Google News

Jan 26th

The News It appears as Google is doing some updating this weekend, I also saw the new Google search engine results page format at a friends house (originally noticed at WebProNews).

Google Descriptions How do I get a good snippet?

Google does not usually use the meta description tag, but uses random snippets from the page copy itself. From what I have seen Google likes to pull the keyphrase that was searched for from locations where it is by itself or in small word groupings. Common locations could be headings, lists, and navigation.

The first search engine marketing is in my navigation, the second search engine marketing is from the title of an unorganized list.

The keys to getting a good snippet are

  • Provide the keyphrases you want to list well in by themselves or in small clusters in a few different locations. These will be the "snippet anchors."

  • Place the words you also want to show in the search results right before and right after these elements on your page.
  • Tweak as necissary!

I also have noticed on some pages with low content Google may also use IMG ALT tags in the snippet. If you search for "black hat seo," my home page of that site is #1 and it has its IMG ALT tag in the snippet. Me Happy! My other site snuck back upward near the top of its field. My friend Daniel told me I am #1 for "search marketing" and #8 for "search engine marketing."

Me Happierestest Google is using an amazing snippet for my other site for the search "search engine marketing."

My snippet reads "... (401)207-1945. Aaron Wall. Search Engine Marketing (home) - you are here. ... The only limits are your motivation and imagination. Search Engine Marketing Tips: ... "

How Many Pages From My Website are Indexed in the Google Index?

Jan 25th

Long title...before the answer was a little complex, requiring the addition of a common word or subtraction of an irrelevant string. Now Google made it a bit simpler.

Over at Webmaster World Google Guy confirmed that you can now find what pages of a site are in the Google index searching for

site:mysite.com

please note that site:seobook.com and site:www.seobook.com provided slightly different results when I tried them.

Originally found at ResearchBuzz

Google AdSense Charts

Jan 25th

Google AdSense has program terms which makes it a bad idea to share your AdSense data with other people. While a site such as AdSense Charts may be fun to use, it would require some real trust for me to use it.

Eventually Google will add features like this chart to their AdSense program, but I do not recommend submitting your data to any third party website, even if they have a privacy policy.

Here is the Google AdSense Charts privacy policy
"We firmly believe that your data is yours and yours alone. Our scripts generate charts from your pasted data but we do not have access to your inputs. The only other information that we collect from our users is aggregate traffic analysis; that is, we monitor how many people visit our site, when they visit our site etc."

And here is their About Us, which seems rather admirable if it is true
"We are web publishers who use and love the Google AdSense program but we are not affiliated with Google in any other way. We believe that Google and the AdSense program has the potential of reviving some of the luster of the internet's early days. With AdSense, great content is rewarded and publishers can recoup some or all of the expenses associated with their sites. AdSenseCharts.com was developed out of our own need to keep a pulse on the success of our AdSense ad placements. Sure you can copy and paste the data into a spreadsheet, but we are sure that you'll find that AdSenseCharts.com makes the process much easier - just a ctrl-A, ctrl-C and a ctrl-V! "

I looked at their site and did not see any upsell or attempt to gain profits from it. This leads me to wonder how they are paying their AdWords ad bills...

Google DomainPark Droppings

Jan 24th

Some people over at WMW are quite disappointed at click quality of Google DomainPark.

Most of what Google does is great in my eyes. The discouraging thing about paying good monies (always wanted to use that word) to people who are cybersquaters buying expired or misspelled domains is that you are promoting the creation of junk which wastes time. These people create ends to the web which is otherwise endless.

AdSense was created to help fund the creation of high quality content. DomainPark rewards people for not creating content.

Google will argue that these DomainPark pages help people find relevant information, but if you asked people knowledgeable about the internet what Ultimate Search does few would say "help people find relevant information."

Ultimate Search has a deal with Overture (Google's biggest rival) which pays him a percentage of the click through price from an add filled directory. He has bought thousands of domain names and the only difference between them is the title and url. They all stink!

Say you want some "True Democracy." What you find is commercial crap...the complete opposite of what the web is about.

Search engines do not execute java. They should not follow java links. I used java coding on the above link such that there will be no PageRank parsed to his evil site. If you ever want to link to evil stuff without parsing any PageRank or link popularity you can view the javascript I used by looking in the status bar when you roll over the above link. Place that string where you normally would place the domain in you href links.

Google please don't be evil :)

Social Networking by Google

Jan 23rd

If we can't buy it we'll build our own...

"Google has quietly released a social networking service called orkut, named after Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google software engineer who developed the project during personal time allowed to him by Google." read more at SearchEngineWatch.

My Ads, Your Ads

In a big fight between Google and Overture ads are spreading through the web.

Kelkoo, the third largest European shopping site, is to carry AdWords ads.

Overture is to display ads on Net Temps job portal, and they resigned a multi year deal with Wanadoo (Europe's #2 ISP).

Caution parady sites are fighting for their share of the pie. Everyone knows about YouHo, but Booble has came out of nowhere!

Eurekster - the Social Search Engine

In marketing the power of the weak tie is astronomical. If you ask a large cross section of society "Who found a job through a weak friend?" the percentage will be exceptionally high. Our friends typically share much of our environment and lifestyle. People who are friends of a friend live in a totally different world and know realities which are completely foreign to us.

Friendster is a free dating and social interaction network which opperates using this idea. Reports have stated that Google wanted to buy them last year for $30 million, but they did not sell.

Google organizes the web based on the social structure of the linking of the entire web. Newer technologies are allowing them to better find local clusters, but The Bost Globe reports that today a new competitor will take this field using the direct route.

For Eurekster to be effective features such as categorizing friends and settings such as trust friends of friends a certain number of levels deep will be necissary. Eurekster works by allowing you to cast a silent vote for a site based on the time you visit the site. Read the official Eurkester about us and Eurkester how it works information.

They hope to get you to download their toolbar and to tell friends about Eurkester via email. Two things which I believe to be errors in spreading this message are that the name of the search engine is hard for me to remember, and that they have a somewhat cluttered home page when compared with the current major search engines.

Google ads in email

Jan 18th

Syndication AdSense ads are going to appear more regularly in email newsletters.

Google Ads New Codes

Jan 13th

Internetnews announced some of the additional features Google has added, including USPS codes, UPC codes, Flight codes, and zip codes. Thats a whole lot of codes!

In addition the article briefly talks about how Google can make additional revenue off of the Flight numbers and UPC codes.

"When you type in the UPC code, it comes out with a link to Upcdatabase.com but some other information as well," Li said. "It's mining the information that Google has in its example but also information about the product as well. If I'm either the product manufacturer or a competitor, I could go to Google and buy my UPC number."

Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Just another tip on improving conversion rates with Google AdWords. When search words appear in a Google ad they are bolded. A good way to improve click through rate (and thus lower price per click) is to place keywords in the ad.

Sometimes it may not be practical to create 100 different ads and 100 different groupings. If you have similar terms which can use the same creative description, but you would like to have the title dynamically match searched keywords you can.

The syntaxt for Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion is {keyword: }

When you create the AdWords creative place {keyword: } in the first line and then fill out the rest of the creative like normal. Automatically your title will match the search terms which will improve click through rates. Please note that Google does not want this feature used on search terms which are mis spelled or otherwise break their ad policies.

When you use {keyword: } make sure you place a keyword after it so that search terms which may be too long or are not processed correctly still have an ad to show. I know this because I had one of my Google AdWords ads disapproved for not doing this. For me I would probably use something like {keyword:SEO Book}.

Some people will want to try this with a huge catalog of products and will lose money in the process. When products are widely varying you want to send the person to the specific page for that product so you must specify that as well.

This technique is likely to be most profitable to those who use it on smaller niche specific areas...the whole thing that makes Google so appealing is that you can customize every aspect of your ad and track every cent spent from begining to end.

Dynamic keyword insertion capitalization:
{keyword:} will make the title small
{KeyWord:} will capitalize all the words in the Google AdWords ad title.

Pages






    Email Address
    Pick a Username
    Yes, please send me "7 Days to SEO Success" mini-course (a $57 value) for free.

    Learn More

    We value your privacy. We will not rent or sell your email address.