One Policy, One Google Experience

We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

Notice of change

March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

• Easy to work across Google
• Tailored for you
• Easy to share and collaborate
• Protecting your privacy hasn’t changed
• Understand how Google uses your data
• Got questions? We’ve got answers

Many countries approach privacy issues differently and there is no consistent global standard on which all countries agree. Google’s privacy policy is designed to be a single, clear, global statement of our approach to privacy, and our privacy practices under it are designed to meet applicable law around the world.

New Google Privacy policy

• 2,229 words
• 11,949 characters (not counting spaces)
• 14,435 characters (including spaces)
• 91 paragraphs
• 281 lines

Summary:

Googles Privacy Policy explains:

• What information we collect and why we collect it.
• How we use that information.
• The choices we offer, including how to access and update information.

Information we collect

We collect information in two ways:

• Information you give us.
• Information we get from your use of our services.

This information includes:

• Device information
• We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number).
• Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.
• Log information
• When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs.
• Location information
• When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device. Certain services include a unique application number. We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.
• Cookies and anonymous identifiers

How we use information we collect

• If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.
• We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know. We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent.
• Google processes personal information on our servers in many countries around the world.
• Review and control certain types of information tied to your Google Account by using Google Dashboard.
• You can also opt out of certain Google advertising services.
• Take information out of many of our services.

Information you share
Many of our services let you share information with others. Remember that when you share information publicly, it may be indexable by search engines, including Google.

Accessing and updating your personal information
Whenever you use our services, we aim to provide you with access to your personal information. We aim to maintain our services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction.

Information we share
We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply:

We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

• access or retain information stored as part of your account.
• restrict your ability to delete or edit information or privacy settings.
• Please refer to your domain administrator’s privacy policy for more information.

We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to…

For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.

Information security
Our Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by Google Inc. and its affiliates, including services offered on other sites (such as our advertising services), but excludes services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

Changes
Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time.

New Google Privacy Policy Link

New Google Terms of Service

• 1,671 words
• 8,475 characters (not counting spaces)
• 10,100 characters (including spaces)
• 46 paragraphs
• 187 lines

We’ve rewritten them to make them more readable and to reduce the repetition and legalese. The terms explain more simply the legal terms associated with the use of our services, including how we treat content that users submit. We’ve also consolidated many of our terms, with most products now using the Google Terms of Service and dozens fewer products than before using additional or separate terms.

Summary:

Thanks for using our products and services (“Services”). The Services are provided by Google Inc. By using our Services, you are agreeing to these terms. Additional terms will be available with the relevant Services, and those additional terms become part of your agreement with us if you use those Services.

Using our Services

Don’t misuse our Services. Using our Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in our Services or the content you access. Our Services display some content that is not Google’s. In connection with your use of the Services, we may send you service announcements, administrative messages, and other information. Your Google Account

You may need a Google Account in order to use some of our Services. Google’s privacy policies explain how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use our Services. Your Content in our Services

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. About Software in our Services

Some Services may let you adjust your automatic update settings.

Modifying and Terminating our Services

We are constantly changing and improving our Services. Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time.

OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET OUT IN THESE TERMS OR ADDITIONAL TERMS, NEITHER GOOGLE NOR ITS SUPPLIERS OR DISTRIBUTORS MAKE ANY SPECIFIC PROMISES ABOUT THE SERVICES. WE PROVIDE THE SERVICES “AS IS”.

Liability for our Services

Business uses of our Services

New Google Terms of Service Link

The Data Liberation Front

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to “liberate” their products.
data liberation mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

More info on Google and your data.
Good to Know

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google News – The Short Story is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Baidu and bing Partnership

The Chinese search mogul Baidu and Microsoft announced yesterday they have struck a deal to offer bing web services in English. It’s expected to take place by the end of the year.

Baidu

Baidu dominates the native language search in China with a whopping 83% of the market. With the English language searches increasing to as many as 10 million a day they were looking for a powerful partner. Google moved last year to Hong Kong to escape Beijing’s censorship.

A year and a half after Google pulled its popular search engine out of mainland China, partly over concerns about censorship, its rival Microsoft has struck a deal with the biggest Chinese search engine, Baidu.com, to offer Web search services in English.

Microsoft – bing

This partnership will allow Baidu to offer better English search experiences and results through Microsoft’s bing search engine.

Microsoft appears to be accepting the Chinese censorship with out missing a stroke. It looks like they are keeping their eyes on China’s 470 million internet user prize.

Google declined to comment on the partnership between Baidu and Microsoft. But Google says that search is not its biggest business opportunity in China. Instead, it is betting on selling ads to Chinese companies to show users outside China and selling display ads to run on non-Google Web sites, neither of which is dependent on search. Chinese advertisers spent $1.7 billion on display ads last year, one of the highest such spends in the world, according to Google. The company continues to employ 500 people in China and says revenue there is growing year over year.

If you are planning on entering the 470 million internet user Chinese market you might want to re-work your bing strategy.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

bing and Baidu Partner is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

MetaCrawler Broken for Day Number 2

Both yesterday and today when I tried using metacrawler the “metasearch engine”, the results came up fine. The problem arose when I clicked on any of the results.

When I clicked on the result I wished to visit I received a “Runtime Error” message.

An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a “web.config” configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its “mode” attribute set to “Off”.

I noticed at around 7AM Pacific Daylight Time today metacrawler resolved this problem for a few minutes.

At first I thought this might have been their tribute to Memorial Day.
At this time metacrawler is still rendering a Runtime Error.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

MetaCrawler Breaks is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

How Does the Google Panda Algorithm Update Effect SEO?

Just one day after Cinco de Mayo Google released a blog post “More guidance on building high-quality sites”. With this post Google has dealt with a number of questions that they have been trying to resolve with their algorithm update.

Of course, we aren’t disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don’t want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google’s mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we’ve been looking at the issue…

Here is the fresh list of the questions Google is trying to answer with Panda:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Writing an algorithm to assess page or site quality is a much harder task, but we hope the questions above give some insight into how we try to write algorithms that distinguish higher-quality sites from lower-quality sites.

So what does this mean to us SEOs?

If we are wearing the SEO white hat nothing.
It is our job to help create great content that deals with all the questions above. What good is it to get visitors to your site to just have them turn around and walk out the door (metaphorically that is). We need to engage our visitors and give them value.

If you haven’t been keeping in mind most or even all of the list above why not?

If you had a brick and mortar store would you only have a door? Your customers would walk through your door and not be able to find anything they were looking for. How long would you be in business with this store?

While I believe the list above are some very lofty goals shouldn’t they be what we are striving for?

If you shoot for the moon and fall short you will be no where. If you shoot for the stars and fall short you will be able to reach the moon with ease.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Panda Update – Update is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Google Local What is Ahead in 2011?

Here we are one week into 2011 and I am finally getting around to putting up my first blog post this year.
Google Local has been very erratic the past few months.
I figured I’d toss around some of my Google Local observations, predictions, and conclusions.

Google Local Observations

• Google renames the Google Local Business Center Google Places
   
• New display for business listings appearing when users submit search queries related to local businesses

 

• Local results moves around from the top of the organic results to the 3rd position

 

• Google’s local Results change from the top 3 inserted into the organic results to multiple results

 

• Google no longer lists a page organically and in the local results

 

• Today Google places the local results in the number 2 position

 

• Google places 7 local results on the first page

 

• Google now only places 6 organic results on the first page

 

• Google places 13 results for a search term like “portland window cleaning” on page one

Google Local Predictions

• Local businesses will be scrambling to recoup their SERPs

 

• Local businesses will be forced to become more familiar with the various factors which may influence local search rankings

 

• Local search and organic results will become more subservient accomplices in your first page results on Google

 

• You will see more deep linking in the top listed websites

 

• You will see more mini sites being used

 

• You will see a lot more changes to the Google first page results display in 2011

Google Local Conclusions

• Google isn’t really trying to be more relevant with their new displayed results

 

• Google is trying to create more value to their Google Places model

 

• Google is trying to create more revenue with Google Places

 

• Google is trying to create more of a need for AdWords

 

• Google is not my friend they just want access to my pockets!

 
Don’t even get me started with Google instant! That’s fodder for another post.
 

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Local New Year Predictions is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Dogpile and MetaCrawler have both been Broken for nearly a Week Now

When I first noticed that both MetaCrawler and Dogpile were getting a “timed out message” I chalked it up to a network glitch. As time went by and they still weren’t loading I figured it was a problem with Comcast or the dns server I was using.

I did my due diligence and searched the internet for someone reporting problems with these sites. The only thing I could find was…

InfoSpace Appoints William J. Ruckelshaus as President and Acting Chief Executive Officer

InfoSpace (News – Alert), Inc. (NASDAQ:INSP), today announced that the Company has named InfoSpace Board member and former chief financial officer of AudienceScience, William (Bill) J. Ruckelshaus, as president and acting chief executive officer…

InfoSpace, Inc., a leading developer of metasearch products, is focused on bringing the best of the Web to Internet users. InfoSpace’s proprietary metasearch technology combines the top results from several of the largest online search engines, providing fast and comprehensive search results. InfoSpace sites include Dogpile® (www.dogpile.com), InfoSpace.com® (www.infospace.com), MetaCrawler® (www.metacrawler.com), WebCrawler® (www.webcrawler.com), and WebFetch® (www.webfetch.com).

Could this be the reason for MetaCrqwler and Dogpile being down?

After checking all the metasearch products that Bill took over it appears that they are all broken. He must be having a great first couple of weeks.

Will the InfoSpace metasearch products be resurrected?

MetaCrawler

Dogpile

The importance of MetaCrawler and Dogpile for us SEO folks is that Wordtracker uses a database of over 330 million search terms which is updated on a weekly basis. All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers – Dogpile and Metacrawler.

I use NicheBot to access the Wordtracker database for part of my keyword research as well as many other cool things. How will this affect our info-space?

Any insights?

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

MetaCrawler and Dogpile have been Down for 6 Days is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Conduit Hijacks Firefox on a Windows Computer and Convinces User it is Google

I recently had a client ask me a question about some Google results I couldn’t answer. When I finally figured out the answer it was a case of Conduit taking control of the computers Firefox settings.

He was totally convinced he was using Google so I had the client send me some screen shots of the search results he was getting and the results were very interesting.

The search term was “windows” and…

The above screen shot is a compilation of 3 screens the single screen showed only one organic search result. While Conduit does identify the top results as ads it is not easily apparent to the viewer that there is any difference between the ads and the organic results.

Here is what the searcher saw in his results.

Only the bottom result was organic. All the results above that one were paid Google ads.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
This hijacking even removed the Conduit logo and replaced it with a magnifying glass.

But when I loaded the Conduit search on my Mac using Firefox the logo magically appears.

As you can see from the above Mac screen shot Conduit does place the text “sponsored links” on the page but the uninitiated could easily miss it.

When I went to the Conduit home page on my Mac this is what I saw.

The Conduit logo is the text “Conduit”, so why isn’t it showing on the PC?

A pretty slick job of hijacking the Firefox browser preferences on a Windows computer ‘eh?

Do you have any similar stories of some sort of control over your computer by some outside source I would love to here about them.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Search Engines and Fraud is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

It is Time to give Cuil a Cool Farewell

Cuil is pronounced “cool”, the venture-backed search engine company has disappeared. My broken links WordPress plugin shows Cuil to be unreachable for 3 days now. It appears Cuil has gone down for the count.

Touted as the “Google Killer”, Cuil never really caught on. They had a lot of edgy ideas about how search terms should be delivered and it was actually interesting but not all that useful.

Cuil had raised about $33 million in funding from private equity firm Madrone Capital Partners, Greylock Partners and Tugboat Ventures.

According to the SearchEngineWatch online forum, employees at the Menlo Park-based Cuil were told at 11 a.m. on Sept, 17 that the company would be shutting down. To everyone’s surprise the company’s servers were shut down only five hours later.

Cuil launched in 2008. They were led by Andrea Patterson, the architect of Google Inc.’s large index search and Tom Costello, Patterson’s husband and a computer scientist who had developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM Corp.

Cuil Didn’t turn out to be so Cool after all. Goodbye Cuil I can’t say we will miss you.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Cuil The Search Engine That Never Really Was is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

What effect does the Yahoo! – bing marriage have on traffic?

I ran the traffic stats from Google analytics for the 12 days prior to the change and the 12 days after the change. I compared the visitor stats from both Yahoo! and bing during this period.

I used 3 websites that have no similarities other than they are all established sites that have been around for quite some time and get organic traffic.

Age of the sites:

• 8 years
• 7 years
• 4 years

Server Location:

• Henderson, Nevada
• Eugene, Oregon
• San Antonio, Texas

Alexa Traffic Rank:

• 162,947
• 694,179
• 1,661,606

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

Daily pageviews per user:

• 9.80000
• 6.00000
• 4.30000

With all of that said let’s take a look at the stats.
 
There was a 17% increase in traffic from bing and a 42% increase in traffic from Yahoo!
 
There was a 9% drop in traffic from bing but a 29% increase in traffic from Yahoo!
 
There was a 32% increase in traffic from bing but a drop in traffic of 5% from Yahoo! One interesting fact about this site is while there was a 5% drop in visits from Yahoo! there was a 19% increase in pages per visit over the same time period. Does this mean that the bing search results are more relevant?
 
Yahoo! Traffic:

• 22% increase in search engine traffic from Yahoo!
• 9% increase in pages per visit from Yahoo!

bing Traffic:

• 13% increase in search engine traffic from bing
• 12% increase in pages per visit from

Even with such a small sampling to this SEO it looks like the bing relevance factor is shining it’s light on Yahoo! results.

The 32% of the search market seems to be close these sites show the bing – Yahoo! search alliance to be bringing close to 30% of the organic search traffic to these sites.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Yahoo! Bing Search Alliance Traffic Report is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Bing and Yahoo! Conjugate Alliance in the US and Canada

With the sheets pulled back all that was left was for the bing – Yahoo! Search Alliance to be conjugated.

Towards the end of last month Yahoo! fully switched to using bing’s technology as the power for its search results in the US and Canada.

What this means is whenever anyone searches on yahoo.com they will get exactly the same results as as they would on bing. The only differences are the interface, navigation, some universal results (except images and videos) and related searches.

But will this bring SEO woe?

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The organic results appear to be identical.

The Yahoo! footer now sports a “Powered by Bing™” identifier.

It looks as though everything is going as planned by the bing – Yahoo! Search Alliance, so unless something blows up we can expect Yahoo to switch to bing powered PPC ads sometime in mid October.

What this means to us SEOs is that bing is now powering 5.2 billion searches monthly which gives them nearly 32% of the search market share in the US and nearly 9% in Canada. Previous information deduced from the numbers published in the comScore report from June 2010.

Yahoo Site Explorer

One of the largest concerns to SEOs is the effect this alliance will have on Yahoo’s Site Explorer. This tool is one of the best free sources for backlink data. If Yahoo’s Site Explorer goes away it will take many of the popular backlink checkers that use its data with it.

Good News

According to the post on the official Yahoo search blog Site Explorer will remain operational at least till early 2012. 2012 is the chosen date when Yahoo is planning to complete the switch to the bing backend technology.

Once all markets are being served by Microsoft, we plan to refine the focus of Yahoo! Site Explorer, and webmasters should use bing’s Webmaster Center to provide information about their website and its structure.

How is the switch to Bing algorithm affecting your site?

Are you noticing a rise or decline in traffic from bing or Yahoo?

Post your story in the comments.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Bing and Yahoo! Conjugate the Relationship is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Will these Bed Partners Help SEO?

As Bing and Yahoo! get ready to climb in bed together this week I find myself considering the effect this will have on the SEO world.

This is one of those rare occasions when I actually publish two posts the same day.

I received an email from the Microsoft adCenter this morning with the following statements.

This is an exciting week for Bing as we reach another major milestone in the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This week, Bing will begin powering organic search results on Yahoo! Search for the English language in the United States and Canada.

After this organic transition is complete, Bing will power 5.2 billion monthly searches, which is 31.6 percent of the search market share in the United States and 8.6 percent share in Canada. You can take advantage of this traffic by using search engine optimization (SEO) to complement your search campaigns and boost the visibility of your business.

I find the statement “take advantage of this traffic by using search engine optimization (SEO)” very interesting. It appears that unlike Google the Bing Yahoo! alliance is going to embrace SEO.

Is this the Bing strategy to attack the Google giant’s SEO distain head on with acceptance of the SEO community?

Bing has already launched their own version of Webmaster Tools and they even offer up a page with the title “Search Engine Optimization for Bing“.

Bing’s SEO principles

SEO is fundamentally about creating websites that are good for people. The most basic advice we can give for achieving optimum rank for your site in Bing is to do the following:

• Develop great, original content (including well-implemented keywords) directed toward your intended audience
• Use well-architected code in your webpages (including images and Sitemaps) so that users’ web browsers and search engine crawlers can read the content you want indexed)
• Earn several, high-quality, authoritative inbound links

At least Bing is openly welcoming SEO unlike Google who tries to sweep it under the rug and deny its existence let alone it’s validity.

Will Bing be able to eat away at the hold Google has on searches? I use Bing as my personal search engine of choice and have been since their launch of the “decision engine”.

As time passes we will have more answers to these questions.

As you probably already know I am a Mac guy and Microsoft is well.. Microsoft. They do offer some great webmaster tools especially their web developer tool box but.. they only run on Doz Longhorn and above.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Bing and Yahoo! Pull Back The Sheets is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

A Double Shot of Espresso – Using Google Caffeine for SEO

Since my Last post on Google Caffeine “Google Caffeine – The SEO Experts Speak” took some pressing (french of course) for not being up to date.

I figured I would try another search approach. Let’s take a look at the results we get from the top 10 results for “using google caffeine for seo“ using the parameter of in the last 7 days?

The Envelope Please!

Here are the Google search results.

1. Google Caffeine : The SEO Experts Speak
   5 days ago – I used the new Google Caffeine to search for the information.The quotes were pulled from Google’s top 10 results for “using google caffeine for seo”. … sphinn.com/story/156087/ – Cached

 

2. Techfrog – SEO Articles, News, SEO Tips, Polls And Quizzes
   5 days ago – Techfrog.org Provides The Latest Seo Articles, Tips, Quizzes, Polls, News & Updates on … If Not For Google, Which Search Engine Would You Prefer Using? … techfrog.org/ – Cached

 

3. Google Caffeine & SEO, Virtual Keyboards, 3D Maps & AdSense …
   1 day ago – Google Caffeine & SEO, Virtual Keyboards, 3D Maps & AdSense Earnings … Some guy wants to use Google to propose to his finance. Google did doodles for … pcdoctorbymail.com/…/google-caffeine-seo-virtual-keyboards-3d-maps-adsense-earnings/ – Cached

 

4. Search Engine Guide: Search Engine Marketing and Social Media …
   4 days ago – With well-known brands and small businesses alike now using social media marketing in … Popular Articles. New SEO Practices for a Google Caffeine World … www.searchengineguide.com/ – Cached

 

5. Caffeine – Google’s answer to Bing | Google Success SEO SEM Tips
   4 days ago – Google unveils a beta version of their next generation search engine dubbed Caffeine. Google Caffeine is designed is to improve its size, indexing speed, … www.google-success.com/caffeine-googles-answer-to-bing.htm – Cached

 

6. Effective SEO Techniques in the Google Caffeine Updated Era
   5 days ago – In the Caffeine updated Google SERP clear preference is given to the domain names, …. To get traffic online you need to use SEO best practices. … www.articlesbase.com/…/effective-seo-techniques-in-the-google-caffeine-updated-era-3012189.html – Cached

 

7. Google Caffeine updated Off Page SEO Technique | SEO,SEM,Internet …
   34 minutes ago – All the webmasters especially those who specializes in Google SEO and Google … are of good quality and have not been involved in using any black hat SEO technique. … Website Design: Seo Implications Of Google’s New “caffeine” Search … www.xiexiejiao.com/…/google-caffeine-updated-off-page-seo-technique.html

 

8. Google Caffeine. Quick, but not relevant. | SEO Blog from …
   9 hours ago – Ive been conducting some experiments over the last week on google caffeine, and will publish a full blog post in the next day or two when the results of my. seoforums.org/seo-blog/google-caffeine-quick-but-not-relevant/ – Cached

 

9. How Google Caffeine Will Affect an SEO Website
   5 days ago – PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 11, 2010 – With any new search engine architecture the concern rises for SEO websites. Now with the arrival of Google Caffeine, … www.prlog.org/10851406-how-google-caffeine-will-affect-an-seo-website.html – Cached

 

10. Website Design: Seo Implications Of Google’s New “caffeine” Search …
    4 days ago – Website Design: Seo Implications Of Google’s New “caffeine” Search Engine … a good Website Designer that does not use the pre-packaged website generation … www.webmaster9.com/…/website-design-seo-implications-of-googles-new-caffeine-search-engine.html – Cached

So let’s examine these 10 results for “using google caffeine for seo”.

Here are some interesting observations.

• The listing in the first position was generated by my original post
• 6 out of the 10 pages actually displayed “Ads by Google” (Google Adsense)
• 7 out of the 10 pages actually had the term “google caffeine” in the actual article
• There was very little NEW Google Caffeine information.
• One of the “new” results “Caffeine – Google’s answer to Bing” had a comment dated September 30th, 2009 at 3:16 am.
• One result was from a “Popular Article” listed in a sidebar.
  “New SEO Practices for a Google Caffeine World”
• I found some NOT so NEW information.
  “Google no longer uses the keywords found in the “meta keyword” HTML tag but searches for the keywords that have the most density in the first 50 words of the page.”
• I found only one quote worthy post.
  “Ive been conducting some experiments over the last week on google caffeine, and will publish a full blog post in the next day or two when the results of my experiment are available.”
• I had no way to pull off another the “Experts Speak” subtitle

Google Caffeine may be faster and show more results but I see no improvement on their results.

So I will stand by my original post “Google Caffeine – The SEO Experts Speak“. There is more old Google Caffeine information from the experts than new and fresh.

What does this say about Google Caffeine? Is it all hype or are the experts keeping a lid on their findings as to it’s inner workings?

You decide for yourself!

Me! I am going to make myself another double espresso.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

A Double Shot of Google Caffeine for SEO is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

SEO and Google Caffeine

 
As I sat requiring liquid caffeine this morning I figured I would check out the Google Caffeine updates in the SEO world. So I googled “Google Caffeine”.

You will have to excuse me for a few minutes while I fix myself a cup of the real caffeine with my espresso machine…

While I was creating my 12 oz 4 shot americano with my 15 pump Krups espresso machine I was trying to come up with some sort of witty comparison with Google Caffeine. I couldn’t. The only comparison I could derive was that caffeine was supposed to speed you up, that’s probably why Google chose “Caffeine”.

Back to my Google search, I searched for using google caffeine for seo.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I chose a some of the top results and…
 
 
Seth Weintraub
New Google Caffeine search engine reinvents SEO

The results are what makes Google so popular and will be the true test of how good this new engine is. In my tests, the new Google pulls significantly different results than the old Google. For what I was searching for (my name, people I knew, events, computer hardware) the results were significantly better. In fact, it looks like the search keywords have become much bigger a factor than before. I’m seeing smaller sites rise to the top more overall.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists are going to have to go on a whole new formula for getting their clients to the top…and who knows exactly how this new Google search algorithm works? SEO people are going to have to start nailing down the new rules to Pagerank to keep their customers on top.

 
 
John Andrews
Google Caffeine SEO Notes

There is some speculation that this will form a basis for the Google’s annual “screw the affiliates right around Thanksgiving, to have maximum impact on the holiday sales season” effort this year. If that’s true, I suppose it’s a good sign that Google finally recognizes the importance of such huge changes, and the need for more than a week or two of lead time. It also makes sense that Matt’s out front handling PR on this, since he has to face the webmasters at Pubcon in November.

I have yet to see any meaningful discussion of this new Google on the web, beyond basic observations on a few specific searches. But I’ll keep watching.

 
 
Aaron Wall
Google Caffeine

In the new infrastructure so far I think there is…

• an increased weighting on domain authority & some authoritative tag type pages ranking (like Technorati tag pages + Facebook tag pages), as well as pages on sites like Scribd ranking for some long tail queries based mostly on domain authority and sorta spammy on page text
• perhaps slightly more weight on exact match domain names
• perhaps a bit better understanding of related words / synonyms
• tuning down some of the exposure for video & some universal search results

The ROI on effective SEO campaigns is simply unbelievable, and Google is going to do everything in their power to diminish the ROI of algorithmically focused optimization efforts. As the cost of memory drops and the algorithms improve, the next couple years might separate the men from the boys in the SEO space. Those improvements will drive many SEO practitioners into parallel fields like niche publishing and public relations. 5 years ago was the perfect time to start building your empire. But starting today is far better than starting tomorrow.

 
 
Mark Rushworth
SEO for Google Caffeine Part 1

There’s lots of speculation that Google will rank faster serving pages higher (based on comments made by Matt Cutts who said something about users liking sites that load quicker).

Personally I don’t believe that this will be a massive factor in Caffeine as it penalises site owners with limited budgets who may not be able to afford a dedicated server on pier1 or rackspace hosting etc… this doesn’t mean that their content is any less valid.

 
 
Dave Cosper
New SEO Practices for a Google Caffeine World

The new approach catering to Caffeine appears to favor a more altruistic SEO model and rightfully so. Marketers will need to shift priority and think “relevance” rather than just links. Effectively deliver quality content – the high-level perspective is really that simple. Qualitative not quantitative, although if you can quantify quality you may be on to something. The old adage “build it and they will come” has more merit now than ever. I’m willing to bet most people already knew this was an important ranking factor, but what’s more interesting is how Google Caffeine is using brand new parameters to measure it.

To successfully adapt to the new blended search results we’re seeing out of Caffeine it’s going to be really important for SEO companies to push clients into the social realm. There are far too many opportunities to be missed with the advent of the Facebook “Like” feature and Twitter’s “Places of Interest”. I like these social links better than traditional links because they’re related to a specific user and open up all new gateways to social sharing and traffic.

 
 
Will Google Caffeine “Jolt” The SEO Community?

What may have seemed like a blatant attempt to pull a PR stunt on Starbucks with a code name “caffeine” inside the GooglePlex, is now poised to stir up the search engine result pages and the web as we know it.

It is logical to suspect that the “new caffeinated filters” will identify patterns of automation and parse and purge the existing index (like a process of refinement) by observing timestamps, IP ranges, semantic anchor text clusters and other unique signatures. Or on the contrary, will someone simply flip a switch and voila a new Google is unleashed?

 
 
 
Compare Google Caffeine

Welcome to our Google Comparison tool. Enter your query and we will return the results for both the new version of google and the existing version. The differnces between the two can be sublte as they essential run off a similar algorithm. By having the side by side you can see that there are some slight differences. If you have comments about this tool, please leave them on our New version of Google. This tool is based on a tool we previously did to compare google & bing. Please excuse the patchy design, but our focus was on the usability and doing something that worked !.

You can compare results from the old Google to the new Google Caffeine side by side.
 
 
Matt Cutts
More info on the Caffeine Update

I joked that the half-life of code at Google is about six months. That means that you can write some code and when you circle back around in six months, about half of that code has been replaced with better abstractions or cleaner infrastructure. Six months is an exaggeration, but Google is quite serious about scrutinizing our codebase regularly and rewriting the parts that don’t scale well to make them more robust, more elegant, or faster.

Matt has broken links in this post

So there you have it the “Google Caffeine” info from the SEO experts direct from Google search results.

I am sure there are more SEO experts who have posted on the subject but… hey they didn’t rank in the top SERPs.

As my coffee is finished so is this post on Google Caffeine.

I guess my tongue in cheek writing technique is at to high an altitude for some people.

It was pointed out that:

Sadly, only one of those quotes is from 2010, and that one is from May. The rest of the comments are all from 2009. This could be more informative if more recent information was used.

I thought it was obvious but guess I have to point out that I used Google (equipped with Caffeine) to search for “using google caffeine for seo”.

The quotes from above were gleaned from the top 10 listings. So where is the power from Google Caffeine? The results the new Google Caffeine search gave me information from May 2010 and 2009.

I have a suspicion that my regular readers picked up on the first go round.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Caffeine – The SEO Experts Speak is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The New SEOmoz Guarana Tool is Slated to Blow the Doors off of Google’s Caffeine

Let’s compare caffeine and guarana. What are their definitions and their synonyms?

Once we compare their definitions and their synonyms we can continue on to discuss their functions.

Guarana

Guarana (pronounced /ˌɡwɑrəˈnɑː/, from the Portuguese guaraná, Paullinia cupana (syn. P. crysan, P. sorbilis) is a climbing plant in the maple family, Sapindaceae, native to the Amazon basin and especially common in Brazil. Guarana features large leaves and clusters of flowers, and is best known for its fruit, which is about the size of a coffee bean. As a dietary supplement, guarana is an effective energy booster: it contains about twice the caffeine found in coffee beans (about 2–4.5% caffeine in guarana seeds compared to 1–2% for coffee beans).

Guarana is a native species of South America and has stimulating properties when taken by mouth. Guarana is also used to enhance athletic performance and to reduce fatigue.

The active ingredient in guarana was formerly called guaranine (tetramethylxanthine), but was later found to be caffeine. Guarana has one of the highest caffeine contents of all plants (up to 7%), and has been used by manufacturers for its caffeine content (e.g., Dark Dog Lemon®, Guts®, and Josta®).

Guarana Synonyms:

guarana

• Brazilian cocoa
• caffeina
• caffeine-tannin complex
• Dark Dog Lemon®
• elixir of youth
• gift of the gods
• Go Gum®
• guarana bread
• guarana gum
• guarana paste
• Guarana Rush®
• guarana seed paste
• guaranin
• guaranine
• Guts®
• Happy Motion®
• Josta®
• mysterious Puelverchen
• pasta guarana
• Paullinia
• Paullinia cupana
• Paullinia sorbilis
• Sapindaceae (family)
• Superguarana
• tetramethylxanthine
• Uabano
• Uaranzeiro
• Zoom®

Caffeine

Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that is a psychoactive stimulant drug. Caffeine was discovered by a German chemist, Friedrich Ferdinand Runge, in 1819. He coined the term kaffein, a chemical compound in coffee (the German word for which is Kaffee), which in English became caffeine (and changed to Koffein in German).

Caffeine is found in many plant species, where it acts as a natural pesticide, with high caffeine levels being observed in seedlings that are still developing foliage, but are lacking mechanical protection; Caffeine paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding upon the plant. High caffeine levels have also been found in the surrounding soil of coffee bean seedlings. Therefore, it is understood that caffeine has a natural function as both a natural pesticide and an inhibitor of seed germination of other nearby coffee seedlings, thus giving it a better chance of survival.

Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the beans, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants. It is most commonly consumed by humans in infusions extracted from the bean of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as from various foods and drinks containing products derived from the kola nut.

Caffeine Synonyms:

caffeine

• battery acid
• brew
• café
• café au lait
• café noir
• cappuccino
• decaf
• decoction
• demitasse
• espresso
• forty weight
• hot stuff
• ink
• jamocha
• java
• joe
• mocha
• mud
• perk
• varnish remover

Google Caffeine

Caffeine is just a revamp of Google’s indexing infrastructure.

• Content is available to searchers more quickly
• Caffeine has resulted in a 50 percent fresher index
• Google’s storage capacity has greatly increased
• Caffeine is intended to help Google better evolve as the web does
• Google’s flexibility in storing information about documents has greatly increased
• The Caffeine infrastructure provides more flexibility in the type of details that can be stored with a document

How can content owners best take advantage of the new infrastructure?

Content owners will reap the benefits of Caffeine without doing anything at all.

Google has said that that Caffeine change doesn’t make any of the crawling, indexing, or ranking factors more or less important than before. It simply makes crawled content available in search results more quickly before and paves the way for added flexibility in taking advantage of the whatever may come as the web evolves.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

SEOmoz Guarana

Not only is SEOmoz Guarana a revamp of the SEOmoz’s indexing infrastructure it also has many uses geared toward the individual user.

• Content will be available to searchers more quickly
• Guarana will result in a 70 percent fresher index
• SEOmoz’s storage capacity will be greatly increased
• Guarana is intended to help SEOmoz better evolve as the web does
• Guarana is open to the evolution of it’s users also
• SEOmoz’s flexibility in storing information about documents will be greatly increased
• The Guarana infrastructure provides more flexibility in the type of details that can be stored with a document
• With Guarana the individual user will be able to attach specific search variables to their saved quires and information

How can SEOs best take advantage of the new SEOmoz Guarana?

SEOs will be able to reap the benefits of Guarana by attaching search and ranking variables to this new incredible tool.

SEOmoz has iterated that that Guarana won’t change any of the crawling, indexing, or ranking factors for the mozRank. It simply makes crawled content attachable to your informational search results more quickly than ever before and sets the stage to increase your SERPs like nothing ever has past or present.

Way to go SEOmoz keep the SEO tools coming.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

SEOmoz Guarana VS Google Caffeine is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

HTC-Columbia’s Mark Cavendish Wins Stage 5 and You can follow The Tour with Bing Maps

If you have been reading my blog for a while you are aware that I am a cycling aficionado.

Stage 5 Thursday, July 8 Épernay – Montargis 185 km and more champagne is on tap for the riders as they traverse the Champagne region on their way to the finish in Montargis.

I have been getting up early each morning of the Tour de France and pulling for Lance Armstrong and Team RadioShack. They spent the day under the radar as an exciting stage 5 wound up with a wild sprint to the finish in Montargis.

Mark Cavendish out sprinted the likes of Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, Robbie McEwen, and Thor Hushovd to win his eleventh stage at the Tour. Cav tearfully climbed the podium to accept his accolades.

Bing Maps Brings You the Tour

Bing has a “Map App” that provides a wealth of information about “the Tour,” which includes stats and standings by stage as the race travels its ups and downs from Rotterdam to Paris. You will need to have Silverlight installed.

This app is designed to help you visualize the overall race, the stages (stages tab + numbers) and how variables such as weather & elevation (elevation profiles) will impact each stage. Results will be updated along the way in the ‘Results’ tab.

If you go to bing.com/maps/explore there is a group of icons at the bottom left hand side of the page. On the extreme right of these icons is the one marked “Map Apps”. If you click that you’ll find 19 applications that run on top of Bing.

Some of the available Bing Map apps include:

• Twitter Maps
• World Cup
• Local Events
• Distance Calculator
• Todays front pages
• 2010 Tour de France Route

When you click on the 2010 Tour de France Route button you will get the Bing Tour de France central screen.

From this screen you have plenty of options to follow the Tour your way.
Not only do you get an elevation map…you get a regular map with the course marked out and a current position marker.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
Of course you get access to the full compliment of TDF information like:

• Welcome Information
• Details on Stages and Prologue
• Results
• Stage distances
• It’s all there in that small pane

Bing was the first to have the most complete maps-based coverage and perhaps most complete coverage overall, other than the official site itself.
Here is their disclaimer.

Content provided courtesy Podium Café (Copyright 2010)
The opinions expressed by the representatives of Podium Café are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Microsoft or any employee thereof. Microsoft is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by Podium Café.

Google also offers their own map-based Tour tracking, with an emphasis on the HTC-Columbia Team. HTC is one of Google’s Android OEM partners.

I hope you are enjoying the Tour as much as I am.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Cavendish Wins Stage 5 at The Tour de France is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

AdWords Help Pages are Banned by Google for Cloaking

On July 1st Vanessa Fox published a post on Search Engine Land about Google breaking its own rules.

It appears even Google can’t follow their own rules.

Search for [google adwords help] or [adwords help] this morning on Google and the AdWords help center is nowhere to be found. Search for the URL itself, and it doesn’t appear to be in the index.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Even Google finds it impossible to follow their own rules

According to Barry Schwartz this goes well beyond just the AdWords Help area, it appears this is how Google’s help sections work site wide.

When asked about these violations a spokesperson from Google said:

I can confirm that some Google support pages were inadvertently showing different content to the Google crawler than to users. This error has since been fixed. We will investigate how this happened and make sure that we take appropriate action.

Google eagerly admitted that those who work on Google products don’t have any special knowledge of search. The recent SEO report card they issued on Google products proves this. Google products have been found to be violating the webmaster guidelines in the past.

The Google support pages were banned in 2005 for cloaking. Early 2009, Google Japan was discovered buying links for PageRank, and swift action was taken by Google once again.

Google responded as soon as they were alerted to the infraction.

What can we learn from this?

• Don’t show search engines different content than you show users
• Make sure you don’t serve different content to search engines
• Don’t look to Google products as the shining examples of what to do for SEO
• Just because those teams work at Google, doesn’t mean they’re search experts

Read the full article at Search Engine Land.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Bans Google for Cloaking is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Are Keywords different for PPC and Organic Search? Why you want to rank organically on a word you wont pay for?

Is there a really a valid reason for trying to rank on a keyword or keyword phrase organically that you wouldn’t be willing to pay for in your pay-per-click campaign?

Let’s examine the examples from the “Century 21 Real Estate Presentation Post“.

Let’s take a look into the following keyword phrases:

• real estate
• Portland homes for sale
• Portland house for sale
• 3 bedroom house for sale in north Portland

Usually it is not a good idea to bid on keywords or keyword phrases for pay-per-click unless they will convert to sales. The more general keywords are usually reserved for your organic strategies.

Your short-tail keywords, “real estate” for example are so top level, even though they have a possibility of converting down the line they just don’t make sense to pay for click-throughs. Your long-tail keywords, “3 bedroom house for sale in north Portland” for example, are ripe for conversion and therefore perfect for pay-per-click.

This doesn’t mean that you will want to ignore these same conversion long-tail keywords for your organic campaign.

Once again using my favorite keyword research tool I have compiled some numbers for the four keywords listed above.

Competition = The number of sites listed with the matching phrase.

Predicted daily count = The number of times the exact phrase is entered into all the search engines.

KEI = Keyword Effectiveness Index. The larger the number the easer it is to rank for the keyword or keyword phrase.(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Real Estate

Google returns 1,700,000,000 results.

• Competition – 536,000,000
• Predicted daily count – 14,727
• KEI – 0.19

Portland Homes for Sale

Google returns 8,080,000 results.

• Competition – 50,100
• Predicted daily count – 0
• KEI – 0.0

Better keyword phrase: “homes for sale portland oregon”
Google returns 14,900,000 results.

• Competition – 25,100
• Predicted daily count – 14
• KEI – 0.0

Portland House for Sale

Google returns 8,510,000 results.

• Competition – 8,200
• Predicted daily count – 0
• KEI – 0.0

Better keyword phrase: “houses for sale in portland oregon”
Google returns 6,630,000 results.

• Competition – 13
• Predicted daily count – 10
• KEI – 3.77

3 Bedroom House for Sale in North Portland

Google returns 265,000 results.

• Competition – 1
• Predicted daily count – 0
• KEI – 0.0

Keyword Wrap-Up

So there you have the long and short of keywords and their tails. Just because the results don’t show any searches are being made on a particular keyword or keyword phrase that doesn’t mean there are actually none. These tools are bulk tools and require a fair amount of data before the results are exposed. The 0 search counts are an average over a year divided by 365. One search a week would still show up as “0″ searches.

Guess who is the “1″ competition?

To answer my original question “Is there a really a valid reason for trying to rank on a keyword or keyword phrase organically that you wouldn’t be willing to pay for in your pay-per-click campaign?” my answer is an emphatic yes! As a business professional I understand the value of keeping the funnel full. What a great way to keep potential clients entering the funnel. Just make sure they are introduced to you early in their purchase process with your rankings on your top level or short-tail keywords.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Century 21 Real Estate Presentation Keywords Part Deux is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Local Weather, Local News, Google Local, Local Search, is Local Search Taking it’s Place in the Local Arena

A study from the end of 2009 gives us a realistic view of local search and it’s effect on business.

In this study surveys were taken by actual online users of local business search platforms. This survey sample was based on the comScore proprietary panel of two million online consumers. These particular survey results were based on 4,000 completed responses.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

And the Survey says:

• print media is declining
  41% of local business searchers spend the vast majority of their time searching for local businesses online instead of offline
• Yellow Pages usage down 3%
  Internet Yellow Pages are experiencing significant growth
• Google has developed applications that have overtaken online business directories
  local searches have grown 40% – 51% over 2008, attributed mostly to Google Maps
• mobile search continues to experience growth
  more consumers have access to mobile devices with Internet browsers and applications
• As youth and seniors continue to age search will be affected
  41% of youth, ages 18 to 24, utilize search engines for business information while 49% of searchers 65 years old or more rely on print
• search engines comprise a significant portion of search traffic for local business information

LOCAL SEARCH STUDY SUMMARY
Since 2007, the trend across all searches is that more users are searching for personal reasons, less for business purposes. This creates a need for companies to develop positive user experiences and relevant business information across all search platforms, so consumers can develop good impressions about your brand and make informed purchase decisions. Whether your consumers are engaging in mobile, online or print searches, search satisfaction remains relatively high. Survey respondents were the most satisfied with online searches, followed by searching for local businesses on their cell phones. When dissatisfied, a majority of consumers blamed content: not being able to find what they were looking for or a lack of product/service information.

While the Internet is the most satisfactory source of local business information among consumers, traditional media and burgeoning mobile solutions hold relevance in today’s search landscape, demonstrating the need for businesses to integrate cross-platform strategies. Based on our findings, companies should allocate marketing dollars to the distribution of different media channels because consumers today use a variety of sources for local business information, sometimes several sources for single purchase decisions. As both innovative and traditional sources continue competing for consumer search traffic, businesses need to focus on developing a complete search presence. The idea is to diversify your search marketing to help consumers find you, regardless of how they’re searching.

So what does all this mean?

An exclusive search marketing position is probably not the best stance to take. You need a complete marketing strategy. You should include a complete package, a diverse mix of media sources for local business information that includes mobile platforms and a strong mix of social media.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Local Weather, Local News, Google Local, Local Search is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The Battle over US Internet Supremacy Goes to Facebook as Google has to take the Back Seat for a Week

It has happened before but… Facebook beat out Google on individual days during the holidays but this time it is for a full week.

Information released from Experian Hitwise shows that Facebook won the traffic title from Google for an entire week.

Does this mean that Google’s evil empire is being defeated by the Social Rebellion? Has Facebook learned to use the “force” to help them defeat Google?

Here is a graph from Experian Hitwise that will show the battle.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Hitwise Intelligence – Heather Dougherty – North America
Facebook Reaches Top Ranking in US
March 15, 2010

Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

What can be learned from the fact that people are visiting Facebook more than Google?

Is Google’s core business being a search engine in danger? Google is a search engine it is a tool, and one that works on getting better every day.

Facebook only search is designed to bring users to Facebook. Social networking is the new kid on the internet block. It is still riding the peak of the wave.

Facebook can now leverage those user visits to gain a controlling interest in the online ad-placement business. Google’s advertisers may begin to migrate to the higher traffic site.

The paid advertising on Google’s search results is their monetization. Can Facebook cut deep enough to draw Google blood?

Only time will tell.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Loses Traffic Battle to Facebook for the First Time is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The Top Ten Search Engines, Google Search, Yahoo Search, Bing Search… Search Engine List 2010 Version

Google search and Yahoo search, we are all familiar with these but what about the other search engines that are out there?

What is the best search engine?

Even though it is impossible to list all internet search engines, here is a search engine list in no particular order.

• Bing search engine
• Altavista search engine
• Google search engine
• Dogpile search engine
• Yahoo search engine
• Webcrawler search engine

This is by no means a complete list of web search engines. It is just some of the more popular. Rather than just a bulleted list I will give you a list of the top 10 search engines complete with logos.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Top Ten Search Engines

Google search

Yahoo search

Bing search

Ask search

Metacrawler search

Dogpile search

AltaVista search

AOL search

Cuil search

Kngine search

SearchGeek search

eccellio search

Jawoco search

Business.com search

Answers.com search

Google Blog Search search

Google Spanish search

Yahoo Answers search

Topsy search

Ok so it’s more than ten. There are actually 19 search engines above. The top ten search engines are in there.

Some of these are actual search engines, some are compilers (they use other search engines to compile their results) and others are niche and or language specific. They all do the same job the attempt to return relevant results to the searcher. I have included a Spanish search engine but left out Russian search engines. I did take 2 years of Russian in high school but I have slept since then and remember next to nothing of what I once learned.

As a SEO we must be aware of most if not all search engines our potential traffic might use.

By the way, Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Search Engines: The Top Ten Search Engines is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

SEO for Firefox – SEO Tools of the Trade for Firefox Web Browsers

Next in the Firefox Browser plugin “Tools of the Trade” series is SEO for Firefox. SEO for Firefox is a great plugin that will allow you to see where a site is standing when it comes to visibility.

SEO for Firefox gives you a quick overview of just how visible a website is on the internet. It looks at Google, Yahoo, important directories, and social media.

I like to just be able to glance at something and see if it is worth doing or not. Over time in the SEO game you sorta learn a feel for estimating keywords and markets, but it is helpful to have a few additional data points, especially if you are new to the market.

This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.

SEO for Firefox is another one of the offerings from Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com that we have covered in this Firefox Plugin series.

The main tool in the SEO for Firefox plugin is the “Site Information” window.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
This window is launched either by right clicking and choosing SEO for Firefox > Lookup This Page or by using the Firefox toolbar Tools > SEO for Firefox > Lookup Tool.

The information available in the Lookup Tool is:

• PageRank
• Google Cashe Date
• Traffic Value
• Age
• del.icio.us
• del.icio.us Page Bookmarks
• Diggs
• Diggs Popular Stories
• Stumbleupon
• Twitter
• Yahoo! Links
• Yahoo! .edu Links
• Yahoo! .gov Links
• Yahoo! Page Links
• Yahoo! .edu Page Links
• Technorati
• Alexa
• Compete.com Rank
• Compete.com Uniques
• Cashed
• dmoz
• Bloglines
• Page blog links
• wikwpedia
• dir.yahoo.com
• Btow

By double-clicking on the service you open the page associated with that particular information comes from.

The SEO XRay function in SEO for Firefox will also give us some useful information.

It is launched by right clicking and choosing SEO for Firefox > SEO XRay or by using the Firefox toolbar Tools > SEO for Firefox > SEO XRay.

SEO XRay will give you access to the following information from the page:

• Heading tags
• Keyword Density
• Title
• META description
• META keywords
• External links
• Internal links

The Keyword density information is simple and easy to read.

The External links and Internal links can be exported in .csv format.

As you can see you get the URL information as well as the anchor text and whether the link is internal of external.

Can you think of any uses for this csv export?

Here is a short video on SEO for Firefox.

I find SEO for Firefox very useful all the time.

I can get some insight into a potential client’s website or even get up to date information on a current client’s website quickly and easily. I also use the Google Cashe Date information daily. I find being able to find out when Google last cashed a site very valuable information.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Firefox Web Browsers, SEO Tools of the Trade for SEO Information is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Rank Checker – SEO Tools of the Trade for Firefox Web Browsers

Next in the Firefox Browser plugin “Tools of the Trade” series is Rank Checker. Rank Checker is a nice little plugin that will allow you to check your search ranking in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Rank Checker gives you the power to track your search engine ranking for multiple keywords at the click of a button.

I like being able to check my rankings real quickly without worrying that some SEO company is aggregating my data and/or spying on me. This tool is open source and hosted on your computer – designed with privacy in mind.

Looking at the rankings of a couple of your sites that you know intimately well and tracking how they change over time allows you to

• learn how to read the search results
• appreciate and understand general algorithmic trends
• be one of the first people to know when the relevancy algorithms change in a major way

Rank Checker is just one of the offerings from Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com that we will be covering in this Firefox Plugin series.

Even though Rank Checker is limited by only covering the 3 major search engines I still find it very useful.

You can actually add multiple keywords with a pop-up menu.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

I will use this Firefox Plugin when checking the keywords for a potential client. Many website owners actually have no idea how they rank for their chosen keywords on the big 3.

Rank Checker returns nice orderly results which can be saved, exported as a csv file, and scheduled for consistent tracking.

I don’t use the scheduling feature. It is nice that Aaron has added tracking over time.

Here is a short video on Rank Checker.

I do find Rank Checker useful. Rank Checker isn’t my only search engine rank checking/tracking tool in my SEO arsenal but, that’s just ammunition for a post at another time.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Firefox Web Browsers, SEO Tools of the Trade for Search Engine Ranking is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician