SEO UPDATES

Google, currently the most popular search system, is today rolling out its new advertising program. The L.A. Times reports that Google intends to capitalize on the $9.6 billion online ads generated last year with its new program:

Advertisers will be able to search Google’s database for websites relating to specific subjects, then bid on how much they’re willing to pay to place either text or display ads on each site. The program builds on a limited test of graphical ads launched on partners’ websites late last year.

For some, such as TheStreet.com’s Kevin Kelleher, Google’s move signals a return to a past marketing model–at least, in appearance. This is because

The plans would further detach many of the ads Google sells from its search engine, expanding the company’s role of broker to advertisers seeking to place ads on third-party Web sites.

Google, in other words, is looking more and more like an advertising company than, as they oft described themselves, an information dispenser. In doing so, they are stepping up their challenge of Yahoo!’s, AOL’s, and MSN’s plans to dominate the online advertising space. Yet Google may endanger their own lead as a search system by changing Internet users’ perception of the company. Today, Google is highly respected for the simplicity of its product(s) and for seemingly adhering to the philosophy they have promulgated, “Don’t be evil.” By focusing on advertising, however, Google may be viewed as more concerned with the bottom dollar than the quality of its information-dispensing products. Google may not quite be evil yet, but with their expanding forays into new adverising programs they’re certainly less angelic than they’ve heretofore presented themselves.

Great article over on the ClickZ network that talks about Google’s new patent filing:

Google reveals in the filing its ranking algorithm is organized to thwart overly aggressive marketers. It confirms something search marketers have long suspected: Google watches how fast new links to a site appear as a way to detect and penalize search engine spam. If too many new links appear in too short a timeframe, the site may be penalized, or even banned, by Google.

According to the filing, Google also watches how many new links with identical anchor text emerge. This is another clue links may be suspect or mass-manufactured. Additionally, Google monitors the rate at which links disappear to identify the degree of relevance and sort out spam. If Google does these things, you should assume other engines do something very similar.

If you were to switch to an affiliate platform that caused all your affiliates to link directly to your site overnight, all using the same anchor text, red flags would very likely be raised with Google and other search engines. Your site might be banned or, at the very least, experience a sudden decline in rankings. Either scenario costs a lot of money and take months to repair.

Read more here

Aaron Wall of SEO Book tackles Ethical SEO in this article.

A quote (from an email he received):

I think when people talk about ethics in business they are concerned about someone cutting into their profits or threatening their profits. It has nothing to do with human rights or suffering (which is wrong). Either way, business people will continue to talk about ethics all day - even while they own sweat shops - because sweat shops have very little to do with ethics.

Definitely worth a read. I like Aaron’s contrarian thinking.

Just to extend the line of reasoning from the article (so that we’re all on the same page), these are a few statements of fact that can also be made:

• Hitler was ethical
• Killing babies is ethical
• Genocide is ethical
• Comment Spam, Email Spam, DNS Hijacking, Stealth Spyware Installation, etc etc is all very very ethical

Why? Because (just going off this article) ethics is a tautology defined by you. Whatever you say is ethical, is, well, ethical. Or to quote Mr. Wall:

The people who push the ethics concept, are by default, ethical.

This was my favorite quote from the article:

Search engine spam is not the same as email spam or blog comment spam as you are not directly immediately wasting some persons time.

I love that: “directly immediately”

I’m actually not finding fault here, just picking apart the words…

So… is it okay if I’m only indirectly immediately wasting someone’s time. Or what if I’m directly, but not immediately wasting someone’s time?

Aaron - here’s all we (speaking for anyone with a weblog and comments turned on) are asking:

Do you, Aaron Wall, think that using blog comment spam (as a technique) is unethical?

That is, from your own code of ethics that you wake up with, make money with, live and breath, everyday.

If not, I think people should start linking to you with the phrase: ethical comment spammer

…as a joke

Update: Aaron responds -

>ethical comment spammer
I actually have not done anything like that in a while. feel free to link up though

Glad to see Aaron hasn’t gone to the dark side of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is a tricky business. You really have to stay on top of it; everything that applied last month (or even last week) may have have considerably less value today. For example, submitting to search systems. That SEO for Dummies book you have on your desk may have been written well over a year ago, and by now half of the material within is probably outdated.

In fact, I’m currently reading an SEO book that even admits the potential discrepancies between the information presented on its printed pages and the more timely information presented on a websites such as SEO Updates. The book declares that some search systems–such as MSN Search, which is not as widely used as Google or Yahoo!–will probably have become major players by the time of the book’s publishing. (This turned out to be true, as MSN Search has since become one of the top search systems.)

The key is to keep digging up the most current information and watching those websites and blogs which update regularly. A very recently-published book will give you a good enough idea of what to expect if you’re just starting to learn SEO techniques, but stay away from the two or three-year-old tomes, as the information presented within will be about as relevant to your needs as the 1999 price of RAM to a current computer shopper. If you’re really serious about keeping up with SEO, also subscribe to sites that offer an RSS feed so that updated information will be delivered right to your desktop just as you’re busily updating that website you want to build traffic for.

Via webmaster world:

To create your own pretty charts, simply follow these quick instructions:
1) Download your CSV file from Google (its above every report you can make) I recommend taking the “All Time” report because if gives a larger sample size.
2) Open Microsoft Excel or a similar spreadsheet application. These instructions are really for Excel, but most spreadsheet packages are similar.
3) Open the CSV file in Excel, you’ll have a table of figures.
4) Delete only the column heading marked “Date” (for some reason this messes charts up) (don’t delete the entire column or you can’t tell what you’ve done over time!)
5) Delete the rows at the bottom of your sheet that indicate Totals. (otherwise you have a spike at the end of your graph which makes everything else hard to interpret)
6) Highlight column A (should be date) and highlight column B (most likely to be Page impressions) and go to Insert > Chart. Go through the wizard (its really simple) looking at the lovely charts you can make. Settle on the first bog standard line graph. Next, Next, Next, until you hit the part that asks where you want to create it (in the current worksheet- no, or in a new worksheet- yes!) Click Finish and bang! Instant charts.
7) Now repeat for A+C, A+D, A+E and A+F.
Save to disk, then print. Analyse, marvel and plot for world domination.
9) Profit! (okay, I had to do that).

CNet: Microsoft plucks top Yahoo Search exec Gary Flake

More on Gary Flake on this thread at Search Engine Watch:

Dr. Gary Flake is Principal Scientist & Head of Yahoo! Research Labs. In part one of this wide-ranging interview, he talked about the daily work of researchers at Yahoo Labs, and what they’re doing to make search better. In part two, he talked about the challenges of indexing various types of information, and Yahoo’s efforts at realizing a current hot trend — personalized search. In this final installment, he touches on a wide range of other search related topics.

Do you see a time when Yahoo will be able to deliver an answer on a results page. For example, instead of just giving links to sites about the Prime Minister of France, you get an answer with key facts, directory info, and links to articles? You’ve started something close to this with Yahoo shortcuts but they usually involve a second or third click? Will Yahoo eventually become an answer engine?

Yahoo! shortcuts have been growing and improving at a healthy pace. I think if you try some today, you’ll see that we give many answers right on the results page (e.g., weather, flight and tracking information, word definitions, etc.). Shortcuts work best when there is an unambiguously correct answer to a query. Many queries have no clearly perfect result, or may be ambiguously formed. As we improve the technology, we’ll get better at answering more things with fewer clicks or query refinements.

(via webmaster world)

Yahoo te gustan TeRespondo.

That’s mangled Spanish, not Portuguese - I know.

Clickz has the scoop:

Yahoo! is expanding its presence in Latin America with the purchase of Brazilian performance-based advertising network TeRespondo.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

TeRespondo operates in much the same manner as Yahoo!’s Overture division — distributing paid text ads on search results pages — except its distribution network is centered in Latin America. The Sao Paulo-based company has offices in Mexico City and Miami.

Overture opened an office in Brazil in October 2004 and has built a distribution network that includes Yahoo!, Cadê?, IBest and Bondfaro. It will now include all the sites in TeRespondo’s network, including MSN Brazil, UOL, IG and Buscapé.

“We are very happy to be joining forces with a pioneer and global leader like Yahoo!’s Overture,” said Juan Calle, CEO of TeRespondo. “We believe the combination of our strengths and our shared dedication to our customers and to Internet users help us execute on our vision of providing the largest online search advertising network in Brazil.”

As with Overture, TeRespondo’s search ads are sold on a cost-per-click basis and displayed in order of bid price. The minimum CPC bid amount is R$0.15 in Brazil, P$0.50 in Mexico and US$0.05 in Argentina.

Webmaster world thread here.

Just came across this great thread on Webmaster World.

If you are running AdSense on your website, and haven’t yet experimented with the new Ad Links unit, you should definitely give the entire thread a good read.

Some highlights:

I have tried AdLinks in two different locations on a 3 column layout:
(a) middle of right column
(b) top of left column (just above site navigation)
Results:
1. Location (b) receives 5 times as many clicks as location (a).
2. Location (b) has increased total earnings by 125% whereas location
(a) made no noticable change to anything.

And this comment:

I included Ad Links as soon as it came out and so far I’m very impressed.
Targeting spot on which is good for publisher and advertiser alike and earnings up more than 32%!

We’ll see how it pans out for the rest of the month to judge whether it’s the novelty factor or an accepted more highly focussed results page for the visitor.

Anywhere from 32% to 125% isn’t bad!

There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding the CTRs (click-thru ratios) for Ad Links, and when you actually get paid.

Google only makes money (and hence you only get paid), when the visitor clicks through on the second link via the Google Ad Link results page.

It’s key that you implement Ad Links effectively, otherwise it’s possible that your CTRs will drop and you will be penalized under this new Smart Pricing thing that Google has going. (This is all just from the thread - the Smart Pricing thing seems to be in beta or alpha stage - details are sketchy.)

Good luck! I’ll report back with my results in a week or two, after trying out a few Ad Links formats on some of the new Niner sites.

Duncan Riley outs a comment spammer (Amy Cross of realtrafficsite.com) over on blog herald:

Duncan Riley> Whilst digging for my last post I also discovered an SEO who is not only using comment spam on blogs as a tool, but is actually soliciting for new comment spamming scripts using Freelancing sites.

(Drum roll please) And the SEO is: Amy Cross of realtrafficsite.com.

Now its one thing to be unscrupulous enough to spam blogs in the pursuit of search engine traffic, but it takes a particular level of stupidity to advertise for someone to write you a new script as Amy has done at Get A Freelancer.com.

If you follow the link you’ll also disturbingly find that there are quite a few offers from programmers willing to help her in her comment spamming ways.

So who is Amy Cross, if that is indeed her or his real name? Well the whois information provides little use, with the contact details being held from public view. On her site she describes her self as follows: “Amy has been recognized as an effective leader who is in tune with her client needs and has one of the single highest customer satisfaction and consumer confidence ratings ever recorded”. For somebody so well known I cant even find her on Google.

We do know however that the site is hosted on marketrends.net, a Sacramento based hosting company. So if we don’t know who Amy is, we do know a little about one of her customers, who provides a customer reference to Amy right on the front page, and guess what products they are flogging…..if you guessed cialis you’d be right! So Joe Hopkins of genbucks.com, come on down! But you know, for some strange reason these comment spammers don’t want to be found because Joe also uses a cloaking company for his domain registration, and even the dns for his host is cloaked.

So a dead end for now, but none the less the world is hopefully a slightly better place for the exposure of this comment spamming scum. Have a nice weekend!

Amy Cross - you’re busted!

How would you like to plead to the court of public opinion?

I recently landed an SEO job through Craigslist, that grassroots directory-slash-community that began in San Francisco, California and has been since expanding to reach the global community (and recently, the universal community). I always thought of Craigslist as a place to find free giveaways–a garage sale, so to speak, for those of us who really have no money. After several friends and associates prodded me toward the directory as a place to find work, however, I finally settled in for a few days of some serious Craigslist job searching.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a variety of listings for both freelance and full-time SEO positions. Anyone looking for a local SEO position should definitely check out Craigslist, as the directory is a very user-friendly and dynamic resource; fresh jobs are prevalent there, with outdated listings being removed regularly. Due to its organic and localized nature, the directory seems much more useful for IT and IT-related job seekers than other, and often more commercial, employment directories. This may be an illusion, of course, but one thing’s for certain–at least with Craiglist you might find some free stuff while you’re looking for that SEO job.