceiving the general public.

The below is from Yahoo's web site:

Where are sponsor results shown on the Search results page?
Sponsor Results: Sponsor Results are sites that pay for placement in search results on keywords that are relevant to their business. These listings participate in the Yahoo! Sponsored Search program and appear on Yahoo! Search results pages and other sections of Yahoo!. You'll see Sponsor Results when they're relevant to the specific search terms you used. For example, if you search for "digital cameras," you'll see Sponsor Results for web sites that provide information about or sell digital cameras. Sponsor Results are separated from other results on Yahoo! Search results pages so you can tell them apart.

Now if the above was always true, then Yahoo would not be deceiving the consumers. However since Yahoo is putting paid sponsored results in the free results section, Yahoo is deceiving consumers and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) needs to fine Yahoo and make them stop this evil dirty trick against the general public. Don't you want to know what search results in Yahoo are being paid for and what results are free?

Furthermore Google and the Microsoft (MSN) search engines do not do a scam like Yahoo does, not because they could not make a lot of money doing it. The reason Google and MSN do not do it is because they know it is evil and wrong and they may have problems with the FTC if they did what Yahoo is doing.

Since Yahoo maybe in violation of the FTC regulations Matt Cutts has been promoting lately, I ask everyone who reads this article to write to Matt Cutts asking him to enforce Google's guidelines and the FTC regulations by completely removing all of Yahoo's web sites and all of Yahoo's web pages from the Google search engine. Yahoo is in my opinion the biggest violator of Google and the FTC guidelines in the world. Also, ask Matt Cutts if the Google and FTC regulations apply to all web sites, or just some web sites?

The other sad part of this is how Yahoo treated small webmasters when they started their paid inclusion scam. This was right after they purchased Inktomi. I think I may still have the email Yahoo sent me. It basically said pay us for every click to be in the non-sponsored natural listings of Yahoo or we will kick you out. So I refused because I knew this was totally evil and perhaps a violation of FTC regulations. One of my web sites is still not in Yahoo because I refused their evil attempts to make me pay. The reason it maybe a violation of FTC regulations and Google guidelines, is that when web surfers see these listings in the natural non-sponsored rankings, they are not marked that they are really paid for. This is deceiving the general public.

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I think Google has made a Big Mistake

2008-11-29T20:35:00.000-08:00

First let me give my disclaimer: I own a large amount of Google stock and I want Google to be successful. Furthermore I am a white hat SEO expert and follow similar link building methods that Eric Ward does. These methods have been approved in writing by Matt Cutts of Google. Also if I see companies using dirty black hat SEO tricks I report them to Google and I will even report them directly to Matt Cutts if what they are doing to deceive the general public is really evil and effects millions of people.

I was reading an article that interviewed Matt Cutts and some Yahoo engineer, I forget the Yahoo engineers name because I hate Yahoo and think they will be out of business within a few years, also because of their evil paid inclusion scam that generates over $200,000,000+ per year by perhaps violating the FTC guidelines that Matt Cutts has been promoting lately. If it is not against FTC regulation it definately should be. I am angry that the incompetent FTC has ignored possibly the biggest Internet advertising scam of all time perpetrated by Yahoo for many years now, after many people have reported this Yahoo scam to the FTC.

So now that we have all of that out of the way, here is the big mistake Google has made:
The Yahoo engineer said it is a better approach to ignore any enforcement of paid link violations and just let the Internet run wild. At first most people would think that is crazy, however if you think about it I believe you will decide it is a much smarter strategy. If you do not worry about trying to enforce paid link violations it makes it very easy to filter and block any link juice from passing. Please think about it, if I put two outbound links on this page and collected money for one of them and the other was merit based how would Google or anyone know which one was a paid link and which one was merit based. It is impossible even for the great Google to know. It is absolutely 100% impossible for anyone to know.

I would appreciate anyone to email me and prove me wrong, my email address is tomforrest@htpcompany.com , if I am wrong I would be happy because of all the Google stock I own.

Before Google started to enforce this paid link policy is was easy for them. Webmasters put the words Sponsored Links on their page, and had a link to Text Link Ad companies promoting the paid links they were trying to sell. The footprint was clear and obvious and a piece of cake for Google to detect and filter. Now it will become impossible for Google to tell what links are paid and what links are not paid, and I have already seen Google penalizing innocent sites and guilty sites getting off free and clear.

I think what caused Google to make this bad mistake is all the pressure of the white hat webmasters telling Google enforce your guidelines or we will just think you are full of shit Google, and we will also start buying links. So Google was in a bad spot, however it would have been better for Google to have suffered though that then to be in the impossible position they are in now.

I just saw the funniest thing I have seen all year and it is related to this article. A webmaster that put a section on his site called "PAID LINKS SECTION" the only link in it is to Matt Cutts Blog. I wonder if other webmasters will also start doing that?

Also since Yahoo maybe in violation of the FTC regulations Matt Cutts has been promoting lately, I ask everyone who reads this article to write to Matt Cutts asking him to enforce Google's guidelines and FTC regulations and completely remove all of Yahoo's web sites and all of Yahoo's web pages from the Google search engine. Since Yahoo maybe the biggest violator of Google and the FTC guidelines in the world. Also ask him if the Google and FTC regulations apply to all web sites, or just some web sites?

The other sad part of this is how Yahoo treated small webmasters when they started their paid inclusion scam. This is right after they purchased Inktomi, I think I may still have the email Yahoo sent me, it basically said pay us for every click to be in the non sponsored natural listings of Yahoo or we will kick you out. So I refused because I knew this was totally evil and perhaps a violation of FTC regulations. One of my web sites is still not in Yahoo because I refused their evil attempts to make me pay. The reason I beleive it maybe a violation of FTC regulations and Google guidelines, is that when web surfers see these listings in the natural non sponsored rankings they are not marked that they are really paid for and this is deceiving the general public.

If deceiving the general public in this manner is not a violation of FTC regulations, the this is further evidence that the FTC is not doing their job properly. I have never show what Yahoo is doing to anyone who did not reply with a comment like: That's just not right, the government should not allow them to do that.

Also Yahoo in my opinion falsely claims that paid inclusion does not affect rankings and virtually all SEO experts know from direct experience using the paid inclusion program offered by Yahoo that this is a total lie by Yahoo. Furthermore they earn in my opinion over $200,000,000 per year from this scam against the general public and I may be dramatically underestimating how much Yahoo is earning from their scam, this is another reason why we need a FTC investigation. To think this is just random luck that these listings appear at the top of Yahoo's natural rankings is laughable. Sure a company that is losing market share and money every day would just by random luck have the paid inclusion listings at the top of so many searches and not marked as paid is ridiculous. This is why I am so angry at the FTC, why has the FTC not investigated this? I would love to be a fly on the wall if and when the FTC does investigate Yahoo for this scam against the general public. I would like to hear how the Yahoo engineers would answer these charges. Generally engineers do not like to lie and are very bad liars, so in my opinion this would be a very easy case to prove. In total this scam against the general public most likely has brought in over a billion dollars in revenue for Yahoo. FTC if you ever read this article I suggest five billion dollars in fines for Yahoo, if indeed they are found guilty after a full and fair investigation by the US government.

Also why has Google and MSN not created a paid inclusion program like Yahoo has?

It is not because they do not like making money.

Furthermore I do not think it is fair as Matt Cutts in my opinion seems to want, to try to apply the same standards and regulations to a small time webmaster. That however is for another article that I may write in the future.

When Yahoo started their paid inclusion program several years ago, it was back in the days where it was important to be in Yahoo. It really harmed millions of small webmasters. Today Yahoo is a joke and I do not care what they do with my web sites in their search engine. Since I believe in Karma I think Yahoo is getting what they deserve, and hopefully more if the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) ever goes after them.

I was raised to be a stand up guy and to do the right thing, and that it is never too late to choose to take the righteous path in life and I think Matt Cutts was raised that way too.

Definition of righteous:
1: acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin ; morally right or justifiable; arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality.

What about the founders of Google?

I thought they believe to not be evil, and that you can make money without being evil.

So Google should just kick Yahoo out of their search engine, it is just that simple for me.

Feedback and Comments Section:

I will not use any one's name here unless they ask me to:

1. This first one is from an Attorney:
"It makes perfect sense. If Google adheres to its “Don’t Be Evil” policy then it should kick Yahoo off."

Note: I know a famous Internet law expert and I am asking him for his feedback and comments on this article.

2. From an Internet marketing expert:
"Nice article, you should sphinn it."

3. "Well done, I side with your feelings. I’ll see what I can do.
Did Google penalize one of your sites or someone you know? I’m trying to see what inspired
your writing."

4. "very good article.. I would have to copy it to reprint it -- if you want that...and by the way, I have really been thinking about this yahoo scam because I can very easily prove what they are doing"

5. "I really liked your article. Now I understand why you don’t like Yahoo."

6. "What Yahoo is doing is evil and the FTC should punish them for their dirty tricks."

We have received hundreds more like #6 above, it is the most common feedback we have received so far.

Please send your comments to tomforrest@htpcompany.com and let me know if you want me to use your name or not.

Copyright © Tom Forrest 2008
All Rights Reserved.

Pros and Cons of Google Customization

2008-11-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

At first I was unhappy when Google started doing this new customization stuff. Below is what I cut and pasted from my FireFox browser.

Search customization details: internet marketing companies

When possible, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity. Additionally, when you're signed in to your Google Account, you may see even more relevant, useful results based on your web history.
The following information was used to improve your search results for internet marketing companies:
Recent Searches
You or someone else recently searched for seo company using this browser. Learn more

However I am reconsidering my initial dislike of this, now I am not sure. Please consider the following facts. In my industry location does not generally matter, I can help a client in London, Detroit, or Los Angeles all the same. So if I was #1 on a search for Internet marketing companies in the USA, I would be against customization based on location because it would harm the amount of traffic I receive, if however I was #7 with location customization turned off and #1 with geographic (localization) customization turned on, than this would be good for me. I would only be #1 with it turned on in a limited geographic area, however it would still bring my business more traffic because being #7 with localization turned off would bring me little or no traffic.

Currently I do not know if this will bring my business more traffic or less, and it also may vary based on several factors, and offer different results where for some webmasters this will be a good thing and for some webmasters this will be a bad thing.

If anyone has any useful and good data regarding this please email it to me at: tomforrest@htpcompany.com and let me know if I may publish what you send to me.

I plan on working on this more and trying to figure out if this is a good thing or not. So please check back in a few weeks as this article hopefully will be updated by then.

Also sometimes when I write these articles I smile because most people that read them, e.g the average web site owner newbie trying to learn about search engine optimization and Internet marketing have absolutely know idea what I am talking about, it takes a more experienced webmaster to understand these issues. Also I am not sure why Google is so convinced this localization stuff is such a good thing. Clearly it is not good in all cases, and I am not even sure if it is good even in the majority of cases. Furthermore I think Google should make what I am discussing in this article more clear to the average Joe, and make it easier to turn on and off.

SEO Lessons Learned, no pain no gain

2008-10-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

I was thinking of the old weight lifter saying " no pain, no gain".

SEO is like that in many ways. The following is a case study of a client I have had for 6 years and his web site has achieved great results, at least up until today.

He was attacked by evil hackers and they deleted all his web pages. I found the problem by checking his rankings as I do monthly. I do not check any clients web site as this is their responsibility as I agree to with the thousands of clients we have at HTP Company.

Anyway the client's web site was down for about one week and it took a few days for the hosting company to turn the site back on.

Regarding the SEO effects:

Google took his home page completely out of the Google index. They left a few of his internal pages cached.

Google Local is a separate database from the core Google listings (index). The client's home page stayed in Google Local while it was not in the main Google index. So this was very interesting to see and learn from. His ranking dropped from A to I in Google Local and is interesting to study as for a secondary keyword phrase his Google Local listing was and has been #I. So it appears that this Google Local #A ranking was tried to his home page. It seems to me some strange things happen with Google Local and that the two different databases (indexes) of regular Google and Google Local and how they interact and interface with each other.

Now while painful we have to try to regain all that this client has lost. I wish we could just phone Google and explain the mistake and that Google will put us back where we were today.

So some of the SEO questions are:

1. Will his top rankings just come back by themselves?

2. If yes, how long will it take?

3. If no, why and what SEO lessons can we learn? e.g. why if every thing is back exactly as it was before his site was down, why did Google not rank him back at the top again.

As of today his site is back up and Google does not have his home page indexed at all. How long will it take for his home page to be indexed again? His site was PR5 and now it shows greybar.

Some factors to consider are aging of the back links and will Google consider all his high quality natural backlinks as new. Meaning does he lose the benefit of all the years of aging?

I was surprised that Google took his home page out of the Google index after one week. This used to take much longer to happen a few years ago. So this proves at least some of the changes Google has made of the last few years and slows how important it is to check that your web site is working everyday. I suggest to all our clients they assign 1-2+ staff in their company to check that their web site is up and working everyday.

Excellent article by Google VP of Engineering

2008-05-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is an outstanding article written by the VP of Engineering of Google and explains the reasons why Google is so secretive.

Google Penalty vs. being Blocked and GrayBar

2008-05-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

This article was updated on 10-5-08

Google can and does give different types and levels of penalties. This can range from just blocking a site from passing PageRank and or link juice to a more serious (death) penalty of taking the site out of the Google cache and out of the Google index altogether.
Google does not really use the term TrustRank and Matt Cutts has clarified this in the past. Google does however implement this concept of "can a site be trusted" as Google does look at and evaluate the sites you link out to. Who you link to is also important for the SEO concept of co citation of citation theory.

So currently Google can give penalties via automatic filters that look for spam, malware, hidden text links, duplicate content, etc.

Google has a staff of Quality Engineers that review all the submitted SPAM reports and manual penalties can be imposed. Let's look at a specific example of this. Please start at this page:
http://www.w3.org/QA/
This is one of the most powerful sites on the Internet, and a PR9 page. Now look at the outbound links at the bottom of the page.

Now this is where I question some of the subjective decisions Google makes and I also question why they come to the conclusions they do. E.g. how can Google be sure that the PR9 page is not showing paid links? Or maybe the form of payment is not in cash, it could be in other things like free trips or organization sponsorships. I do not think this is happening in this particular case, however how would I or anyone know 100% for sure?

Than Google does give a penalty to Accessify.com, when it is not 100% certain they are selling outbound links. Also if you look at other sites the w3.org PR9 page links to, there are questionable items on some of these pages. So in my opinion this can lead to a "witch hunt", and with Google penalizing so many sites for paid links many webmasters are afraid to give out any links at all. I do not think this is what Google intended by giving out all these penalties, however it is a negative side effect. I also think this is a tough problem for Google because they do not want to penalize innocent webmasters, however I have seen several cases of Google incorrectly and unfairly penalizing some web sites.

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If you want to read more about if you should buy text links and what the risks are and what the "safe ways" are to perform Google approved link building please read this article:
http://www.htpcompany.com/google-pagerank-buy-sell-ads.htm

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The way w3.org gives the outbound links is fine with Google and please notice that all of the pages this site links to are PR8 pages except one of them.
http://www.accessify.com/ which is a PR5 page because of outbound links at the bottom of the page Google does not like. So this is a case of a manual penalty being imposed by Google and the accessify site should really be a PR8 and Google has reduced it to a PR5 to discourage future text link sales and penalize the site. Generally when Google does this it also blocks any link power or juice to be passed by accessify and the sites it links out to. This case is also interesting because it shows it takes time for PageRank penalties to propagate though the Internet. E.g. every page that accessify links out to is currently a PR6. I suspect that after the next PR update these will all drop.

Google has had a very long history of blocking sites from passing PageRank and link juice (Link Juice = PageRank + any other factors Google uses to value links).
Another example we can look at is: web-stat.com which should be a PR8 and Google has penalized them to a PR5. This is an interesting case, because this counter site and almost all counter sites have been blocked from passing PageRank for a long time. Recently Google dropped their PR and all the advertisers are now gone. However Google has still kept the web-stat.com site at PR5. Generally Google will keep this penalty on a site until the site requests the penalty be removed and promises Google in writing that they will never do what caused the penalty again. One more example is seroundtable.com that should be a PR7 and Google has reduced seroundtable.com to a PR4, for selling paid "Sponsored Links".

Still adding more to this article. Please check back soon.

Regarding the Google toolbar and what the graybar means. In the past the graybar was the kiss of death. The worst and most serious penality you could receive from Google, even worse than PR0.
Today is not true that graybar (greybar - British spelling) is the worst penalty, any new page one creates even this page shows up as a grey bar on the Google Toolbar at first.

Studying Google Patent Information and what you might Learn

2008-02-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting well written article about a Google patent filed in 2003. The author does an excellent job of explaining that this does not mean Google is using this exact patent today. However this article http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=929 will explain several important concepts for search engine optimization and may help you.

I can tell you for sure that Google currently does also look at who you link out to. So to keep it simple one could say if your site links out to only spam crap, then most likely Google will consider your site spam crap. Something to think about when people ask you to put up a link to their web site for them.

We want excellent articles to publish on our web sites.

2007-09-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

We want to publish your articles. Please email your article(s) to:

tomforrest@htpcompany.com

We can not allow comments on this blog because too many Spammers write crap in this Blog when comments are turned on.

So please email your comments to me and we will publish them here or on other sites we own.

This is an Important Matt Cutts Post to Read

2007-05-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

This is one of the more interesting SEO posts by Matt Cutts that I recommend all webmasters and business owners read.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-hell/

Feedback to Google Regarding SEO and Ads

2007-05-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

Google has been trying to implement more filters to block and / or penalize paid links. Some of what they are doing seems confused and off track. E.g. Googles priority list seems to be wrong. We see sites blocked and penalized that should not be, and questionable sites penalized when clear blatant abuse goes undetected and the wrong doers are harvesting huge results, while Google seems to do nothing about it.

Google knows about this huge abuse I discuss below and has done nothing about it.

I did a Google search on " blog.txt theme by Scott and sponsored by Flower Delivery"

Very interesting to me that it is a clear abuse, and appears to me to be helping all wrong doers with high PageRank and high rankings on Google for their important keywords.

Please see the first result of my Google search:

http://buzzdroid.com/wordpress/themes/wordpress-beware-the-sponsored-link-theme-do-you-know-where-your-pagerank-is-going/

This is an example of the "obvious low hanging paidlink spam fruit" I am talking about.
______________________________________________________

I was reading a well known web designers site and he made some interesting points, to bad he does not know he is in danger by linking to a well know text link brokers web site. He makes the following and I beleive correct and insightful comments about dealing with web advertising clients.

I think my first mistake right off the bat was offering too many choices.
I ended up simplifying things within a couple days, dropping some of the ad options.
People need to be able to see value and if there are too many choices, it makes it difficult for them to make any choice at all.
People also tend to ask more questions to clarify any comparison between the ad options, so the more ad options the more questions people ask.
That is why we try to get them to make a small purchase and then ask them to buy more later. Sometimes they buy multiple ads over a 3-5 day period. The key is to get them into the buying mode and away from all the questions.
Keeping it simple makes it easier for everybody.

Alexa Traffic Rankings are WAY Wrong

2007-03-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

I have known for some time that the Alexa traffic rankings are way off. Off by tons... not a scientific way to explain this.

So please see this interesting article to learn more about the how and why Alexa traffic rankings are so defective and not correct.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/estimating-webmaster-skew-in-alexa-metrics/

SEO News

2007-02-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

Hello,

A great site to visit and read about all the lastest SEO News from multiple good sources is:

http://www.gccnews.com

Please try it and see if you like it.

Linkadage

2007-02-19T22:26:00.001-08:00

Linkadage seems to be going down the tubes.

Blocked and worthless links being sold by people who know they are worthless.

A rude and ungrateful site owner. Stay away from Linkadage.

Please click on the link in the title above to read others negitive comments regarding Linkadage.

Another company to stay away from is text-link.us they are owned by searchfit.us, they sell worthless links and do bad seo and shopping carts, they totally screwed over another company I know and caused them problems with Google, and then I had to help this company recover from the problems they caused them. These guys also cheated some people I know out of $8500. So we have outed the bad guys.

Check out this new blog we are creating

2007-02-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Please visit this new blog we are creating.

http://gototom.blogspot.com

It explains the reasons why and the topics it will cover.

Google Webmaster Central

2007-02-15T16:42:00.000-08:00

Google has added a lot of good information to this page:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

You should read it several times and use the free tools Google provides.

Links are like Diamonds and Wine

2007-02-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

Please click on and read this information below.

http://gototom2.blogspot.com/2006/09/80-of-webmasters-are-wrong-about-seo.html

This is still one of the best articles for people to read to understand many details and complex issues involved with SEO.

Search Engine Marketing Data

2007-02-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

North American advertisers spent $9.6 billion on search engine marketing in 2006. I do not have the current worldwide numbers. I wish I did have worldwide numbers for this report. 84% of this $9.6 billion was invested in paid search. E.g. Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN PPC, etc.

So only 14% went to natural search engine optimization (SEO), Yahoo's paid inclusion scam accounts for 1% or $96 million. We hope the FTC stops Yahoo from this paid inclusion scam against the general public and gives Yahoo a huge fine for this advertising scam.

1% for agency fees and in house development account for 1%.

So my question is why is natural SEO still such a low percent of the total. I think it will increase in the future as Google's PPC prices have gone though the roof. Keyword terms that we used to pay $2 for are now $10. At some point people will start to shift more of their Internet marketing dollars to SEO I think. 75% of businesses use some SEO efforts to promote their businesses. For many years people have said they want branding however they generally are still more focused on measuring direct response rates. TV advertising , print ads and newspaper advertising have been dropping and Internet marketing and advertising are growing, we see a significant shift of how corporate budgets are invested. We predict this trend will continue for many years, as the Internet is still a young child.

More from Matt Cutts of Google

2007-01-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

I do not see Matt Cutts comment in very many blogs. I might feel a little nervous if I knew Matt was reading my blog on a regular basis. Sometimes I am critical of Google and ....

Anyway Matt has always been helpful to me and responds to my emails very quickly. I do not send him many, I try to keep a low profile with Google, and only talk to them as a last resort. This in itself sets Google head and shoulders above Yahoo (I strongly dislike Yahoo) or MSN.

It is wonderful that a $10 billion dollar a year company has a senior Ph.d level engineer who responds to people like me :) :)

Below is a comment Matt made in some other guys blog.

Matt Cutts Says:

December 20th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I think you put this pretty well, Eric. Search engines want links to be real: editorial votes based on quality and merit.

With Yahoo, you’re paying for the reviewing service; Yahoo rejects plenty of submissions.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Tom Forrest Says: This is the same with our Directories, we reject about 85+% of people who submit their listings to us. There are tons of Spammers trying to get into quality Directories and web sites like ours.
We just keep deleting them.

This is an interesting article and funny too.

2006-12-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

Please click on the link to this article, it is very interesting to read and may make you laugh.

http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

The SPAM problem just keeps getting Worse

2006-11-30T17:09:00.000-08:00

I really hate Spammers, I find they are generally frustrated and unsuccessful people, venting out in a sick way at the world.

Anyway I had to delete and turn off the comments on this Blog for a while, because of problems with Spammers leaving a bunch of garbage in the comments.

Please email me at: tomforrest@htpcompany.com if you want to send me any comments. I use www.cloudmark.com as a SPAM filter and it works well and reports the Spammers to a database, so that is why I can give out my email and not worry about SPAM.

54% of all emails sent today are SPAM, and unfortunately it seems to be getting worse not better over time.

Learn about SEO and Internet Advertising.

2006-11-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

Below is an email we sent to one of our clients to explain the pros and cons of Paid Google ads (PPC - sponsored links on Google) VS. Google approved methods for building natural or organic rankings in Google.

Hello Steven,

We set a limit on how much we spend on Google ads per day. This is for several reasons. First we are limited by your budget, and we also need to place ads on authority web sites to build up your natural rankings (non paid). So after the Google ads reach the daily limit then they turn off for the day and then start the next day. So if you check early in the day USA time you will see the Google ads we put up for your sites.

We suggest we check and monitor your bookings as there are different types of Google ads. There are ads only on the Google search engine, ads on other search engines Google provides search results for like AOL, etc. Then there are ads on travel related sites in the Google network (content ads). We try all of these and monitor your results and see which type has the best conversion ratios, this is an ongoing process and takes many months to optimize.

The best results come from achieving top natural rankings. This will happen faster on the Chicago site as it is older and has a good PageRank already. It takes many months to build up on new sites as Google does not let knew sites rank highly quickly. We have some methods to work around this, E.g. We create pages with all your content and links on long aged sites we own and these pages will rank well sooner and also link to your new site. Over time we will show you detailed examples of these.

Regarding your budget question:

Yes giving us a bigger budget will increase your traffic even more, we suggest you think long term and plan on keeping all the SEO links we place for you long term. These are for building the natural rankings, the longer we build and keep the links up the better the results will become. It is like wine and diamonds for the links. Links are like wine because the longer they are aged the better (more effective they are). Also once you lose them you have to start the aging process all over again.

This is not the case with the sponsored PPC links (paid Google ads).

SEO link building: are like diamonds, because links can vary greatly in value and quality just like diamonds vary greatly in value and quality.

Please click here and read this article for more details and technical background information regarding text link ads.

So while we would like you to increase your budget with us, we would to be careful and monitor the results and make sure you stay with this long term.

The biggest mistake we see people make is to do SEO (non PPC ads) and then run out of funding before they achieve the best results.

We do not know how much knowledge you have regarding these topics, so if we are explaining things you already know please understand we are trying our best to help you.

So the benefit of the paid Google ads (PPC = Pay Per Click) is that we can turn them on and off quickly. The disadvantage is they can be expensive and they are not as powerful as the natural or organic listings. Natural or organic are terms used for the non PPC ads.

Perhaps the best way to explain this to you is by example.

Let’s use htpcompany and htp company as the examples.

So if you type htpcompany on Google you see us on the left (natural listing) and on the right side of the page under sponsored links (sponsored links equals PPC).

Being on the left is much more powerful (5 to 30 times more valuable than the PPC listings on the right) , however it is still good and useful to have both. That is why we do both for our own sites and our client sites.

If you do not understand some of this let us know and we will try to explain better. Sometimes it is more difficult to explain via email, we know this is the best way for you, however it can be more difficult to explain sometimes.

Now if you type htp company with a space on Google you see another example of being on the left and righ side of the page.

HTP Company

HTP Company ( Phone: 805-493-4450 ) provides the best Internet marketing company, Internet advertising and SEO services in the world.
www.htpcompany.com/ - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

Any way this email is getting to long and the bottom line is we are happy to have you increase your budget as long as you can afford to stay with this long term. We do not want you to spend too much too fast and run out of funding. Again we are trying to give you good advice and help you.