Google has set up their IPO page where you can acquire a bidder ID number.

https://www.ipo.google.com/

Best of luck to Bruce and whoever wants to play in his contest.

The blog contest is for blogs with the best social movement or social conscience related theme. Blogs will be judged by viewers through e-mail.

More info on the blog contest @ http://www.wowdirectory.com/bestblog.htm

There has been a decent amount of noise recently about searching information that is more local (either on your hard drive or something you have seen before).

Some of the larger search companies have been making purchases or creating in house technology in this arena. I am a big fan of the small or new guy / underdog though.

Recently I interviewed Hjalmar Gislason, who is the owner of an interesting social searching bookmark project by the name of Spurl.

What is Overture Search Optimizer?

Search Optimizer users will be able to automate search campaigns based on those response metrics. It also lets marketers develop "watch lists" of keywords or campaigns and run campaigns only during certain times of the day. It will suggest potential keywords that could meet a marketer's business objectives. Marketers also can sort campaigns based on business objectives to see which are underperforming. source: DM News

Advantages of Overture Search Optimizer
Some of the advantages of the new tool are that it will allow you to:

• Optimize campaigns based on business objectives such as cost-per-acquisition (CPA), cost per click (CPC), return on ad spend (ROAS) and others;

• Automate keyword bidding based on performance-driven bid recommendations tied to their unique business objectives;
• Sort campaigns by performance to quickly and intuitively determine which campaigns/keywords need additional optimization;
• Manage thousands of keywords through features that allow them to develop "watch lists" of their most important campaigns or keywords, perform advanced searches of their performance data and quickly download large amounts of information to an outside application;
• Define active time frames for their listings.

source: Press Release

Cost of Overture Search Optimizer
A tad bit on the expensive side... $249 - $1599, especially when compared with similar tools by companies like KeywordMax (thanks AussieWebmaster type guy).

iProspects Bid Management Tools
Jumping on the bid management press release bandwagon iProspect filed for a patent on their proprietary bid management tool.

SEO Softare = Eventual Commodity
Some of the advancements for bid management tools will command some value becuase they save money, but most of this software will eventually become a commodity though and I find the current prices to be absurdly high.

Google and third party bid management software vendors will continue to inovate and and lower costs. In about a year the competitive marketplace wil expect similar software to be included as part of the advertising system for free.

thanks to all @ SEW forums

Many webmasters in different SEO forums are reporting that they are having problem accessing Google's site.

Apparently the BBC thinks that Google, Yahoo!, and AltaVista are under attack by the MyDoom virus. This does a good job of showing just how fragile a web based business can be. Make sure you register to bid on your Google shares soon :)

Google's Recent Non Update
When Google recently updated it's backlinks many people were waiting for a visual display PageRank update which has yet to happen.

They have began showing lots of low PageRank links (including a ton of forum posts, DMOZ mirror sites, and others) and some of the higher PageRank links are not showing in the backlink lookup.

There has been no major change on search result relevancy or what backlinks they are using to determine relevancy, just a change in what they display. Any statement beyond that would probably be a bunch of speculation, but if you have any interesting comments on it let me know.

Google Employment Opportunities
Out with the old
In with the new

Google Trademark Laws
Googles and Froogles oh my.
Don't you wish the trademark lawyers would just shut up?

Webmaster Toolkit whipped up another quick tool. His C class IP checker lets you check if two domains are on the same IP block.

It is believed that domains which are hosted on the same C block may not get as much credit for linking to one another as sites on various independ IP C block addresses.

{update: it worked when I first tried it, but one person just reported that they had a problem with it. I let Will know so hopefully it will be good to go soon.}

Whois Source is another good place to check the IP address of your websites.

Google to set price soon!
...at least that is what a bunch of people are saying.

The Value of a Google Home Page Link
...a bunch...

But Wait...
Yahoo! is gaining on Google?

And the Stock Market / Sky is Falling?
Ask Jeeves dips and Google misses its mark...

Oh No, Google WILL BE a Penny Stock
I kinda feel bad for helping promote Dr. Steve Baba self promotional press release.
(then again I suppose all press releases are)

Speaking of Press Releases
I made my third one ever yesterday, and you wouldn't believe who called to chat. It wasn't them, but it was one of their biggest competitors. Hopefully that works out well :)

Both Sides of the Story
Before buying any Google stock I recommend you get both views of the story, after all This Land is Your Land
thanks to Marketing Wonk Vox

Many people are perplexed at how to get ads to list in the top spot of Google AdWords. So the question was asked:

Daniel E Ross and Danny Levinson (of Yahoo!) recently created a whitepaper titled Understanding User Goals in Web Search, which aimed to figure out "why are people searching?"

The underlying relevance-ranking algorithms that determine which results are presented to a user might differ depending on the search goal. For example, queries that express a need for advice might rely more on usage- or connectivity-based relevance factors, while those involving open-ended research might weight traditional information retrieval measures (such as term frequency) more highly.

They broke the searches down into three broad groups (and subgroups of these groups).

• Resource - be entertained or interacting. not just finding info on the page - free online video games, pornography

• Informational - read or learn something - lists, advice, locate
• Navigational - going to a single topical hub - Amazon, Ebay

These findings came from 3 sets of approximately 500 AltaVista searches each.
The study found a few interesting things about web search:

• Nearly 40% of searches in each of their search sessions were non informational.

• A large percent of informational searches were aiming to locate a product or service vice find information about it.
• "Just over 35% of all queries appear to have the kind of general research goals (questions, undirected requests for information, and advice-seeking) for what traditional information retrieval systems were designed."
• Navigational searches were much less common than expected (~13% of total search. Incidentally 62% of searches were informational and 25% were for resources.

They stated the lack of distribution of AltaVista and its reputation for having powerful search capabilities might have thrown their research off and they hoped to eventually be testing Yahoo! results.

Originally found on Cre8tive Flow blog.

Not that Exciting
Google updates the Google Toolbar to allow browsing by name.

More Exciting
Google updates backlinks! It appears as though they are showing many more low ranking (< PageRank 4) backlinks than they usually do. In addition certain high ranking backlinks are not showing up in backlink search results using the link:www.mysite.com search feature.

More info on the Recent Google Update
Visual PageRank has not been updated, just backlinks, even after they update that it will be uncertain if they are changining what links they accept as backlinks, or if the the backlinks shown even corelate to the actual links they use to determine relevancy. In addition some mild speculation is floating about that Google may be trying to look at relevancy more on high PageRank links.

Last Google Update...
Last update they started showing backlinks from many of the sites that had their PageRank blocked. It was obvious to some (including me) that those backlinks were not significantly affecting relevancy back then.

What is up with these Google Updates?
Many of the recent changes at Google seem as though they are aimed at making link brokering a much less effective (or at least much more confusing) business. Going forward I believe the ticket is going to be getting tons of links from various different websites.

Bulk Low PageRank Link Purchases
In a few forums recently I have noticed people trying to rent hundreds of links from various IP addresses for a few bucks each. This perhaps will become a more effective and cheaper technique of link purchasing than buying a few powerful links or just sponsoring a single powerful site.

SEO Forum Opinions on this Google Update
V7N Web Dev Community: Google Update
Search Guild: Google July Update
Webmaster World: July Update?

This may not have a bunch to do with SEO, but it is interesting stuff to me :)

AlwaysOn is holding their Innovation Summit and today is the last of the three day series. You can view the webcast free by going to their site.

Lots of cool internet names there such as: Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, Larry Lessig, David Sifry, & FCC Chairman Michael Powell.

Also interesting is that Mr. Powell opened up a blog on the AO network with comments open. I bet that was kind of a publicity stunt for the conference. There is no way that he is going to keep that feedback loop open longterm.

In case you have never noticed the little logo off to the right side of my home page I usually use FireFox for most of my browsing (as it is way cooler than Internet Explorer).

Recently MozDev came up with a PageRank hack for the status bar which looks fairly nice (especially when compared to the images used for the PRGoogleBar).

Currently I have both installed because as an SEO I just can't ever get too much PageRank. :) Unfortunately they do not work with Safari :(

What about Safari
Recently Shawn (over at Digital Point) was bored and created a tool to help Mac users view PageRank.

At the NYC SES conference JupiterMedia stated that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originate from search originate from the free (or organic) side.

Recently Atlas DMT released a PDF report titled The Atlas Rank Report: How Search Engine Rank Impacts Traffic which showed how the clickthrough rates breakdown within pay per click ads.
(thanks to Danny)

Google AdWords PPC Clickthrough Rates

Overture PPC Clickthrough Rates

Overtures ad clickthroughs seem to drop significantly as you move down each position through their rankings, and their open bidding system means the bid prices are more likely to be near one another.

Google's customer delivery seems to drop a big amount from position 1 to 2 and then drops off slowly the rest of the way through. Positions 4 through 6 seem rather close to one another.

The fact that Google hides the bid price and the prices drop down significantly by position means that there is perhaps a wider range of ad positions that can provide a decent ROI on Google than on Overture.

In the future Atlas DMT intends to do conversion rate measurements (which are usually a bit higher as you move to lower ad positions) which will help give a better idea of profit potential by position, but there are many factors outside of bid position that can help determine the click through rate and profitability of your account.

Eventually more search engine marketing measurements will become more sophisticated, ignoring ROI and measuring profit elasticity.

I wonder how long it will be until some of the best PPC bid management software becomes a true comodity.

I reformatted my ebook and have recopied the pay per click section of The SEO Book so people can see a representitive sample of my ebook before they purchase it.

Until I released this there really were not any good free PPC guides (at least that I knew of) since people usually make more money trying to get you to sign up for second tier search engines than they do off just giving you honest info...but you didn't hear that from me :)

The SEO Book is currently 128 pages and the pay per click report is 22 pages.

The free PPC report requires Adobe Reader to view.

Download the Adobe Reader

Download the Pay Per Click Secrets Report

I have recently reformatted my ebook to include a few more goodies such as a Directory XLS checksheet, a quick start checklist, and a quick reference guide to all the SEO tools I use.

Recently (maybe about three weeks ago) I began working on a brand new site idea for a client. Within two days his site was built (my designer is really fast and awesome). Within a week it was ranking well in Google for a fairly competitive commercial phrase with a respectible search volume (thousands of searches per day).

What did I do? I picked a keyword rich site name and registered the site with a ton of directories.

There were some other forces at hand that I am not at liberty to discuss, but the primary driving force behind his rankings is about a few dozen directory links.

John Scott and I have been talking a bunch recently about the power of LINKS FROM UNIQUE IP ADDRESSES and he posted a good example recently in the V7N forums.

Obviously I have a ton more tips inside my SEO Book, but the condensed version is:

• buy a keyword rich domain name

• list it in a ton of directories using those keywords
• write articles and figure out other ways to get links into your site

There are a ton of other things to consider, but for most industries the web is so non competitive that just the above few steps can go a long way.

Shawn over at Digital Point recently launched a banner (and text ad) link exchange program which aims to place links across many different sites.

He runs the ads through an ad server and uses blog or forum plugins which allow the ads to be viewed as static text links by search engines.

I think this sort of network idea is a good idea if it allows people to select their categories. Right now it is in early testing stages, but I am sure Shawn would be willing to add more categories and other cool features as it grows.

The one thing I strugle with is that I am super conservative as an SEO and I would fear that eventually a big link exchange network could garner a penalty. I am going to go to Shawn's forums and ask him about it.

Currently the program is weighted by site size, popularity, and a variety of other factors. There are no profit takers in the program other than profit via improved rankings. Learn more about the new link exchange program.

I asked Shawn a few questions over at his forums.

Do you think search engines will ever be able to penalize such a network if it grows to a large size?

I don't see why it would warrant a penalty to be honest, unless the search engines are going to penalize sites for advertising. {shrug}

But either way, I would say it would be impossible to detect since it's not done with JavaScript, IFRAME or anything else. If you look at the source, the ad is embedded within the HTML source.

I actually had a problem being able to automatically validate that the ads were in place, because *I* couldn't even detect it. I did figure out a way to do it by having the system insert a unique/random HTML comment tag while the validation happens. But the tag is always different, and only turned on for the split second the validation routines happen. It's also a good way to make sure people aren't spoofing the ads to make it look like they are serving them without actually doing it.

I guess my question is "Is this idea truely scalable?" and "What other features do you intend to ad to improve relevancy when the network grows?"

I think it should be scalable, I mean I don't see why it wouldn't be.

Once the network grows will probably add things like the ability for site owners to classify the type of ads they have, then allow other users to optionally set their ads to only show certain types of ads.