SEO UPDATES

Sorry there haven’t been too many updates around here lately… If you’d like to try your hand at blogging on Search Engine / SEO news, we’d love to have ya join us here on the Niner Niner network and SEO Updates.

You can signup to write for Niner Niner over on the Signup Page, beta password is: niner

Now, onto some AdSense news from a few days ago (in case ya misted it!):

JenSense broke the story of Google’s own AdSense page being hijacked in the SERPS of Google.

This is just silly. Someone thinks they can hijacks a Google page get away with it? LOL. Not.

Jen sez:

When you decide to hijack a site in the Google serps, it makes sense to do one that will benefit you in some way, while not raising yourself too high on the search engine’s radar. So, it obviously makes perfect sense to go and hijack the Google AdSense site

This is the best though. Kevin at All-In-One-Business.com replies back in the comments:

I want to thank JenSense and others for posting this thread.

Thanks for the comment Air Charter. I just got off the phone with two different tech writers explaining why I would have a meta redirect on my site.

It isn’t an attempt to profit from either Google’s page rank or some cloaked affiliate link.

I am no hijacker. In fact, I’m not sure how I could in any way benefit from this link.

The simple fact is this: I write and syndicate articles all over the web. I used to put into those articles direct links to sites I was talking about.

A couple years ago I had a problem when I had written and syndicated several articles about GoTo.com when they changed their name to Overture. There were dozens of websites to notify and ask them to update the links in my articles.

So I decided to begin using meta refresh redirects rather than listing the URL’s directly. I can then keep the links current in all the articles I write.

Hopefully Google will look at this and decide to make some changes so this won’t occur. It’s hard to believe I got a number 1 listing without trying.

Can anyone these days ever just admit when they’ve f’d up and come clean? Feh.

Andi Baio broke another webspam story recently, this time on Syndic8 hosting articles on their various sub-domains.

An update on the article reads:

May 6, 2005: Philipp Lenssen reports that Syndic8.com was removed from Google’s index entirely. By e-mail, a Google engineer also confirmed that the Google AdSense account for Syndic8′s ad affiliate was terminated.

I agree with Aaron Wall in the comments, who states that it’s Google’s responsibility to make sure people aren’t cheating AdSense. If their quality control for the AdSense program was more rigorous, this wouldn’t be an issue. They’re passively supporting this practice by allowing people to profit off it.

Ouch! That’s pretty harsh, but I guess they had to make a lesson out of someone for all this “webspam” + AdSense that’s floating around out there.

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.

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.