New Google Advertising Patent
New Google Advertising Patent

Open Directory adds Affiliation Declaration Database
Editors of the ODP are invited to add their affiliations to the affiliation database to help minimize conflicts of interest.

Blog PR Tracker
It looks as though someone is marketing a blog monitoring system to be used as a PR system. Blabble is currently in beta testing.

Blog Topic Streamer
Waypath now offers blog tracking by topic stream.

Microsoft Answer Engine Research (Ask MSR/AnswerBot)
info from Gary.

Google "Search Harder" Button
Google creates a new button at the end of search results which provides a different set of search results. (beta test only seen by some)
regular Google search for cars
search harder Google search for cars
more info about the "search harder" button

Google Search Algorithm Change
Webby posts about a Google algorithm change he noticed on August 25th. Apparently Webby noticed this effect most on deep inner pages of large travel related sites which had extremely low link popularity into some of their less popupular travel destination pages.

Not really sure where they collected their data from or how accurate it is, but Aleksika has a keyword directory and some other neato looking keyword stuff.

(thanks to Text Link Brokers)

Browsers:
Don't use Internet Explorer, Browse Happy...

Evil Site Registration:
Don't waste your time...use Bug Me Not!

A bunch of SEO conferences are scheduled to occur between now and the end of the year.

What: SEO Roadshow
Where: London
When: September 18th at high noon
Price: 100% Free

What: WebmasterWorld's Search Conference #7
Where: Las Vegas
When: November 16th - 18th
Price: $399 until September 15th
Hotel Tip: Harrah's has a special around this time frame...where it costs less than $50 a day ;) http://www.harrahs.com/hot_deals/las_deals.html

What: Search Engine Strategies
Where: Chicago
When: December 13th - 16th
Price: $1,595 before November 30th, $1,695 afterward.
single day pass: $495 before November 30th, $595 afterward.
Expo only pass: Free in advance ($25 On-Site) ... in some of the past SES conferences Google has been known to give out $300 AdWords credit passes at SES. Not sure if they will this year, but there are usually a few fun things to pick up.

(there is also an SES in Stockholm October 27th -28th)

Google News
Google News now has a geographic based drop down menu to allow you to filter news results by location.

Google's Blogger
Google took the disturbing looking ads off the top of their free hosted blogs. They now have a useful Blogger toolbar which resides at the top of their hosted blogs(which has a cool "next blog" function). They also opened up hosted blogs to their AdSense program.

Google's Purchases?
Perhaps with all that equity now would be a good time for Google to go on a buying binge? Some people think DCLK and MNST would be good Google properties.
(thanks to SEW forums)

Lycos now has a new Discussion Search Beta. cool.

I would like to see a free search engine that extensively searches blogs, forums, and news sites in near real time for free :) This is a step in the right direction. Extremely useful.

One cool feature Lycos should add is "sort by date," but the tool is still just a beta release right now.

An Indian company could power internet giant Google's next killer application. Geodesic Information Systems, a Mumbai-based company listed on the BSE, is believed to be running a pilot project for what could some day be the Google Instant Messenger. Sources told CNBC-TV18 that the company got the go-ahead to develop the prototype after meeting Google's founders in Mountain View, California. source

thanks to Nacho

I suppose this does not have a ton to do with SEO, but it does relate to Google and I found it interesting.

The following article / report talks about how the economic environment which help fostered the creation of Google may be hurt by the cutting of capital gains taxes.

Here is a short review and the full report. The report is a 60 page PDF which I have not yet read.

100 via eTrade (for some reason Yahoo! was showing 140 though)

...check it out here (quotes have a 20 minute delay)

Hip and cool ...Yahoo!

New blog about Yahoo! Search. Yahoo! Search Blog announced by Jeremy Z.

Jeremy also recently announced Atlas OnePoint on his blog.

Terrar for Sale
My Buddy Chris Ridings is selling off Terrar, his RSS search engine.

If I were more technically inclined I would really want to buy it. I think it could be used as an amazing PR tool used to track what various people are saying about other people in real time...similar to Web Fountain but at a much lower cost.

Here is his full post about the Terrar sale. You can contact him via PM at SearchGuild if interested.

Paparazzi Search?
Ask Jeeves offers celebrity search. Example: Elvis (who is not dead by the way)

Taking a Break
The MSN tech preview has ended...for now at least. They will be back soon though and likely more evil than ever :)

Completely off topic, (not really any sort of SEO news) just a thanks to a few cool people
Recently some people have been giving my ebook cool reviews. I am somewhat new to the web and even flattered that some of these people would mention my book, but thanks to:

• Jarrod Hundt of Text Link Brokers;

• many wonderful people at SEW Forums; &
• & Dominic, especially for his big support of my fun little GOOG game, for which I am up to #5 now. the #1 / #2 site has links from Harvard law with GOOG in the anchor, so it might be a bit hard to take them out. Yahoo! Finance is right up there now too.

To trade as soon as Wednesday... according to CBS Marketwatch

MSN Sponsoring more than Chicago SES Conference?
Why is this third site resolving to the MSN IP address? They could not have thought that it would be good PR...

found in SEW forums

update: evidentally people are doing this to many other large companies too. just point your DNS details at their name servers. I still think its funny though.

What is 3 Way Linking?
Some webmasters own multiple sites and try to build up one of their specific sites by offering link exchanges from their other sites. In doing this they add a link to you on their other site and get you to link to the main site they are trying to build up.

What Benefits Exist in 3 Way Linking?
Citation analysis works well in academic environments but kinda falls a part in a commercially driven direct marketing environment (which is what the web is).

Many search algorithms may be able to detect link trading as an artificial means of boosting the popularity of both sites and discount the value of these links.

By doing a three way link from sites hosted on different servers a webmaster can build link popularity without the search engine being able to detect the link trading as easily.

The Problem with 3 Way Link Exchanges

Most people engaging in 3 way link exchanges are doing it with the express intent to manipulate search results. This typically means they are trying to make automated bots think their ideas are better than they are, and are willing to do deceptive things to do it.

There are legitimate reasons to do three way links, but most of the three way link partnerships I have been offered are not worth touching with a 10 ft pole.

The real problem is that if their two sites are not connected and they are primarily working to benefit the link popularity of their main site then it does not really hurt them if the site linking to you gets banned. If those sites get banned then they parse no link popularity to you.

In doing this webmasters can agressively market their high margin websites while keeping them somewhat shielded from the dangerous effects of their aggressive promotion.

In fact many marketers might set up 20 or 30 or more secondary sites to echange links with.

An Example 3 Way Link Technique
Some people will set up a bunk directory and ask for you to link back to one of their partner sites. In doing this they get links that would cost them thousands of dollars a month for making an investment which is sometimes less than $100.

They do not mind linking out to somewhat crapy sites because they are getting tons of free marketing for 5 - 10 minutes worth of work each day. I have recently seen more and more directories partnering up to promote more and more sleezy high margin pharmacy and debt type websites.

3 Way Linking: Moral of the Story
If you are trading links with a debt reduction site on your personal hobby site to list in a directory of some sort it is not a fair trade.

Many other sites will be suspicious of you and not want to trade links with you if you have shady off topic links on your site.

If people you do not know want you to trade three way links you should do a bit of investigating before just saying yes.

Shawn over at DigitalPoint keeps making his stuff better and better. He just recently added a geographic filter to his Keyword Suggestion Tool.

MSN Search Sponsors SES Chicago
Which likely means that they intend to have their technology ready before the end of the SES conference (which starts December 13).

MSN Search Research
Block level link analysis (PDF) - talks about breaking page down into each of their visual sections to extract semantical information. Builds upon Hits and PageRank by taking it to the block level.

If this technology takes off it would require those who rent links to use a bit more page space for each link rental by requiring it to be embedded in content. I have already seen some link brokers renting links in this manner.

Give MSN Tech Preview a Try
MSN Tech Preview

thanks to Andy

Better and Better
What SEMPO is NOT getting, part deux by Mike Grehan.
A tantalizing extract...

...the sound of furious back-peddling and the odd waft of BS.

A must read for anyone in the SEO / SEM industry.

Buy Now, Buy Now, Buy Now!!!
(not an official stock recommendation)
Google to close bidding registration Mañana. They need to stop playing around and get done with this IPO thing already...

A Rose by any Other Name...
Kozoru is to be a new natural language search engine. They just got financing and David Warthen (Ask Jeeves co founder) is on the board of directors.

Hopefully they change that name to something easier to remember if they want to be successful...

thanks to Tara & Andy

What is Google AdWord Generator?
Jeff Alderson of Xybercode recently created a new Google AdWords tool.

His tool helps you create Google AdWords ads from a prepopulated set of successful marketing phrases. Google AdWord Generator takes a list of over 5,000 sales terms in 65 categories and creates various AdWords ads on the fly.
Not all of the ads are going to be a perfect fit for what you are trying to do, but by glancing at a few dozen variations (they show 8 variations at a time and take less than a second to generate another 8 ads) you may be able to find a few great ad ideas.

Importance of Ad Copy
Many people do not realize that a large part of the sales cycle occurs before people even click on your ads.

People see what they want to see and taste what they want to taste. If you give people a stronger presell they are more likely to convert. By changing my ad copy on one of my AdWords ads I saw my conversion rate go from 1.5 to 3.5%. John Caples once saw an ad pull 19.5 times better than another.

Is Google AdWord Generator worth $97?
If you are serious about Google AdWords and internet marketing then $97 means next to nothing.

Google AdWord Generator alone will not make you rich, but if it helps you create just a few quality ads then this software will pay for itself in no time at all.

Who is Google AdWord Generator Best For?
You still need to find the right products and do keyword targeting, but Google AdWord Generator is a good fit for:

• People who struggle to write ad creatives.

• Affiliate marketers who market tons of different products and need to make ads quick.
• People who are writing ads for large ecommerce sites and need to write tons of ads.
• This software could likely even help experienced ad copywriters think of more good ad creatives quicker.

Google AdWord Generator Bonuses
I think the sales copy is a bit overdone and some of the bonuses are more about getting you to buy more stuff versus giving you good quality bonuses. I recommend not buying the stuff for sale within the bonus products.

On a whole the Google AdWord Generator is a useful product which will surely pay for itself over time.

Other Copywriting Tips
Right now I am reading Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples and would recommend reading it to anyone in marketing.

If You Buy Google AdWord Generator...
Realize that there is a learning cycle to the Google AdWords game and not everyone will make money right away.

If you are new to Google AdWords you will want to read a report filled with tips on how to use AdWords. A few months back I created a free one ready for your download (I update it regularly). Additionally I would recommend the reports wrote by Andrew Goodman and Perry Marshall.

The Google AdWord Generator comes with a 120 day money back guarantee.

New Shopping Search Engine
Setup.com

"We founded StepUp.com because local shopping is broken, and our mission is to fix it. Currently, half of the 80 million web shoppers in the U.S. prefer to purchase offline, but the Yellow Pages, the most-used local shopping resource, only list generic categories and force customers to call around in order to find specific products. This makes local shopping tedious at best," said Kendall Fargo, President and CEO of StepUp.com. source

One bad thing of note about this new search engine is that it requires a location be set. Part of the convenience of online shopping is that it breaks boundaries. When you do not set your address before searching your get an error message which says "No address set. Cannot perform local search. Please enter an address." The fact that they do not have any type of global default is kinda dumb.

On The Other Side of the Pond...
Overture now the exclusive sponsored search result provider to Kelkoo.

If anyone is going to the SEO Roadshow next month make sure to take proper precautions before drinking the water...apparently there is Prozac in it.

If Your Longing for San Francisco
Why don't you rant about Google's sometimes confusing ad policy when you get there...

Thanks to Gary

Yahoo! Renting Links
Yahoo! was recently renting / leasing / buying / otherwise acquiring some high PageRank keyword rich links from gasbuddy.com. Normally when large companies buy these types of ads they use tracking codes, but these ads were straight links which are analyzed by search engines. Was Yahoo! Buying PageRank? Was Yahoo! Trying to Manipulate Search Results
Only Yahoo! knows what their true intentions were with the links, but within 4 days of people mentioning the links in the SEW forums the links were dropped. If they were not buying the links to manipulate the search results then one would wonder why they were not using a tracking code.

The Yahoo! ad unit used keyword rich links. They pointed links at
http://autos.yahoo.com/ with "cars" as the anchor text
http://used-cars.autos.yahoo.com/used_cars.html with "used cars" as the anchor text
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html with "new cars" as the anchor text &
http://used-cars.autos.yahoo.com/kbb/ with "Kelley Blue Book" as the anchor text

What Did Yahoo!'s Ad Look Like
Their Gas Buddy ad unit looked like this:

Yahoo!'s Other Ads
Yahoo! Shopping is still renting other high PageRank links through the Internet.com network to boost their rankings for high margin consumer electronic items.

anchor text "cameras" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Digital%20Cameras:20148412

anchor text "laptops" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Laptops:20148417

anchor text "PDAs" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:PDAs:20148420

Yahoo!'s Problem with Link Renting
Yahoo! runs their own search engine which powers a ton of search worldwide. Not only are they renting links that manipulate Google's search results, but the links also manipulate the Yahoo! Search search results.

These links are essentially used to build keyword rich link popularity from powerful websites, which may fall under the following unacceptible practices:

• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity

as set by the Yahoo! Search quality guidelines.

Recently someone at the SEW forums stated that Yahoo! told them the problem with their site is that they have too many links pointing at their site.

The Problem with Yahoo! Renting Links

Yahoo! manually edits their search results. If other people have too many links pointing at their sites it is a problem, but if Yahoo! does it then it is ok? why?

Yahoo! owns a valuable network. What they do with that network is up to them. When people search for information Yahoo! can throw whatever ads they want around the results, but the results themselves should not be internally tainted.

As an oracle of information an ethical question is raised when Yahoo! is paying people to edit their results and paying other people to manipulate those same results.

What Next?

If Yahoo! decided what they want to place in their search results how can I trust them? What happens when they personalize my search? Will that mean that I get biased crap promoting more Yahoo! stuff? Will I not be able to find the information I need?

There is a level of trust associated with search. If Yahoo! wants to manipulate Google search results that is fine. If they are going to do that then they should prevent those same pages from being indexed in their own search results.

Yahoo!'s pages rank in the top 5 of Yahoo! Search for "cars," "new cars," & "used cars." Interesting how those search terms match up with the links they were renting.

Yahoo! just shot themselves in the foot if they were hoping to catch Google in search anytime soon.

Another Link Renting Problem
If you look at the Internet.com commerce partner network
http://www.jupitermedia.com/partners/
you will notice that it is a random collection of websites. The only thing preventing these links from being considered a "link farm" is that:

• they are expensive

• they are attached to a huge powerful network
• and Jupiter Media is making a ton of money from them.

  Also, how can a company claim it

  provides unbiased research, analysis and advice, backed by proprietary data, to help companies profit from the impact of the Internet and emerging technologies on their business. source

  and yet sell keyword rich ad space:

  • to random sites

  • throughout its own parent company network
  • which manipulates search results?

Google IPO
May occur as soon at Tuesday.

New Search Engine in China
China's Sohu.com unleashes sogou.com which means "search dog"

Search.com Launches new Features
Thumbnail screenshots, custom colors, specialty searches, & customizable category searches - more info

Thumbs Down SEMPO
They are still failing to address Mike Grehan's questions despite many opportunities too. Perhaps there could be something better. Maybe there could be an organization with the same mission statement that SEMPO has which ACTUALLY AIMS TO DO WHAT THERE MISSION STATEMENT IS.

Many people have called SEMPO a marketing scam. SEMPO blatently ignores feedback and has no clue about how to pull their own name out of the mud. Not defending yourself when dozens of your peers question your intent with hundreds of forum post is an admission of guilt in my book.

I see absolutely no value in joining or supporting the SEMPO organization.

Yahoo! Renting Links?
Yahoo! has been renting links from the Internet.com network. Generally most people view the Internet.Commerce partner links as links from PageRank more than ads (since those links are rarely relevant to the page content and rarely get clicked on).

Some people think it is a big deal that they are perhaps buying links for PageRank, but I think the bigger problem at hand is that they also edit their own search results. It becomes a sticky situation if they edit their results and rent links which manipulate them.

When I glanced the links into this page were using "cellular phones" as the link text and yet Yahoo! is using "cell phones" in the page title. Somebody needs to teach them SEO...

[update] if you look at sites like gas buddy you will see that they totally are buying links to manipulate search results...almost pro style. keyword rich anchor text, keyword rich file names, keywords in the page copy, etd. [/update]

In Other News Down Under
Sensis has new competition? Yahoo! says no, but for some reason Yahoo! just created an Australian local search directory and put a new snazzy local search tab on the au.Yahoo.com home page.

Overture recently released a free "how to" PDF manual to help Overture account managers get the most out of their account. The Overture Advertiser Workbook comes with 7 chapters and an appendix.

One rant / complaint I have is that each section is its own download :(

Some other people have said it is rather basic info. I have not read the whole thing yet, but at its current price it is probably worth a glance.

thanks to Andrew. oops, wrong one. thanks to Andrew