Search Engines Watching

Google Pagerank Table

2007-08-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

Google Pagerank is losting its power more and more, but there are many people wonder that how many external links we need to improve our Google Pagerank from 3 to 4 or even from 4 to 5. THIs table helps you to understand.

Google's Supplemental Results go to Hell

2007-08-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

There is a good news that Google announced that they have done away with the "supplemental results" label from the search results within Google.com.

I remember what I shouted about on DP 45 days ago:

Supplement result is useless for me,
when search something, I don't care whether if is supplemented, just want what is helpful.
why Google let us know that's supplemented? I can't figure it out.

Now, Google do a right thing to drive us out of the damn Supplemental Results, we are just a normal searcher, never care about what we search are supplemented. Cheers!

Google Update on 2007-1

2007-01-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

During the last week, we noticed the PR on some sites got changed, but I think it's not a real PR update, just a little adjustment on algorithm. Some site's PR dropped to zero, then rolled back after several days. It's said just some changes on some DCs, maybe just reboot. :-) I can't see any obvious update on PR. Most of sites' PR remained, only one PR of index updated to 3. Wish a big dance will be happened in the next two months. So don't believe the PR update on 2007/01, it's just a joke.

Here's Matt Cutts's explain:
A few people were seeing PageRank 0 for their site. There was a small auxiliary push that needed to happen to complement the PageRank push, and that push happened a few hours ago (i.e. Jan 11, 2007). If you were getting stressed, you might want to re-check now. If you never even noticed, well, good for you.

2006 Search Blogs Nominations

2006-12-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

Here is a list for the nominated blogs in each category. Blogs were nominated over the past week by Search Engine Journal readers. Great Massive Search Engine Resources. Sorry for no links, you can check their url by search these title, like: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=SEO+by+the+SEA

SEO Blog of the Year

SEO by the SEA
SEOpedia
SearchRank Blog
SERoundtable
Search Engine Guide
Graywolf’s SEO Blog
SEO Disco
SEO Buzz Box
SEO News Blog
Unofficial SEO Blog
SEO Scoop
StuntDubl
Bruce Clay Blog
SEO Book
Matt Cutts
Sugarrae
SEO Egghead
Traffick
SEOmoz

Search News Blog

Search Engine Watch
SERoundtable
ResourceShelf
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Lowdown
Search Views
Threadwatch
WebProNews
Pandia
Traffick
ValleyWag
John Battelle’s Search Blog
Daily Search Cast
Googling Google
Google Blogoscoped
Google Operating System
V7N SEM News (Peter Da Vanzo)

Search Marketing / Contextual Ad Blog

JenSense
Make Easy Money with Google & AdSense
ShoeMoney
SERoundtable
Small Business SEM
SEM In House
Search Marketing Gurus
Shimon Shandler
Marketing Pilgrim
ProBlogger.net
eWhisper.net

Best Link Building Blog

StuntDubl
Jim Boykin
Link Building Blog
Text Link Brokers Blog
The Link Spiel

Best Search Agency Resource Blog

SEOmoz
MarketingPilgrim

Best Search Engine Blogger of 2006

Take the questionairre to find out :)

Best Social Media Optimization Blog

TopRank
Pronet Advertising
Seth Godin’s Blog
MicroPersuasion
Social-Media-Optimization.com

Best SEO Black Hat Blog(gers)

Webguerrilla
David Naylor
G-Man
IrishWonder
Oilman
SEO Black Hat
Biggnuts (Dax)

Best Local Search Blog

Greg Sterling’s Screenwerk
Small Business SEM
Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local
Mike the Internet Guy
The Local Onliner

Best Affiliate Marketing Blog

5 Star Affiliate Programs
PepperJam
ReveNews
Super Affiliate
SuperAff Blog
ShoeMoney

Best Web 2.0 Blog

CenterNetworks
Mashable
ReadWrite Web
TechCrunch
Somewhat Frank

BONUS Best Search Engine Marketing Community / Forum

Webmaster World
v7n Forums
Digital Point Forums
Search Engine Watch Forums
Web Pro World
Cre8asite Forums
iHelpYou Forums
High Rankings
SitePoint
SEO Chat

Google Tell: How to deftly deal with duplicate content

2006-12-21T00:23:00.000-08:00

Google became more care about the duplicate content on its search result, for give user better search experience, they gave some advices to webmasters. These suggestions is good for help webmaster to keep SERP on Google.com.

How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?

* Block appropriately: Rather than letting our algorithms determine the "best" version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don't want us to index the printer versions of your site's articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file. (I don't think so, like print page is very helpful，will not delete it.)
* Use 301s: If you have restructured your site, use 301 redirects ("RedirectPermanent") in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, the Googlebot, and other spiders. (no need to do it. update your sitemap should be OK)
* Be consistent: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent; don't link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm. (It's hard to do, especially for huge site.)
* Use TLDs: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that .de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than /de or de.example.com. (good idea)
* Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article. Even with that, note that we'll always show the (unblocked) version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. (if some guy steal your web page and don't link back to you, that would be harmful to you? )
* Use the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools: If other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can let us know which way you prefer your site to be indexed. (how about to access with IP addess?)
* Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details. (How big it is? what's the suggested limitation? under 1024bytes?)
* Avoid publishing stubs: Users don't like seeing "empty" pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. This means not publishing (or at least blocking) pages with zero reviews, no real estate listings, etc., so users (and bots) aren't subjected to a zillion instances of "Below you'll find a superb list of all the great rental opportunities in [insert cityname]..." with no actual listings. (good idea)
* Understand your CMS: Make sure you're familiar with how content is displayed on your Web site, particularly if it includes a blog, a forum, or related system that often shows the same content in multiple formats. (sometimes it's rational to show the same content in different ways, cause different people have different habits)
* Don't worry be happy: Don't fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it's highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site's presence in Google. If you do spot a case that's particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have us deal with the rogue site. (good idea)

The Top of Live Search for 2006

2006-12-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

Microsoft released the top searches in 2006 on MSN Search and Live.com. These lists are the result of studying our anonymous logs for the most searched queries in all the countries and regions our users search from.

AOL, that uses Google for web search, also released the top searches like this:

1. weather
2. dictionary
3. dogs
4. American Idol
5. maps
6. cars
7. gamers
8. tattoo
9. horoscopes
10. lyrics

My Top Google Properties

2006-12-02T03:10:00.000-08:00

According to an extended list of Google properties and how they rank amongst themselves in market share of visits. We can see what's the most useful in Google. That also means a great search engine not just a search engine, but a bundle of search engines, that means a giant.

Yahoo Duplicate Content Explains

2006-11-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

Search engines now become more and more intelligent, but some puzzles are still unresolved, such as duplicate contents, yep, anybody use search engines knows we can find many duplicate contents in the search engine results, even some copies get higher SERP than original content. This is really harm for the benefit of the author who created that helpful and interesting posts. Anybody dislikes this happens on himself. So, let's take a look at how search engine try to fix this big bug. William Slawski post Microsoft Explains Duplicate Content Results Filtering , maybe this can help us to understand Yahoo how or try to avoid duplicate contents on it's searching results. SO, if you want search engines know your posts are original, you'd better follow these guidelines:
1. Do not use dynamic URL to publish your posts.
2. Submit your posts to search engines as soon as you published it.
3. declare the copy right privacy on your posts.
4. simplify your post url, better with keywords related your posts.
5. tell your friends you post a original and great article.

Live Search Likes and Dislikes

2006-10-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

MSN likes theme-based pages and pages that have a relatively high key word density. You might need a higher density then is normally done for google.
MSN likes well ordered HTML, and a hierarchical structure with good use of H1 and H2 tags.
MSN likes Keywords in the URL
MSN relies heavily upon anchor text in links, title attribute in links and alt tags in images
Take care when writing for the Description Meta Tag, it is the only Meta tag that matters and holds some importance
Don't have duplicate content, MSN's duplicate content filter are reported to be better then Google's
Avoid link farms, hidden text, tiny text and all the other no no's

Google: Custom Your Own Search Engine

2006-10-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

Webmasters have another way to make money, Google launched Custom Search Engine, it reflects your knowledge and interests, you can place it on your website, using your AdSense for Search program, make money from the resulting traffic.

Secret Live Search Operators You Don't Know

2006-10-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

linkfromdomain
restricts your search to sites that are linked from a certain domain, you can find some of the pages / sites linked from all the pages available on that domain.

linkfromdomain:1f1t.com

linkdomain
shows only the pages that link to a page from a certain domain. The link operator from Google shows all the pages that link to the homepage of a site or to a certain page, but you can't see these aggregated results. Linkdomain operator is also available in Yahoo Search.

linkdomain:1f1t.com

contains
should be followed by a file extension and is used to restrict the search only to pages that contain links to at least a file that has that extension.

radiohead contains:ogg

Yahoo has a slightly different operator called feature, useful to show pages that have embedded content. The operator can have one of these values: audio (the page embeds audio files), video (the page embeds video files), javascript (the page has JavaScript code), flash (the page has embedded Flash), frame (the page uses frames), acrobat, applet, activex, form, table.

u2 feature:flash [ Yahoo ]

prefer
lets you give more weight to a keyword.

ipod prefer:review

loc
is used to restrict a search to domains from a certain country.

bistro loc:fr

Reviews on PR Update since Sep 29

2006-10-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Since the recent PR update of Google at Sep 29, I found most of the sites' PR increased back. Compare with Apr's and Jun's update, I think they have the following relationships:

Apr v1.0 (1) => Jun v1.5(2) => v1.1 => Sep v2.0 (3)

1. used a new arithmetic (new framework?) for PR which caused many new sites which even had zero PR got high PR easily. PR seems to be easy to get for new sites.

2. arithmetic adjusted: fixed the previous bug on new sites which got high PR. This is a failed test for Google PR, somebody use this time to improve his sites successfully. Conclusion: It's a good time to promote your site when Google made mistakes.

3. version 2 update of Apr arithmetic, add some new characters, Google spider will more like unique contents and aged domain. I believe Google use another trust PR to rate a site, but not the green bar on your toolbar.

Back Link is still important

2006-09-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

After the PageRank update on Sep 29, 2006, I found the backlink is still important. No matter what the kind of that backlink is, if it's not a bad link, it will benefit your site. I notice a website, which got tons of unrelated backlinks, PR changed from 1 to 5. Just like Google said:

When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance.

Google is still a backlink based search engine. So more backlinks and more cached pages, you will get higher PageRank. However, we also notice the Google's changes, but the content is still the king.

Three Primary Principles of Goolge's Content Searching

2006-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Google clarified the philosophy again for respect content owners and protect their rights:
1. Respecting copyright
that means more restricted to duplicated contents.
2. Letting content owners choose
a good news for original content writers, dont's write content just for SEs.
3. Benefitting content owners
I'm not sure, but I wish we can benefit most. I believe there are many other better ways than Adsense to promote our profit.

Google Sitelinks

2006-09-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

The links shown below some sites in Google search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Google systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

Google only show Sitelinks for results when they think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or Google don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, Google won't show them.

Download Yahoo! Toolbar 1.3 for Firefox

2006-09-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Toolbar team put Yahoo! Live Search in the latest version of Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox for the US, Germany, UK and Korea.
They made a few more improvements to the search box. In addition to making suggestions, it now shows matching items from the previous searches, and expands as the type so you can see what you've typed when you do one of those extra long queries.

Yahoo, Build your own search engine

2006-08-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

Yahoo seems want everyone to use their brand name just like Google, but have a long way to go. Is this their another step?

With Yahoo! Search Builder you can create a custom Web search engine by selecting a set of trusted sites to search across or you can tune the search algorithm to the topic of your choice. Beyond Web search, Search Builder includes Site search and News search.

Then generate the code you’ll need to add your search engine to your site. You also have control over the look and feel of the search box and search results page. Voila! Instant search engine!

Good and Bad for working at Yahoo

2006-08-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

These thoughts from Matt McAlister, a guy working in Yahoo. That means Yahoo's strengths or weaknesses?

Favorite things about Yahoo!:

Open minds. In most cases, people are open to “not invented here” technology and products. In all cases, people are very open to new ideas. This culture makes it possible for everyone to feel comfortable speaking up in every meeting or blogging both internally and externally.
Smartness. I’ve never been in a meeting where I felt an individual couldn’t contribute intelligently. You witness bursts of phenomenal brainpower both individually and collectively all the time.
Never complacent. The constant stream of advances rolling out across almost all Yahoo! products is the public evidence that nobody inside the company is ever asleep at the wheel. They could be driving into a tree, in some cases, but they’re not asleep.
Passion. Well, maybe not everyone is passionate about their specific job, but people are very motivated and feel like they are doing or contributing to something that matters.
Diversification. Mature companies are able to spread both risk and opportunity across multiple channels. Yahoo! knows this well. That can create distractions, but Yahoo! never takes its eye off the ball, either. The user comes first. Always.
Globalness. My experience at IDG gave me a taste for the benefits of globalizing a vision and then sharing knowledge and experience across cultures. I love seeing that same ethos here. People are always thinking about how ideas apply in different countries.
Great work environment. The espresso bar; the gym; the great speakers who come talk to us; cubes up and down the hierarchy. Nothing will top the little building my team had across the street from the headquarters of The Industry Standard in San Francisco which was somewhat of a madhouse, but Yahoo! does a very good job of making life at work a nice place to be.

Things Yahoo! needs to change:

Control. There are way too many people “owning” things and not enough people contributing their expertise in the places where it’s needed most. The Product Managers’ scripted 1 year roadmaps become the magic wand of power used to reinforce the status quo.
Innovation constipation. Few people are willing to take a loss on one product or strategy on the chance that another one might yield a brighter future. The result is a wait-and-see approach. That’s a shame given the incredible potential here.
Isolation. The campus keeps us all from interacting with the rest of the world. External face-to-face meetings only happen amongst people whose jobs are dependent on interacting with external companies. It has an impact on the types of products the company creates…often oblivious to what’s happening on the Internet outside of yahoo.com.
Product duplication. The company’s decentralized approach breeds an environment where different people are solving the same problem in different ways. This is expensive, but it does have the benefit of forcing people to stay on their toes (see #3 above).
Analysis paralysis. There are way too many people involved in very small decisions. You get the benefit of uncovering all the potential pitfalls in any given problem, but people spend way too much time looking for problems and not nearly enough time creating solutions.
Where are all the women at? I’m in a presentation with about 150 people right now, yet I see no more than 30 women in the audience. At a company with so much invested in the social aspects of the Internet, it suprises me that the more socially sophisticated sex doesn’t have better representation.

How to gain from Google Adsense

2006-08-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

Wanna get very high CTRs? You need to make a really excellent website. It maybe take a year's work to build it up and make it fantastic, full of really good content and with hundreds of backlinks. But Which type of websites will generate more adsense revenue?

To answer this question, here are some guy very helpful website building experience, enjoy it:

Forums - low return, hard work to get started and established.
directories - ok return, but needs programming skills.
blogs - anyone can start one, good return, but you've got to have ideas and opinions and writing skills.
portals - lots of work but should be good return if you can make it popular.
myspace - I don't know.
classified ads - lots of competition, same with dating sites. You should get a very mixed bunch of people coming to your site, so plenty of ad clicks.
tutorials - good for getting traffic as this is good content. Should get a good return if your ad positions are good and relevant. Hopeless for computer tutorials though as techies don't click on ads. Believe me.
article websites - similar to blogs and tutorials. Can you write well?

Yahoo Web Rank

2006-08-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has some sort of internal page ranking system - WebRank, but doesn't like Google. Google assigns PageRank based upon an algorithm that includes link popularity.

Yahoo WebRank is basically a rank assigned to a URL by Yahoo on a scale of 0-10. It was introduced a couple of months ago as a Beta feature of the Yahoo! Toolbar, since it was an experimental feature it is no longer available as a part of their toolbar.

Click here to check your Yahoo WebRamk.

Yahoo! Search SDK Updated

2006-08-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Search Web Services SDK with new code and examples has been updated. Test out Ruby and Lua code and other languages:

* C#
* Flash (ActionScript)
* Java
* JavaScript
* Perl
* PHP
* Python
* VB.NET
* Widgets (JavaScript + XML)

It's easy to use and BSD licensed. As a webcoder, I prefer Flash AS, PHP and Widgets(I would like to see it as AJAX). Google already have many powerful developing tools, so wish Yahoo also have more fresh surprises to us. By the way, what's Lua?

Google AJAX Search API

2006-07-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Google launch an AJAX Search API to help you add a dynamic Google search module to your web site, here is the sample page or check out AJAX Search API center. This interactive search box that mixes results from Web Search, Local Search, Video, and Blog Search. It's very cool!

Matt Cutts and Google

2006-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts, a killer cool & hip software engineer who works at Google, a search engineer who knows search algorithms inside out. Want know more about Google? You need to know more about Matt Cutt.

PageRank is not important?

2006-07-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

During these Google dances, we found PR has got some changes different from before. Somebody said that PR is getting less important, it's just a sign to evaluate our website if it's trustful. It's totally different from SERP, also not affects SERP of your site.

I think PageRank is not becoming less important, but more important, just evaluate a different aspect, compared with SERP. The old PageRank system includes only one sign to evaluate the quality of a webpage, that's unilateral and easy to be abused by someone.

A good webpage evaluating system should have more than one aspect to be considered. So, I think Google is starting to use a new arithmetic to calculatie PageRank, together with SERP, they are both the important factors to evaluate a webpage. It's more fair than before.

SEO professional should take care both sides to optimize their own websites, that's more difficult than before. That means a webpage which has good PR and SERP is the best.

Myth of Google PageRank Prediction

2006-07-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

Are you believe those pagerank predictions tools? Here is a software developer's explain for it. Maybe you can estimate it by yourself.

Pagerank predictions tools can't really predicting pageranks, they can't even guess or get your next pagerank. They are all based on a "urban legend" a myth in other words.

If you give a special query to google toolbars, it will report you the first 15 best incoming links for a website! Only the first 15 , if you got 3000 backlinks, only the best 15. Please note that the best 15 don't mean the first 15 with the higher PageRank. The top backlinks are also calculated on how many outgoing links, the websites topic related to your website topic,etc...

This scripts, are just grabling those 15 results, and they make a media like this:

(n1+n2+....nX)/X - X is total amount of 15 results.

EX :
(PR1+PR4+PR4)/3

or
(PR1+PR4+PR4+PR1+PR4+PR0+PR1+PR4+PR9+PR1+PR4+PR1+PR2+PR2+PR4)/15

Now do you get why iwebtools and others websites are writing things like this "Your next predicted PageRank is 6.5" or "6.54" do you get it now, from there the decimal is coming from?!

Let's show you some very well known problems.

1. it only reports the first 15 backlinks. If you got 4000 backlinks, and all of them are PR3/PR4 it won't show more then a PR4...and I more then sure that with 4000 backlinks of PR3/PR4 you will get more then a PR4.. because only the first 15 counts... and they only do an "aritmetic media"

2. If you only get a single PR6 backlink it will calculated

(n1)/1 = 6 / 1 = PR6 ... that isn't bullshit?!

for 2 PR6...
(6 + 6) / 2 = PR6

for 3 PR5s...
( 5 + 5 + 5 ) / 3 = PR5

3. Some scripts are even more crayz. they don't divide by "n" ... they think that all websites are having more then 15 backlinks, so they directly devide by 15... So if you buy a PR8 backlink,and that is your only backlink, then your predicted pagerank will be:

8 / 15 = 0.5 it will be rounted to 1 !