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

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

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

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

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

How Popular are Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz Compared to the Search Engines

Last week a friend of mine, John Poling, forwarded me an email with some questions.

I figured I would make a blog post out of my answer. I have included both the forwarded email and the comment from John.

Hi Gary,

This update just landed in my in-box this morning. Why did I send it to you? Well you are the best person to ask about “how to get the best search results” that I know. I could send you a lot of questions that this email raised in my mind or I could just invite you to do the next BizNet program. Your comments please. I have had several BizNet members ask me about how to build a more professional. I always recommend that they contact you. I have no way to know if they do or not. Maybe you could school us on how to better work with you and each other to better use the Internet for our real estate, investment and small business purposes.

Thank You,
JOHN

The forwarded email.

“This is also a good time for search marketers and marketers in general to think again about Facebook, if you haven’t already. More and more Facebook content has been made visible to search engines over the years.” Sullivan then goes on to say “Google’s move makes having Facebook fan pages even more essential. Without one, you’re missing out on a chance to be found within yet another area, Google’s real time results.”

Danny said it all – if you don’t have a page – now is the time!

Don’t forget in addition to the Notes, Links, Discussion and Wall (default tabs on a Facebook Fan page) you want to create custom tabs with FBML to make the page more compelling and a stronger marketing tool. If you don’t know how to work with code, let me know and I’ll be happy to get you a quote on us creating the page.

Got a Fan Page already? Send me the URL and I’ll take a peek and see if I have any suggestions to improve it.

To Your Success,

Jennifer Horowitz
Director of Marketing

While it is important to have a Facebook fan page is definitely not the most important. Once again your Internet marketing and search engine rankings are like feathers on a balance beam. The balance beam is the ranking scale and all we have to place on the scale to increase our rankings is feathers. So the more feathers you place the higher rankings are going to be. Therefore you should at least be aware of all of the social media.

You should concentrate on the social media that is most applicable to your product or service and your skills. You don’t overlook anything. Make sure to use what you’re best at promote yourself and your business.

Even though the Facebook Fan Pages updates now appear on the Google Real Time Search Results they are not alone.

The search results also include the following:

1. Twitter tweets
2. Google News links
3. Google Blog Search links
4. Newly created web pages
5. Freshly updated web pages
6. FriendFeed updates
7. Jaiku updates
8. Identi.ca updates
9. TwitArmy updates
10. Google Buzz posts
11. MySpace updates
12. Facebook fan page updates

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

According to Twitter.

Monday 2-22-10
Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

In a post by Matt McGee he quotes twitter as saying that they are currently seeing 50 million tweets per day which breaks down to about 600 per second.

And he brings up the question how does this compare to Facebook, known as the king of social networking and Google buzz, the new kid on the block.

Even though the numbers show there are more Facebook updates per second than tweets Matt’s post was tweeted 335 times as compared to only 39 shares on Facebook.

Updates/Posts:

• Facebook status updates: 700 per second
• Twitter tweets: 600 per second
• Buzz posts: 55 per second

Compared to searches:

• Google: 34,000 searches per second
• Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second
• Bing: 927 searches per second

Disclaimers:

• On Twitter, every post counts as a “tweet” no matter if it’s an original tweet, a comment from another user, a link being shared, a retweet, etc. All of those are rolled into one number.
• Facebook’s number is only status updates. It doesn’t include comments from other users on someone’s status update, nor does it includes “likes” of a status update — both of which are popular activities on Facebook. More importantly, it also doesn’t include photos, links, notes, and all the other types of user activity that happen on Facebook.
• Buzz was only two days old when Google published its numbers.

Using comScore’s recent worldwide estimates for Google, Yahoo and Bing Danny Sullivan did some division to come up with the following figures:

• Google: 34,000 searches per second (2 million per minute; 121 million per hour; 3 billion per day; 88 billion per month, figures rounded)
• Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second (194,000 per minute; 12 million per hour; 280 million per day; 8.4 billion per month, figures rounded)
• Bing: 927 searches per second (56,000 per minute; 3 million per hour; 80 million per day; 2.4 billion per month, figures rounded)

So what does all this meet us. The numbers show me that social media and search are both here to stay. And we’d better step up to the plate and take as many pitches as possible. We no longer live in the world for doing one thing will get you the results that you want. We have to do everything that we possibly can, we have to do it often and we have to do a right.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, & the Search Engines by the Numbers is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Microsoft / Yahoo – Search Alliance Will it be Referred to as the Evil Alliance or a Lethal Alliance for Google?

Last Thursday I got an email from the Microsoft adCenter filling me in on some “new” information on the face of pay per click for the future.

I was presented me with the news that all of us in the business knew was bound to arrive. Microsoft and Yahoo are forming an alliance. Well the first thing that came to mind was the evil empire from the movie Star Wars. I thought for a minute and said no that moniker “the evil empire” belongs to Google. I know it is the “evil alliance” yeah, that’s what it reminds me of. It is hard for me to remember any alliance by 2 big players that actually benefited the little guy.

Here is the greeting from the email.

Dear gary,

Microsoft© and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance  in the United States and European Union. This milestone is an exciting step in our effort to give your business a time-saving and cost-efficient way to connect with a larger combined audience of potential customers.

So now we will have MicroHoo! the new unified search marketplace. Here is a sample of what the new logo might look like.

A powerful new choice in search is coming

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is a major initiative between our companies to create a competitive choice in search for advertisers and consumers. The combined scale will assist both companies in speeding the pace of innovation to improve the search user experience, as well as help advertisers get better results and help improve monetization for partners.

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The Search Alliance Marches On.

Microsoft like the Bill Gates original idea will take a small amount from many of the little guys. (when he sold his first operating system to IBM all he wants is a small licensing fee for each unit shipped) Yahoo will cater exclusively high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers. Where is the plus for us in this? Will this alliance by grouping the bidding arena just drive the cost of the ads for the little guy up?

Will this search alliance be lethal for Google? What will happen with the adwords bids there?

Will this search alliance actually benefit us the little guys? I don’t know like many things in life only time will tell.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance – Evil Empire or Alliance from Star Wars is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Is Google Really Taking Aim at Local SEOs and Web Designers with Evil Intent?

Matt McGee posted “Google Doesn’t Want Searchers To Find SEOs & Web Designers” Dec 31, 2009.

Matt takes the stance that Google will almost never show you local results on a map for “seo,” “seo company,” “web design company” and several terms related to these businesses.

So I decided to try some Google searches myself and the results are very interesting… See the results at the bottom of this post.

Matt’s evidence is very compelling.

Why does Google have it out for web designers and SEOs? That question has been going around for nearly two months, particularly in this thread in the Google Maps Help Forum. And, as Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Roundtable, Google employee “Joel H” (likely Joel Headley) posted an update today saying that it’s not a bug (as originally said to be), but a specific, conscious decision on Google’s part not to show these types of businesses on a map.

“Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

“I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.”

What Joel H. is saying is that certain industries won’t get local business listings even with a city name included in the query, but they might get a 7-pack if the query includes a word like “in.” So, for example, queries like “seo seattle wa” (even with the state abbreviation!) and “web design seattle” don’t show local listings with a map:

Everything Matt said proved to be the same results I got from Google.

search engine optimization portland

web design portland

search engine optimization in portland

web design in portland

Both “search engine optimization portland” and “web design portland” gave us no local map. While “search engine optimization in portland” and “web design in portland” both gave us the Google local map.

I even ran searches on “shoes portland” and “grills portland”, neither omitted the Google local map.

shoes portland

grills portland

So there’s the evidence. Google has us in their cross hairs.

The moral of the story: In our business, when it comes to Google, you’d better place your bets on organic rather than local listings.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google Plot To Kill Local Search Engine Optimization and Web Design Firms is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

As Jake Blues said “Do You See The Light?” The Signs are There if We Just Listen to Google

In my last post I quoted Eric Enge’s article as I discussed page load times. Now I am going to discuss the rest of his article “Four New Signals in Search“.

The article is published in the SES January 2010 print magizine as well as being presented as a blog post on SearchEngineWatch.com.

The Topics of Today’s Discussion are:

• Social Media
• Clicks
• Web References

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Social Media

With the popularity of Facebook and Twitter there is plenty of signals available from the social media world. There is the pretty good chance the search engines are using them as a type of web reference. Because of the real-time relevance of today’s social media there is a real good chance the current “hot topics” can be gleaned from their postings and discussions.

We can get a window into these “hot topics” by using the specialized search tools for the new social media. I actually have LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter search plugins installed in my Firefox browser.

Clicks

In an interview Eric had with Google News’ Josh Cohen, Josh indicated that Google News uses click data as a ranking signal. The important click data is that which is outside of the realm of what is considered normal.

Data leaked by AOL in 2006 suggested that the first result would get 42 percent of the clicks, the second would get 12 percent, the third would get 9 percent, the fourth result received 6 percent of the clicks, and so forth. But, if one particular result gets 10 percent in the fourth position instead of something closer to 6 percent, this could be a sign that the fourth result needs to move up in the search engine results pages.

Josh also pointed out that Google News doesn’t use links as a ranking factor.

Just like we concluded that if Google AdWords is using page load time for “Quality Score”, Google would start using it as a part of their organic algorithm . We can also conclude that eventually begin using click data in the algorithm as well.

Web References

We have known for some time that Google Local uses web references as part of their ranking factor. A web reference is defined as a business mention on the web that is not part of a link.

Web References are counted as votes. These “votes” are similar to a link in the algorithm. Using our logic from the above conclusion we can also assume that web references will also find their way into the Google search algorithm as well.

Since we are talking about web references and the Google search algorithm, what about nofollowed links? Does it stand to reason that if a web reference has some weight, a nofollowed link should carry some weight as well?

My opinion is that a nofollowed link will have more weight than a web reference. Of course not all nofollowed links have the same value.

Search Engines

The thing to remember is that a search engine’s job is to return relevant results to the searcher. If they don’t the searcher will migrate to another search engine.

The search engines make their money with paid ads. If no one is searching on their site there will be no clicks on the paid ads. So on and so forth…

If your site is relevant to visitors it will be relevant to the search engines as well.

See the Light?

Late,
Gary Pool

Search Engine Rankings New Signals Indicate Google is Using… is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The SES January 2010 Edition Touts Page Load Time as a New Google Ranking Factor

When my new edition of SES, the SES London sneak preview edition, arrived just the other day I cracked it open to the Focus: Trends page and was surprised to see a blurb on page load times and Google.

Focus: Trends

Four New Signals in Search

by Eric Enge

Page Load Time

Google engineer Matt Cutts discussed this factor at Pubcon in November. Cutts indicated that there is a strong movement within Google to make page load time a ranking factor because pages that load quickly improve the user experience.

Because that is the case, why not make it a ranking factor? Cutts indicated that Google could start using this within the next year.

Back as early as March 2008 I was talking about page load times effecting your Google rankings.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I asked:

Load Time has been confirmed by Google as soon to be AdWords Quality Score metric, can your organic SERPs be far behind?

Or is Load Time already being considered by the Google algorithm?

The post is titled “Does Load Time Effect Your Google Organic Search Listing?”

My suspicions were confirmed at SearchFest 2008.

I can’t give away my source but I was lead to believe that as early as March 2008 page load times were either already a part or soon to be a part of the Google algorithm.

Google SERPs actually do have a page load time element

This post is titled “SEMpxd SearchFest ‘08 | What I learned, Heard, and Won”

Those of you in the general proximity might want to attend SES London February 15 – 19 2010. Here is a code to save you some money.

Late,
Gary Pool

SES, Page Load Times, and Your Google Rankings is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Google Forced “Personalized Search for Everyone” Really Helpful or Just a Ploy to Sell More AdWords?

Google has announced the a new “help” for your search results. They are actually turning on personalized search whether you are signed into your Google account or not.

Will this help you in your searching or will it help Google sell more PPC ads?

When I am researching a subject on the internet I always use the same web sites all the time.

Wait a minute isn’t that what bookmarks are for?
Why would I want to get information from new sites anyway?

This is where Google AdWords come in. If you want information from sites you don’t visit you can always use the paid ads at the top and the right side of the page of the page.

Personalized Search for everyone

Today we’re helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible. For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.

Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. It’s completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You’ll know when we customize results because a “View customizations” link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how we’ve customized your results and also let you turn off this type of customization.

If I am looking for recipes or information on my favorite sports team from specific web sites I think I will use the bookmark feature in my browser.

To personalize your search results, Google needs to record what you’re doing. Does anyone else hear the alarm in the background?

• Can anyone see what you’ve searched for?
• How long do they keep this datat?
• Can you just turn it off?

Google Signed-in personalization

When you are signed in, Google will personalize your search experience based on your Web History. If you do not want to receive personalized results while you are signed in, you can turn off Web History and remove it from your Google Account. You can also view and remove individual items from your Web History.

Google Signed-out customization

When you are not signed in, Google will customize your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
An important part of this “Personalized Search for everyone” change is realizing that it is impossible for you or anyone else (Well! other than Google that is.) to see what you’ve searched on or clicked on in the past, as long as you’re using the signed-out option.

So what does all this mean?
Will Google’s “Personalized search” sell more AdWords?
Is the Google Empire trying to kill true relevant organic search?
Has the Evil Empire created another Windows Longhorn/Vista faux pas?
Will Bing become more popular like Apple did when Microsoft launched Windows Vista?

Only time will tell. Maybe Google will be forced to spin “Personalized search Mojave” or even launch “Personalized search 8″.

I have already changed my personal search engine to Bing. I find the results fit my parameters much better than Google anyway.

From a SEO perspective this opens up a whole new #10 can of worms.

Late,
Gary Pool

Google – The Evil Empire is Using The Force to Maim Your Search Results is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Using Google Analytics to Examine Search Traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other Search Engines

When you install Google analytics on your web site you will have access to a wealth of knowledge about all the search engines sending you traffic. Just how you use these Google analytics is dependent upon what you are looking to accomplish.

Today we are going to examine what search engines are sending traffic, how much traffic, and what search terms visitors are using to find you.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I have created the following tables using my web site’s Google analytics.

Can We Leverage all these Numbers from Google Analytics?

Where is our traffic coming from?

Checking the traffic sources we see that Google has sent us 2,070 unique visitors so far this month, followed by 384 direct visits (these are from visitors entering the URL directly into the browser or using a book mark). Google Images has sent us 129 visits followed by Bing with 109 visits and Yahoo with 82 visits. As you can see from the Traffic Sources table we are also getting traffic from twitter and LinkedIn.

What search engines are sending us traffic and how much traffic are they sending us?

From above we learned that the search engine sending us the majority of our traffic is Google followed by Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, Alltheweb, and Lycos. The search engine labeled “search” in the table is the rest of the search engines combined. Alltheweb, and Lycos together are only responsible for 6 unique visitors.

What search terms are our visitors using to find us with the search engines?

While “SEO blog” is at the top of the list this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is actually the most popular topic bringing visitors to our site. There have been 1,233 search terms and/or phrases that searchers have been using to visit our site. Just by examining the top 20 search strings we can see that “droid” has been responsible for 61 visits. To use your Google Analytics properly you will need to examine them wide and deep to extract the answers to the questions you have.

Analyzing the Analytics

We have just been looking on the surface of the information available. If you add the “% New Visits” into the mix we will really start getting to the value of this information. Google brought us 2,070 visitors but only 94.59% of them are new visitors. This tells us Google has brought us 1,958 new visitors this month. While Bing is only responsible for 109 visitors 107 of them were first timers. Yahoo has brought us 82 visitors, 77 of them new. AOL has brought 26 visitors and only 22 of them have been new.

Now lets throw in the “Pages/Visit” column into the mix. Google’s 2,070 visitors have viewed 2,504 pages, that boils down to 2,369 pages being seen by first time visitors. While Bing has sent only 109 visitors they have viewed 157 pages and 154 of them were viewed by new visitors. Yahoo’s 82 visitors have viewed 106 pages and 99 of them by new visitors. AOL while only bringing 26 visitors they are responsible for over 53 page views.

As you can see from the above examples each search engine brings it’s own brand of visitor. While Google is bringing the lion’s share of the search traffic the visitors don’t spend as much time or visit as many pages as Bing, Yahoo, or AOL. AOL is bringing the most return visitors per visit as well as the most page views.

How much information do you want to glean from your Google Analytics?

How much time are you willing to spend finding that information?

Is the information you are looking for worth it?

These are the questions I ask myself when I delve into the analytics world. You can spend hours, days, weeks, and even months working with analytics and still not have anything more valuable than you had when you looked at them and decided to dive in.

Late,
Gary Pool

Search Engines – Google Search, Yahoo Search, and Bing Search is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The Black Text on a Black Background Black Hat SEO Technique Like it says in the Johnny Winter Song is “Still Alive and Well”

With Halloween coming up I figured it would be a good time to dust off my black hat and do a little sleuthing online. One of the oldest black hat SEO tricks in the book is the same color text as the background.

Back on the old days of the early ’90s we used to put the word “free” as many times as possible on a page in white text on a white background. Well the search engines caught on to this and put an end to it. “The same color text as the background was no longer a viable solution.” When they allowed text for some of the colors it ignited a resurgence of using the same color text as the background and it escaped the search engines view at least for a while. (Font color “white” background color “#ffffff” was working.)
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
As the power of CSS increased so did its use for black hat SEO. There are many techniques using CSS employed today and not all of them are black hat. Just like anything else if something has a function it will be used for both evil as well as good.

Let’s take a look at the site in question.

Beautiful site so where is the text?

There it is hidden behind the header.

Using the search term “paul shipper” this site comes up first in Google so tie black hat SEO used on this site must be working.

The same search term comes up #3 in Yahoo and not in the top 30 on Bing. Does this mean that Bing is better at detecting black hat SEO techniques? That’s a topic for another post.

Here is the text hidden by the class=”paragraph_style” used on a black background.

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How they get caught by Google if they are not seeing it?
They can be reported to Google’s “Report a Spam Result“.

Now back to Johnny Winter. Just like all the olde black hat SEO techniques and the lyrics to Johnny’s hit song say are “still alive and well“. I am not advocating the use of any black hat SEO in any way shape or form just reporting on their use.

Late,
Gary Pool

Black Hat SEO – Black Text on a Black Background is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Google, Verizon Wireless, and Motorola have Collaborated on a Winning Combination, droid the iDon’t Answer

I was watching the San Diego Charger game last night (if you can call that a game) when an ad came on that sent me to my computer. Now that is what I call marketing, an ad that takes me away from my beloved Chargers. The ad was for the droid. I have enclosed the short commercial near the bottom of the post for your viewing.

The theme of the ad, iDon’t, was a very effective long completion in the end zone against Apple’s iPhone.

The droid is a triple collaboration that includes Motorola, Verizon and Google. It looks a lot like the iPhone, and might possibly be as thin or thinner than the iPhone 3GS. It also has three major advantages over the iPhone; a slide out physical keyboard, it is not controlled by AT&T, and it is available from Verizon Wireless.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I haven’t seen any official pictures of the droid, or anything else “officially” droid related other than a November release date (from July), but the folks over at Boy Genius Report did somehow manage to get a hands-on chance with the droid (see the modified picture below).

The iDon’t Ad

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CrunchBase Information

Droid

Company:	Motorola
Website:	droiddoes.com

The Droid is an Android phone made by Motorola which will run on Verizon’s network. Rumored specs include a powerful OMAP3430 processor, 5 megapixel camera, slideout QWERTY keyboard and touch screen, all housed in a super-compact package and running Android 2.0.

Information provided by CrunchBase

It looks lot like a NOKIA 810.

I think want one!

Late,
Gary Pool

The iDon’t Answer – droid – Google, Verizon Wireless, and Motorola is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Is Google AdWords taking credit for your organically generated search result sales?

The Google AdWords Blog has announced that Google is now showing you “View-through conversions” in your AdWords console. When someone visits a page that contains your ad but does not click on it, yet still buys within a 30 day window after visiting a page displaying your ad. Google AdWords will take credit for the sale.

Google has added a column to your dashboard in your PPC account. When hovered over it shows the following information.

PPC

So is Google AdWords taking credit for my organic results?

If you are running a search only AdWords campaign the answer is emphatically no!

If you are running a content campaign the answer is possibly.

OK here is the scenario:
You sell baby shower games. A potential customer (we will call Bobbi) is doing some research on the internet and visits a blog with one of your adds that happens to be talking about baby shower games. After reading this article on baby bingo games Bobbi visits a few more blogs that don’t have AdWords ads. Bobbi learns enough about baby shower games so she decides to purchase one. Bobbi opens her favorite search engine Bing and does a search for baby bingo. Your baby shower supplies site comes up in the top of the list and Bobbi visits your site and purchases baby bingo and other baby shower products. Google will now report a “View-through conversion”.

In this case Google AdWords will have actually taken credit for a sale even though it was actually the result of a Bing search.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
According to Google AdWords Help:

View-through conversion tracking provides you with additional information related to the value of your display campaigns on the Google Content Network. This feature provides a measure of the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a user saw, but did not click, a display ad on one of the sites on the Google Content Network.

You can use View-through conversion tracking to better measure return on investment (ROI) for your display campaigns and optimize your campaigns based on how users are responding to your display ads.

Here are some key benefits of using View-through conversion tracking:

• You can determine the best places (or sites) to advertise to maximize overall conversions. The reporting data can be used to understand which sites work well for display oriented placement-targeted campaigns.
• You can optimize your campaign performance based on how users are responding to your display ads, even if they don’t click.

If there is a content ad click preceding the conversion, the conversion is treated as a click-conversion. View-through conversions are tracked through the AdSense cookie and they’re only reported for display ads on the Google Content Network.

Important note: View-through conversions are not reported for search campaigns or for text creatives in content campaigns.
You need to have conversion tracking implemented in order to get View-through conversion statistics. Google Analytics goals aren’t compatible with View-through conversion reporting.

Anything to look better eh!

Late,
Gary Pool

PPC – Google AdWords May Be Taking Credit For Organic Sales is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician