Various Internet News...

TV Search?
Google is working on it...

Namebombing
Tim Bray talks Namebombing...you saw it here first. ;)

Interesting
The (Transparent) Shopping Society

Go FireFox
Google thinks FireFox is cool...

SEO Toolbar
Not sure if this sends your data to SEO Inc or not, but if not then some may find their SEO Toolbar useful. A while ago my buddy Dale Brown also created a SEO Toolbar offering.

Open Source Developer Search
Koders
(thanks Andy)

In Search of Disclosure
PDF about search engine disclosure of paid placements

Lock Your Domains...
ICANN new transer policy

RSS Ads, Public Spam Reporting

Pheedo
RSS Ads are here...Overture and Feedburner may be nearing a partnership too.

Getting Less for Your Buck...
PPC prices rise 14% on the month.

Public Spam Report
goes awry... DaveN states why many "spammers" still use blogs and guestbooks:

Blogs are now a smoke screen. I monitor the same areas as you, and I saw a site come in to the top 20 with only 20 backlinks before the blog screen went up..

Generally it is a bad idea to post public spam complaints. Its doubtful that search engine reps will see them before they get snipped (or react to them if they do), and you may introduce additional competitors to your keywords while making enemies.

SEO Forum Growth, Google Posts AdWords Content Policy

SMA UK
Releases membership rates.

Go Big or Stay Home
Less than a month old, the Uncover the Net directory just joined the World Wide Web Consortium, already has over 100,000 pages in Google's index, and is running a free site submission program this month... click here for details of the promotion.

Google
Stock 30 points off its peak. Perhaps the market did not like the new (finally published) AdWords Content policy.

She Comes and Goes...
RCJordan starts a thread about how SEO Forums build up and die off...lots of great comments there too.

Talk to me:
Speegle

Sterling Blog Comment Spam
Having a blog is a good way to track what markets are exceptionally competitive or which ones people think are worth a ton of money. I have been getting a bunch of forced sex spam recently...apparently some people are into that, and it is perhaps a hard market to penetrate.

Today I just got a comment from Sara B Sterling, pointing at http://www.sarahsterling.com/

Notice the Sterling anchor text...bet that becomes a silver website.

Canadian Dollar:
At 12 year high against the US dollar. After the election some Canadians are looking to use the additional funds to rescue people from the states, while others just want to buy the blue states outright.

NameBomb, Yahoo! has Happy Quarter, Other Stuff...

NameBomb
(no relation to Tom Jones) ... Danny Sullivan coins another phrase.

Yahoo!
Has a stellar quarter & brings Jeremy Zawodny back to search.

Google
Negativity seems to help them... and they are off to India [added: where they are talked about image, speech, & multimedia search. also:
''There has been much speculation. But our work is focussed on improving the browsing experience,'' Google co-Founder and President (Technology) Sergey Brin told reporters here.

''Today's browsers are doing a pretty good job, but they can be improved. What we are looking to do is to enhance the quality of the browsing experience,'' he said. :source]

MSN
Robin Good on Search Champs...

Beta
Exalead

Survey Says!
My buddy Rich Stokes is running a survey about PPC advertising. Please help out. Everyone who takes it gets a free e-book on new AdWords strategies, and in addition, one in every fifty respondents will get $100 in cash.

Google, Yahoo!, Viral Marketing, & Feedback

Search Google & Yahoo!
(or Yahoo! & Ask Jeeves or Ask Jeeves & Google)

Free tool extracts the overlapping search results of whatever search engines you chose. It lists them at the top and then lists the other results below somewhat like a meta search engine. Give Jux2 a try.

found on Battelle's Searchblog.

Don't Commit Bid Fraud Against UK Government
The UK Government jumps into PPC. Also be careful about click fraud because the UK government proposes to make any and all offenses arrestable.

All About Haifa
Google recently did a presentation there. (PDF)

some stats...

  • Over 10% of URLs change from month to month.

  • There are over 100 million unique search queries each day.

interesting things about Haifa not covered in the presentation...

  • A Russian guy named Boris has a cool submarine oriented bar there.

  • Many cab drivers in Haifa get kickbacks form the diamand industry and brothels.
  • The water in the Haifa harbor is green and will eat the grassy sea skirt off a submarine in a couple days at most.
  • Haifa lets people pump sanitaries right into the harbor (or at least did a few years ago).
  • I was on a Haifa beach when there was a bomb threat and left Haifa less than a week before the violence started again in 2000. I was also at the mall where I am told a bomb exploded just days after I left.

Viral Marketing
ChangeThis is a new cause driven viral marketing driven website.

Its not viral till you link to it though, so get your links up quick ;)

Yahoo! Link Renting: a Critical Look at Yahoo!

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?

Random Tidbits...

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.

New MSN Search Technology Trial, New MSN Search Format

Wow, July is already here...

New Look MSN
MSN launched their new look MSN search engine results page. Now they clearly separate ads and organic listings.

How Other Search Engines Look
Google has always done this and Yahoo! started testing mid June and will release the new look soon. This leaves one to Ask Jeeves when they intend to dump the 10 ad blended serp technique.

While Asking Jeeves...
MicroSoft has not publicly stated any great interest, but

Ask Jeeves President Steve Berkowitz suggested he might be open to deal if it was in the interests of the company's shareholders, although he did not comment directly on any offers coming from Microsoft. - source

New MSN Search Features
In addition MSN has added a drop down box to allow people to search for specific things such as movies or news. Elsewhere MSN added its search technology preview to the MSN sandbox.

Paid Inclusion is Garbage

MSN also decided to filter out their paid inclusion search results. (time to edit my ebook again) "We really we want customers to feel the best about the results being served," MSN's Grothaus said.

Google"It's hard to be sure that the end result of the algorithm would be the same and that everyone is being treated fairly," Google's Silverstein said of allowing paid inclusion.

Ask Jeeves"We will continue to get better at crawling," said Jim Lanzone, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves. "The value proposition of Site Submit has ceased to exist."

More Paid Inclusion is Garbage / Bad Press for Yahoo!
Recently a person I consulted in the past had some of their Yahoo! listings disappear overnight (and from my talking to many other SEOs this is becoming somewhat common). After paying for inclusion into Overture Site Match, my friend's site still does not show up for terms he has shown up for ever since the inception of Yahoo! Search.

He sent them a request question and they gave him a complete crap form letter response that suggested he visit WebmasterWorld to learn more about SEO.

There horrific customer service and near complete disapproval toward the program from SEOs and webmasters has Yahoo! considering dumping or changing the program. (or at least that is what credible sources say)

While I am Picking on Yahoo!
Does anyone know what this is?
RENAMEDBYADMWHILEHIDDENTOALLOWDUPLICATEACCELERATORS

Amazon Switches from Google to A9

Amazon now using Google A9

Amazon has switched it's search from Google to A9. Not really sure if that will make much difference to you or me, but if you like the color brown it is surely a good thing.

The Register also noted that sometimes Amazon's related products may not be related to what you are searching for.

Linking to Good Stuff

Ideally links mean more than link popularity. I am not necissarily a moralist or fan of the ethical SEO tag, but I understand some of the fundamental points of marketing. It is good business to be associated with other good businesses.

Have I bought links? Yup. Have I sold links? Yup.

Generally most links do not fall under the buy, sell, or trade category though. Usually they are earned.

When most of your links are greed driven, you are nothing more than a commodity who is working against technology and the forces of nature. When you start linking to things that are good then good things start to link to you.

This morning I wrote a quick article called Keeping Customers, where I attempted to explain that the best way to have customers come back is by sending them away to other good resources.

The web is just a sea of information and the traffic I get is never my traffic to keep.

What I did not realize is that recently Ammon Johns wrote a great little analogy piece called The Real Meaning of Links which describes what I was trying to say a bit better than what I wrote.

(found from Search Engine Roundtable)

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