Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 8:54 AM
A recent post at ZDNet shows a screen shot from a Google Maps search for “Microsoft” displaying an unexpected image. The image depicted the windows logo with a slash through it.
How did this happen? Apparently Google automatically associated this image with Microsoft's name using geographically targeted image processing. In this case a “Sara B” from Yelp.com had uploaded the image along with a review of the company. While likely unintentional, this could be a new form of “Google bombing” that could cause some serious problems.
The image has since been removed from the search, but one is left wondering where this may lead. If it is possible for Microsoft, what is stopping something like this from happening to other companies out there?
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 8:52 AM
For quite some time Google has provided a keyword tool for advertisers with search volume represented by a green bar. While this green bar did help to indicate the popularity of a specific term, there was no way to know the actual number of searches.
Over the past few weeks I have seen accounts where some have reported seeing the introduction of actual search figures appearing along side the search volume green bar.
Barry Schwartz posted earlier this month at search engine land and referenced an adamap.com post and screenshot, but he was also unable to see the figures at that time. It appears as if Google is testing out the feature for consideration of a future roll-out.
Displaying the actual search figures rather than a general green bar will certainly make their tool more valuable to advertisers in the future. I for one welcome the release, whenever it may be.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:50 AM
There have been reports at search engine land and Search Engine Roundtable that MSN UK has been pre-filling their search box with "The Apprentice BBC". I went to uk.msn.com to see for myself and sure enough, there it was:
I am not sure how I feel about this form of advertising, or how large of an impact it would have on searches. And what happens if the BBC Apprentice site slips from the number one ranking spot? Is their top ranking also being influenced by this?
I do not see this technique catching on as it would likely just irritate searchers forcing MSN to pull the idea. I for one do not want search engines telling me what to search for, but I am curious to know what the BBC has paid for this.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 5:04 PM
Okay, so I said it all in the title. Perhaps you need not even read this article as you may start off not believing it.
Today I read an article written by an unknown name in the SEO industry (at least unknown to me). It had a number of points focused on improving search rankings and provided a bunch of tips on how to improve the overall standings for a site. Sounds like a useful article, and for many who read it, I am sure it was - or at least seemed that way.
The article, sent to me by a client, was surprisingly wrong on several accounts with what the author recommended in terms of SEO. The advice was certainly not anything which could be damaging, but more out dated, now useless information. Many of the tactics recommended may have worked several years ago, but now play little to no role in search rankings.
I found it odd that an article as out dated as this had been published by a seemingly credible newsletter. The source was one I had heard of, but never actually read. I am not trying to discredit the source and therefore will not mention either it or the author, as this is not the point of my post.
I replied to the client and explained which points were inaccurate and why, and then carried on with my day. I got to thinking after receiving a thank you from the client where he stated: "...goes to show you cannot believe what is being written all the time...". I thought, that is very true, and it sparked the idea for this post. I read a lot of articles from a variety of sources, and often spot what I find to be inaccuracies, but never really think anything of it. But what if I were a common businessman with a website, and I was trying to learn about SEO?
How can you tell if the advice you are reading will actually help your site? This is actually a tough question. Most of the advice you read in newsletters and even on authoritative SEO sites is fairly general, applying generic techniques. Very seldom are they focused for a specific site for a specific purpose, so even while the recommendations may be perfectly legit and helpful in most cases, they may not have the desired effect for some. This is not to say they are bad, but merely non-specific enough to do the job. This all makes sense of course, as to be specific enough and cover all possible scenarios, would require articles into the hundreds of pages - otherwise known as books!
Now that I have gone a little off topic, I'll get back to where I was at. So how can you tell if the information in an article is even accurate? Here are three fairly simple points that can help you to determine if what you are reading is trustworthy:
First check out the author. Is it a name you recognize? What are his or her credentials? Have they been around for a while? Are you able to find their articles on any creditable SEO news websites? If not, this does not mean they don’t know their stuff, but it may raise a flag, that perhaps their article could be incorrect. The best of the best are often featured on these news sites and publish a number of articles, so there will likely be at the very least, some reference to them.
Check out the website in their bio. (If they don’t have a bio, there's another flag). Do they even represent an SEO company? If they do, use whatever SEO knowledge you have to see if their site reflects the industry. While not all good SEO companies will necessarily have their own rankings, the basic SEO fundamentals should be in place. Check for the basics, things such as unique title tags, on page textual content, proper navigation etc. In the vastly outdated article I read, the author's bio pointed to a web design company. Now their design was quite nice, and they seem to know their stuff – in terms of design, but their site did not address SEO properly at all. In most cases good designers are not good SEO's, just as good SEO's are not necessarily good designers. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but chances are you would not pay a visit to your lawyer to ask for medical advice. For that matter, you would also be unlikely to see your doctor to have a tooth pulled, perhaps a closer analogy to SEO and design.
Check out the author's advice. If you plan on implementing the advice or specific recommended technique, do some research to verify if what they say is true before putting your site at risk. If their recommendation is one that can be helpful chances are someone else has also written about it. Take a look at some of the popular forums and check for references on the technique – even add your own post asking for thoughts on the item. It is possible that the author is writing about a breakthrough discovery that nobody knows about, but in virtually all cases where a breakthrough occurs, it is kept secret, one would not want to give away a goose that lays golden eggs.
This may seem like a lot of work, but it may certainly be worth it. If you plan on undertaking your optimization efforts on your own you want to ensure that the techniques you are about to use are not only up-to-date, but also worth while and legitimate. Check out your sources and their recommendations. If they are legit, you will most likely be able to verify it fairly easily.
I want to throw in an extra note here. It is very possible that you could stumble upon an article by an unknown name, with no website, and no prior history of contributing articles to any news publications, and it is very possible that this article and author are highly knowledgeable. There are exceptions to every rule, and everyone has to start somewhere. Just because an author comes out of the woodwork it does not mean that he or she has not practiced SEO extensively as perhaps an anonymous face in a large company or even as an in-house SEO for a large corporation for example. My point is basically to do your due diligence before applying any techniques you read about, because you just never know.
And in case you were wondering, no - you don’t have to believe anything I say either.
Danny Sullivan wrote an article today describing Flash optimization and how it is unlikely that Flash will be a completely spiderable medium anytime soon. The article is sobering for those of us who were hoping for a 100% optimizable version of Flash, but at the same time I must stress that there are ways to optimize around Flash if no other alternative is possible. Danny points to a blog describing Flash workarounds that I had not previously seen and I enjoyed a great deal.
All-in-all I consider Flash an amazing technology that can add immense value to a website. That said, if organic rankings are desired it is my preference that Flash be added as a page element versus being the entire website. Flash-only websites are not impossible to optimize but they are extremely undesirable in my opinion because spiderable, optimized content must be hidden in the background of the page (the source). Managing hidden content essentially doubles the work of managing a website because both the Flash and the hidden website needs to be kept current.
I checked this myself from Canada to see if it was a regional alteration but no dice; Canada has been affected as well. I have mixed feelings about this change. On one hand, the link to a directory listing was a great indicator that a website was 'verified' by Yahoo staff since human review is required for directory inclusion. In essence that made the directory link in results an added incentive to pay the price of directory inclusion. On the other hand, removing the directory link has saved 10 lines of valuable screen property on every Yahoo result page. I am unsure what Yahoo will do with this free space but considering their lust for profits (see Yahoo reinvents paid inclusion) I wonder if some additional advertising or another form of profit generation might be forthcoming. If this newly freed space is to be used I just hope it is done creatively.
Also, Barry Schwartz noted this may be a step towards folding the Yahoo Directory. This may very well be true, it would certainly explain the result alteration. That said, I hope Yahoo's Directory sticks around because at this point it is the only directory that has any real validity these days. After all, DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) is a complete mess and I don't honestly know of any other directory other than DMOZ and Yahoo that has any reasonable clout. To put it simply, Yahoo would be foolish to drop their Directory but they do need to reinvent it. I think they should intertwine social media with their directory to give it some freshness and potential energy.
Thinking off the cuff... Yahoo could offer directory listing owners the opportunity to make their listings more robust and they could provide a listing of the most recent articles associated with a company listing. Heck another option that comes to mind is a social media tagging system where any site that met a confidential threshold would get a free review and ultimately a free or discounted listing in the directory. The key is to get the big players in the directory again and make it more attractive and interactive. Personally I could spend ages brainstorming this, it would be a blast... unfortunately it is up to Yahoo to make it work.
As a final note, I was horrified when I could not find a single link to the Yahoo Directory on Yahoo!'s home page. I guess it is true... the directory is being put on the backburner. Does anyone have any sure insight on this topic?
According to Search Engine Land, Google has been caught testing new navigation formats. From the screenshots on Search Engine Land and the adjoining articles it seems Google is attempting to find the right way to include more personalized navigational elements such as Google Calendar, email, etc. into their main navigation. I look forward to seeing the result. I for one, would be very happy to see a quick access link to my Google Calendar or GMail.
Are you still a little fuzzy on social media networking and what affect it has on the web? If so, I expect this review of Digg, one of the more significant social media websites, will provide you with a great introduction.
China is a nation of strict censorship and the country has been rightfully dealt a wealth of criticism for this fact. As many of you know the Internet is carefully screened by China to ensure the proper 'facts' of life are fed to its people. So I wonder, what exactly does China consider worthy of censorship?
Does your website fall into China's wastebasket? The Great Firewall of China is a website that is designed to tell you if your website is blocked in China. Try it yourself and see if your website is a banned substance. Although it is not now, I expect that the StepForth SEO Blog will be banned very soon thanks to this posting.
Here is just a sampling of sites that are completely blocked in China:
Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com)
The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk)
Amnesty International (amnesty.org)
I found other site examples but they were not always banned, it seems site-wide censorship may occur only at certain times or connectivity issues are to blame. The other possibility is China is providing a slightly kinder viewpoint for users of the greatfirewallofchina.org. After all, they are bound to have noted this site's existence and heightened popularity.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:58 PM
More details are now available on selected searches as Google unveils “Plus Box”. Wherever you see the plus box icon “ ” clicking on it will provide you with additional information on the link. A search for Microsoft, with the plus box clicked shows the following:
Currently there are two types of plus box results being displayed. The above stock example for Microsoft, as well as maps for appropriate local results, such is the case with a search for “Babbo”, a restaurant in New York.
This information is not available for all businesses but Google is working on increasing its availability.
If you would like to find a search for your business including this extra information, ensure your full business address is located on your webs site in a textual format and then visit Google’s Local Business Center to add or update your information.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:56 PM
Tuesday, Matt Cutts posted a status update for the KinderStart / Google lawsuit filed by KinderStart more than a year ago. The judge in the KinderStart cases granted Google’s motion to dismiss without leave to amend.
“The instant case has been intensively litigated for more than eleven months. Under these circumstances, the Court concludes that there is no reasonable likelihood that KinderStart will cure the defects in the SAC [second amended complaint] by further amendment. Accordingly, the motion to dismiss will be granted without leave to amend.”
The judge ruled that KinderStart will be responsible for some of Google's legal fees, a practice common with frivolous lawsuits.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:40 PM
Remember way back when HotBot offered customized home page graphics? Actually, I believe it was HotBot, but it has been so many years since I have seen it, I can't recall exactly. I tried to grab a screen shot but was unable to find it, so perhaps the option is long gone by now. At any rate, Google has now followed suit and added customizable themes for the personalized view of Google Search.
These screen shots have been taken from their beach theme. They offer a small selection of dynamic themes that change to reflect the time of day. Some selections include a bus stop, city, and seasonal.
These themes are available to anyone logged into their Google Account who selects "Personalized Search". I for one prefer the basic simple interface. I am not much for all this customization as I personally don't use these extra features.
It is interesting though that Google has taken an age old idea from HotBot and implemented it themselves. I guess making the theme dynamic adds a twist on this old idea. Will it catch on? I suppose only time will tell.
On March 16th, the International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) publicly de-accredited the domain registrar RegisterFly.com for fundamental contractual breaches. BusinessWeek Online appropriately called the RegisterFly.com debacle a "Train wreck" and although this is not SEO-related I think StepForth SEO Blog readers should be kept in the know about this situation. Perhaps this post will help you protect your domain(s) and ultimately your livelihoods from future train wrecks. To that end, I have outlined some tips at the end of this post that will serve as a checklist to help protect you.
So What Happened at RegisterFly.com? Near as I can tell it all began when the owners of the company began a power struggle that ultimately eroded customer support to appalling levels. As a result, customers were not able to transfer or renew their domains and in some cases personal information on their domains were even switched to reflect RegisterFly ownership.
Here is a comment from the BusinessWeek article that speaks volumes of the bad will well-earned by RegisterFly.com:
"This has been a travesty. The transfer system was designed to work between two trusted registrars and completely breaks down when one has gone bad. RegisterFly has held customers hostage by not providing the "auth codes," by arbitrarily locking domain names, by changing the "Whois" info, and by arbitrarily putting your domain into "ProtectFly", their service to protect your identity but also keeps you from transferring your name.
We have lost domains and, more importantly, production Web sites have just gone dead, heading to a RegisterFly parking page instead. Try explaining this to customers depending on these sites for their business. RegisterFly's debacle has ruined businesses and lives. And this could have all been avoided with a better process in place and more in-depth criteria for accreditation. This process must be improved before the Internet can truly be used for mission-critical applications."
What Has ICANN Done to Help? The International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) came under severe criticism as a result of RegisterFly.com's actions because affected domain owners were frustrated ICANN took so long to act. Unfortunately it appears that the domain registration system has some serious flaws because ICANN, which is the only authoritative body in charge of domains, had little power to wield. Here is a March 7th excerpt from the ICANN Ombudsman Blog that provides some insight into ICANN's efforts:
"ICANN is not a regulator. We rely mainly on contract law. We do not condone in any way whatsoever RegisterFly’s business practice and behaviour.
The options for customers to transfer their names to another registrar at this stage are limited. We will advise if we have more information on this point. Last Friday, ICANN convened a telephone conference among those needed to implement a plan that will help cease unintended deletions. This will prevent names from being deleted from the registry and becoming available for re-registration by others. RegisterFly has assured us (for what that is worth) that they will process such requests as soon as they are again technically operational. We will keep a close eye on this.
We do hope this information is helpful and provides some small level of comfort in what is clearly a stressful time for registrants and others affected by these events. Check in at both here and at our website www.icann.org where these issues (amongst others) are being discussed."
For what it is worth, ICANN's 16th of March posting announcing the de-accreditation of RegisterFly also indicated that "ICANN intends to hold a forum to discuss the reform of the Accreditation policy and process at its Lisbon meeting in a week's time." What will come of this meeting is uncertain but there is no doubt that ICANN needs a far larger stick to wield at future companies like RegisterFly.
Do your due diligence and check on the reputations of your prospective registrar before registering domains with them. Try searching with their name followed by "complaint" or any other related words and see if you find anything alarming. Most large registrars will have a complaint or two which is understandable but definitely go the other way if you too many or if, in the worst case scenario, you see a movement such as www.registerflies.com.
Do NOT host your website with your registrar or use their DNS records because any downtime on their part may turn your website into a 404.
Be careful registering your domain with a hosting company. Just like a registrar, a hosting company can leave you in hot water if it goes South. Generally hosting companies are just resellers of domains so all is not lost; with some effort you may be able to skirt around the hosting company and contact the core domain registrar.
If you must make your whois information private then use a 3rd party privacy service - one that is not directly affiliated with your registrar. This way you can be reasonably sure that your privacy options are under your control only.
Do NOT allow your registrar or hosting company to have any stake in your domain whois records. For example, making a hosting company contact the Admin of your domain opens you up to potential problems.
Make certain your whois information is accurate so you can be contacted should complications arise. You are out of luck if privacy is in effect but that should be an understood sacrifice of such a specialized service.
Register important domains for a few years instead of just one so that you can be sure you will not lose your domain to renewal should you find yourself with a bad registrar.
Closing Remarks My heart goes out to all of those affected by this horrid situation. The idea that clients of RegisterFly may have lost domains after investing thousands of hours and dollars in their website - is a sobering thought. I can only hope that those most painfully affected by this mess get some justice - better late than never. Sincerely, Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth SEO Services
PS. I don't think this post would be complete without a creative video that YouTube user "hd1080i" used to put the RegisterFly events into perspective.
Today Adobe unveiled the alpha release of Apollo which Adobe's Mike Downey describes as a "cross operating system runtime that allows users to install desktop applications built using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and Flash." In layman's terms, Apollo enables web developers to create applications for your computer using the web technology they already know and work in.
Mike Downey provided a glimpse of what the Apollo system could do using a demo created for/by eBay. The eBay demo provided an impressive glimpse of a desktop application simply installed from eBay and then operated in a slick interface on the desktop; just like any other program installed on a computer. What I was most impressed with was the offline capabilities built into the program; the runtime works autonomously from the Internet if you happen to be without an Internet connection. Obviously there are limitations without a connection but you can setup new products to sell, totally configure them, and even take photos of the products directly from within the program with a webcam. When the computer reconnects, the system automatically synchronizes with eBay and voila, your new products for sale are online.
So what are the implications of such a system? Well the fact that applications can be developed from HTML, JavaScript and Flash is extremely alluring. After all, as an amateur web designer I know I would rather not learn yet another web programming language. That said, I am mostly curious how Apollo would offer any benefit to someone designing a website using less complex technologies (Adobe Flex is no walk in the park). If Apollo can promise ease of creation, implementation and maintenance I think it will be a rocket ship. It is extra impressive to me that it maintains the general integrity of the Internet by being cross platform.
What Impact Might Apollo Have on Online Marketing? This is my loaded question of the day because Apollo will conceivably extend interactive marketing Internet to both the online and offline desktop which opens a variety of doors. Here are a couple of off-the-cuff concepts:
1) Offline Advertising? What if Google could now provide advertising to offline desktops? Obviously users would not be able to visit websites due to their offline status but perhaps clicking on Adsense/Adwords advertisements would then make the clicked ads appear again (in click order) in a bolder fashion once the user when online. To mitigate fraud the advertiser that ultimately had a clickthrough would be the only one to pay for the extra offline visibility; perhaps via an additional percentage of their click fee. I am not sure how feasible this strategy would be, but I am sure better minds than mine are seriously thinking this one through.
2) Say Hello to Ad-Supported Everyday Computer Applications Apollo opens the door to a simpler environment for providing everyday office and personal computer applications. First of all consider that it is cross-platform, enabling the creation of a single easy-to-install application for Mac and PC. Using a single application, a developer could offer a free, powerful toolset such as an image editing/management program supported by the subtle use of text ads, recommended for-fee plugins, in-window image editing tutorials supported by commercials... etc.
3) Knowledge Bases You know when you get a new computer product that comes with one flimsy manual that essentially tells you to go online and use the manufacturer's troubleshooting site? That can be annoying but the capabilities of Apollo would render this need obsolete. You may still have to visit a website but only once to download a troubleshooting application. The application could download all of the latest information on your product and store it on your computer for future need OR just keep the help files that seem to respond closely to the issue you are currently having. In each case the tool would allow you to access troubleshooting information in an offline environment; after all, in my experience device issues often occur at the most inopportune times. So what is the marketing angle? The manufacturer could easily post the latest news on next generation products or even allow partners to pitch compatible wares.
Until Later... I guess you can tell I am impressed. Yes, my mind is afire with ideas; something that usually happens when there is a new technology on the block. Especially a technology that appears to leverage existing technologies versus requiring a massive new learning curve. I don't know how Apollo will be received over the next few months but I expect many online giants will be jumping on this bandwagon soon once they realize the potential it offers. That is unless a competitor is set to launch a competing product any day now (Microsoft... are you listening?).
Some Notable Benefits of Apollo in Short Form
Apollo provides developers with an immense amount of control over their applications since they control the content on the machine of every user.
Content is updated/update-able on every reconnection to the Internet.
Online advertisers now have an open door to the offline computer user.
Installation is simple - at least according to the one demo seen so far ;-)
Apollo applications are cross-platform.
Applications offer instant updates and notifications: I expect news agencies will be all over this.
Questions I Have About Apollo I wonder if...
there are any requirements for cross-platform compliance?
Adobe can publicly state that any search engines have taken an interest in this software yet. Better yet, have any search engines begun creating an application?
there are any impressive web applications Adobe can demo that utilizes simple JavaScript and HTML? Or is Apollo really only worthwhile for the programming minded?
has advertising been incorporated yet in any Apollo application? I would love to see the first introduction of ads in this product. Let us just hope it is more creative than a banner.
Today I came across a beta viewing of ASK's future layout and platform. I didn't look at it hard so I can't say anything all that super intelligent at the moment but my first impression was so-so (i.e. nothing that blew me away): www.askx.com.
Last week a UK guerrilla marketing campaign launched by ASK was photographed on a train on a London subway featuring ASK's familiar oval logo background shown below the loudspeaker (photo credit Ben Werdmuller). The campaign has raised the ire of a few people and opened the eyes of some others. All-in-all, the campaign has been shown to be one hell of a news-making promotion... which has undoubtedly forced a grin from the staff at ASK. Anyway, here is a little run down on the events to date:
The advertisement is actually rather anonymous, merely suggesting that viewers visit www.information-revolution.org. Once on that site, however, if you look around the page you can ultimately tell it is a ASK website via the logo on the bottom right of the page.
So what the heck is all of this about you might ask? Well ASK is railing against the UK's widespread adoption of the "biggest search engine". The following snippet says it all, without saying Google, of course:
"Did you know that more than 75% of people in the UK use just one search engine to find information? The same search engine. The biggest search engine. The most popular search engine. Why? It's not that there aren't choices, it just seems that most people don't use them."
According to the Information-Revolution blog, the purpose is against "settling for the status quo". Further the March 15th posting states: "Google has a very good search product, and we’re not preaching that people should abandon it. Some people are mistaking this movement as a movement against Google."
Personally, I think the image on the right makes it fairly indisputable that Ask has launched this against Google. This screenshot (right) was taken by Danny Sullivan before ASK removed it from their results (original). This image of a puppet was shown whenever a user typed in "Google" in ASK.co.uk search. To be fair, it is unknown if this occurred on other search engine searches - anyone know the answer to that question? All-in-all, I see no reason why ASK would dispute the intention of their campaign... of course it is against Google and I see nothing wrong with that.
Whatever ASK's reasoning is you can expect to hear and see much more about this 'movement'. According to a recent interview Danny Sullivan had with Jim Lanzone ASK will be launching radio and TV advertisements depicting faux revolutionary takeovers of UK news stations to get out the word on the "information revolution".
Today Google announced it is acquiring Adscape, a company that has pioneered dynamic integration of advertisements within video games. This purchase is yet another brilliant move that will continue to keep Google on the cutting edge of advertisement distribution.
Q. Why did Google acquire Adscape Media? A. In-game advertising is an area where we believe Google could add a lot of value to users, advertisers and publishers. Adscape Media's technology and talented team are a great addition to Google's current advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers.
Q. When will Google integrate in-game advertising into the Google advertising platform? A. At this time, we do not have news to share about the integration plans.
Q. Do you already have deals signed with game developers? A. We have been in discussions with many in the game development community and hope to partner with both large and small game publishing companies.
Q. Will the in-game ads continue to be integrated into the game or will they become text ads similar to AdSense format? A. As this is a recent acquisition it is too early to say what the ads will look like. We will explore a variety of options to determine what is best for the advertiser and user.
Q. Where does Google see in-game advertising going in the future, in terms of both revenue and the technology itself? A. We don't release specific projections but we think there is great value in video game advertising. As more and more people spend time playing video games, we think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences while maintaining a high quality, engaging user experience. That said, we will test ways of successfully implementing this form of advertising and Infinity's technology will be instrumental in those tests.
Over the past few years, the video game experience has become richer and more interactive. We think this rich environment is a perfect medium to deliver relevant, targeted advertising that ultimately benefits the user, the video game publisher and the advertiser.
Courtesy of JupiterResearch and iProspect, this chart provides a glimpse of the number of search engine results surfers will review before choosing their path.
As an admitted stats junky I really enjoy this kind of data. I hope you find it enlightening as well. It may be these numbers are far from a surprise but at least they confirm your beliefs which is a comforting thought in itself.
You have probably heard a ton about Social Bookmarking or Social Media Networking, or .... it goes on; as within anything on the Internet there are a myriad of different terms to describe this phenomenon. What it comes right down to though are votes. Similar to a backlink to a website, social bookmarks are a method for the average joe to share a great online find with the rest of the world. As others share their favorite finds the bookmarked content has a greater chance of generating more and more interest. Content that gets the most interest will earn prominent visibility that can earn hundreds and even thousands of free backlinks. As a result, making it easy for users to socially bookmark your content is definitely in your best interest. From my experience the most popular bookmarking websites are Digg it, Reddit, and del.icio.us.
So how can you add social bookmarking to your content?
Here is a great free online tool called the "Social Bookmark Link Creator" that will automatically generate bookmark links that you or your webmaster can include on key pages or articles within your website. It is not necessary to add social bookmarking to every page within your website but I do recommend adding it to articles, "how to's", and any other material that may provoke lasting interest.
After using this tool I added it to the "How to Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URLs" I recently added to StepForth's FAQ section. As you can see this menu can be added to a page in a manner that does not detract from the content.
Anyway, if you haven't already done it, I suggest taking your first step into the world of social bookmarking. If your content is of use it is likely to generate some positive attention... and who doesn't need that?
Transferring traffic and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.
The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net’s situation was a great opportunity to review what one might expect when switching domains.
Switching Shingles Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains:
You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traffic to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial.
Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traffic to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your switchover as soon as possible by registering the new website within Google Webmaster Central and then submitting a fresh XML sitemap. Google representatives are very clear the only way to minimize the impact of a domain changeover is to give Google’s automated system as much warning as possible to limit downtime.
Find the most significant inbound links that point to the old domain and selectively contact the site owners requesting a link update to the new domain.
TIP: Discovering which sites to contact first can be done using a combination of top referrer statistics, and search engine backlink reports. I don’t recommend taking this step unless you find a few sites that stand out as massive traffic drivers as this process can be frustrating due to lack of response; after all, changing a backlink to your site is likely low on a webmaster’s priority list.
Send out a press release far and wide explaining the move to the new domain. Feature the domain prominently in the release to begin the task of re-branding.
All email addresses will need to be forwarded to their respective addresses on the new domain. Ensure that anyone emailing the old address is forwarded to the new one BUT they should also receive an automated notice to change their contact records to reflect the new email. Leave these email forwards active for a short time to catch the most important emails and then turn them off and delete the old address accounts to avoid encouraging spammers.
On the new domain don’t forget to implement a 301 redirect for the “non-www” traffic so they get forwarded to the preferred “www” version of the domain. For more information and background on this topic please visit the following tutorial “301 Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW URLs”.
If you expect a severe drop in traffic you can expect a drop in sales. In this regard you may want to ramp up or start a pay per click marketing to minimize the damage to your bottom line.
How Long Does a Domain Transition Take? Generally a popular website will experience the least amount of downtime because Google will take notice faster due to the many entry points (inbound links from news articles, etc.) this type of site usually has. It is also more to Google’s benefit to ensure that a credible and well-trafficked website is kept high in Google’s results to ensure users receive the best results possible. Using a popular website such as Topix.Net as an example, I would expect a 2-week to 1-month turn around at which time traffic would be back to approximately 85% of what it was.
Sites that are less popular will really need to do their homework and ensure they have informed Google in every way possible of the transition. The transition back to normal traffic for sites that carefully transition their website should be in the realm of 2 to 6 months.
“What If?” The Worst Case Scenario What should you do if your traffic drops dramatically and after a few weeks or months it still has not measurably restored itself? Google actually recommends you post your issue on their online user support forum. Apparently Google engineers occasionally take pity and help out; maybe you will get lucky. I also recommend visiting the more authoritative search engine forums (such as Search Engine Watch, iHelpYou, etc.) and requesting help. There are a lot of incredibly talented SEOs on these forums that are happy to provide assistance.
WARNING! If you must conduct a domain transition be sure to plan it during a historically slow time of year to minimize damages. For example, it would be a mistake for a B2C to switch domains before the Holiday Season rush.
In Conclusion Do not switch your domain unless you have no other choice because no matter how popular your website is domain switchovers are far from enjoyable. After all, even losing a single week of significant traffic for a popular site could cost many thousands or even millions of dollars. On the flip side of the coin, less trafficked websites (i.e. Mom and Pop sites, small B2C websites, etc.) usually experience a longer wait time so they experience a different type of pain. Fortunately, you now know there are ways to mitigate the potential harm to your bottom line, just don’t forget to follow the rules and your switchover will be a lot more effective and ultimately less painful.
Jakob Nielsen is an authority on usability; "the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site is designed" (Wikipedia). His tips are always worth reading and often worth implementing into your own website(s) whenever applicable.
In his most recent newsletter, Jakob Nielsen released a list of 10 redesign recommendations that are the most likely to increase return on investment. The subjects discussed are:
1) Email Newsletters, 2) Informative Product Pages, 3) High-Quality Photography, 4) Product Differentiation and Comparisons, 5) Support for Reordering, 6) Simplified Text, 7) Catering to Seniors, 8) Gift-Giving Support, 9) Search, 10) User Testing, and a bonus tip on implementing a loyalty program.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:53 PM
After publishing last week's article on "Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons" I have had a few readers contact me with notable "Cons" they have experienced with the recent upgrade process. While I know I had not covered all possible negatives to Panama in my article, these items are certainly worth adding to the list.
Keyword specific URL’s
Michael wrote noting that you can't easily manage unique URL's per keyword. This is absolutely correct. While the ability to specify a unique URL on a per keyword basis does exist, it would be quite a hassle to apply this to any large campaign.
Google has a very straight forward system for unique URL's. You can bring up a list of all the keywords along with a nice simple field to enter the URL's, hit submit, and they are all done. With Yahoo, you must do this on a one-at-a-time type routine.
To have unique URL's per keyword in Yahoo here are the steps you will need to take (starting from your "Dashboard"):
Click on the Campaign Name
Click on the AdGroup
Click on the specific keyword
This will bring you to a page with specific stats on that keyword including a chart. At this step, click the edit link near the top of the page beside "Custom URL"
In the pop up window enter the URL for the keyword and click submit.
After these steps have been entered, you will have to wait for an editorial review before the new URL will be put to use.
While the feature is available, the process is very cumbersome. This is certainly a 'Con' that needs to be added to the list. Perhaps the 'con' should be changed to include all the changes that require far more steps than are really necessary, after all, there are quite a few of them. This seems to be a common issue with much of Yahoo Panama and I anticipate these types of things will be much more streamlined in the future.
Brand Awareness Just Got More Expensive
The following comment was posted to our blog by 'Paul':
"On the CON list, you overlooked the adverse affect to brand advertisers who want to promote something unrelated to the search to create some buzz, awareness, or association with their brand (i.e. Jeep bidding on terms like "beetle" or "bug" to coincide with their ad campaign). The quality score, while beneficial to most, means those advertisers have to spend more to appear prominently where their ad is not relevant."
I have to say I both agree and disagree with this. First, yes, this is certainly a big 'con' for any advertiser that fits into this category, no question about it. This has also been a reality for AdWords advertisers for some time now, and it makes sense that Yahoo would follow suit. If you want to bid on seemingly irrelevant phrases and have your ad appear, things just got much, much, more expensive for you. That said this is also a 'pro' in terms of relevant topical advertisements.
By having irrelevant ads essentially cost more, it can have the reverse impact on relevant ads. By driving irrelevant ads lower in the results, it will in a sense create less competition for relevant ads making the top ranking spots less expensive. Under the new algorithm Volkswagen could secure the rank for "beetle" at a lower cost than Jeep, and would have the potential to outrank Jeep regardless of bid strictly due to relevance.
From the perspective of advertisers trying to build awareness by bidding on popular, yet irrelevant terms, this is certainly a 'con', but from the perspective of the majority of advertisers, I would have to slide this over to the ‘pro’ category.
Note: I also want to say that for these purposes "irrelevant" refers to a key phrase not directly related to the destination URL. I do understand that while on the surface, a phrase may appear irrelevant, however, when considering target demographics, may make considerable sense.
Yahoo Not Prepared for the Upgrading of Very Large Accounts
I had an interesting letter from a Yahoo advertiser who had very big problems with the new Yahoo Upgrade.
With an annual advertising budget on Yahoo of between $150,000 and $250,000, he found the upgrade to be a complete nightmare.
Under the old system he was running hundreds of ads using thousands of keywords. Many of the keywords were geographic in nature very specific to the ad copy and categories being used. After the upgrade was complete, the account was a complete and total disaster. "Thousands of keywords and ads had been jumbled into completely nonsensical categories, all created by Yahoo."
Not only were the keywords moved into inappropriate groups, but much of his ad language had also been altered. He estimated that this colossal rat’s nest it would take upwards of 80 hours to correct. As a result he did what any level headed advertiser would do, and called Yahoo.
While Yahoo certainly felt sorry for him and could sympathize, they did nothing to help solve the problem. Yahoo simply suggested that he do all the footwork himself to bring things back in order. For an advertiser with a monthly spend in excess of $15,000, he felt this was plenty of money for Yahoo to assign someone to sort this out for him. I for one agree completely.
After he started the process of re-organizing from scratch, ads which were previously approved were suddenly being disapproved. He called Yahoo again. After being passed off from one agent to another finally he reached someone who told him the ads were in fact running (which they were not), and that no one could tell him what the problem was other than it being a "computer glitch."
Ultimately, to make a long story short, Yahoo has lost one good and high spending advertiser.
Panama Browser and Validation Issues
Susan wrote in with a few 'cons' that may cause smaller scale problems for some advertisers, but problems never the less.
The first is with browser compatibility. Now I don't use any of these so I will have to take her word for it, but apparently Panama has some functionality issues when accessed using Safari, some older browsers, and is not at all compatible with Mac classic browsers.
She also noted that some of the problems with Panama and access via older browsers is due to the html itself. A W3C Validation check of the new sign in page shows items that are a miss, the most obvious being a lack of declaration of the doctype. While this is an issue common with an incredible number of websites out there, I am surprised to see it with a company such as Yahoo. After signing on and noticing errors, Susan went on to check her browser error logs and found the following:
https://login22.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/ signin/loadSignin.do?signt=true HTML error (5/16): The DOCTYPE declaration is missing. HTML error (231/12): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (237/25): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (243/146): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (249/73): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (323/11): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (345/15): Illegal character ³/² in tag. HTML error (352/16): Illegal character ³/² in tag. https://login22.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/ CSS Error (49/135): Unknown CSS property ³zoom². CSS Error (79/77): Unknown CSS property ³zoom². CSS Error (105/9): Unknown CSS property ³opacity². CSS Error (114/9): Unknown CSS property ³opacity².
The server's certificate chain is incomplete and the signers are not registered
"The certificate on the server has expired"
A script on this page failed to execute. This may keep this page from functioning properly.Statement on line 11632: Expression did not evaluate to a function object:0.addevevtlistner
Now I have to be honest - this goes beyond my level of expertise, however, it is still surprising to me for a site with such a large budget, name, and many months of testing. I would personally expect issues such as these to have been dealt with prior to launch. Perhaps solving these items will allow a wider array of browsers to function properly with Panama.
I am very curious to hear more comments on the new Yahoo Panama. Not only would I love to hear specific 'cons', I would also like to hear the 'pros'. While I do not argue that this new system is certainly with its flaws, I see it overall, as being a positive step. What are your opinions? Please email them to me at scott@stepforth.com. I would love to write another article on the many positive experiences encountered by our readers; after all, there are two sides to every story.
Hi Ross. Just came across this today on Bloglines.
Three years later, I'm still against paid inclusion, because I still think it is hypocritical to charge for something we need to do anyway to be the best search service we can be. I also think it's a dis-service to our users to blur the line that much between paid content and editorial content.
"Welcome to capitalism", Jeremy Zawodny once said in a post called "Defending Paid Inclusion." Yes, Yahoo can do what they want, they’re probably not skewing the results, and even if they did, most people probably wouldn't notice or care. Furthermore, since sites are paying a flat fee with the "Basic" version of Yahoo's Paid Inclusion program, there is no incentive in those instances for Yahoo to increase traffic to submitted URLs. (Except, I suppose, to encourage renewals. One can assume you wouldn't renew if you didn't see any traffic from this.)
On the other hand, with Yahoo's "Pro" version of Paid Inclusion, the pricing model is cost-per-click (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssp_pr.php). In these cases, Yahoo only makes money if a URL gets traffic. What are the odds that out of 2 million results for a given query, their partner sites will be ranked highly enough, consistently enough, on their own to: a) generate enough traffic for the partner site to make it worth participating in the program; and b) generate enough revenue for Yahoo to make it worth operating the program? I don't know, and I'm not accusing Yahoo of anything. I just know that 75% of the clicks on a major search engine typically go into the top 5 results on the page. It would just be too much of a coincidence if paid (and unmarked) partners got those rankings/clicks instead of non-paying sites.
I'd rather not have anyone wondering if we're gaming it. So Paid Inclusion is just not on the table for Ask.com.
A big thanks to Jim Lanzone for updating his view on this matter. I am happy to see that at least one major search engine representative has publicly spoken his thoughts on Paid Inclusion. I hope to hear from Jeremy Zawodny soon to get his take on my article and Jim's comments.
The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild is none too happy with Google's plan to indiscriminately scan, index, and allow the searching of millions of books from libraries the world over and Microsoft is capitalizing on this rare chink in Google's armor.
Copyrighters are claiming infringement because Google is making advertising revenue from the results of book searches in the Google Book Search system. Here are all of Google's arguments that I found:
Google is doing nothing wrong because they only offer snippets of books within the results; not the entire book.
Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, David Drummond, says being in Book Search provides additional "exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers, and producers of content."
Google sees no difference between indexing books and indexing websites because they are both copyrighted and Google allows authors to opt-out of their search engine at any time.
Microsoft Capitalizes Microsoft's Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin is publicly blasting Google for their flagrant abuse of copyright law in prepared remarks to be delivered to the Association of American Publishers. He claims that Google cannot be trusted and the only evidence that publishers need to look to is the current issues of copyright at Google Video and YouTube.
Microsoft is undoubtedly trying to benefit from publicly blasting Google as Microsoft is also making overtures to publishers while scanning and indexing books for their Live Search Books Publisher Program. In contrast to Google's opt-out approach, however, Microsoft is only adding older books that are no longer protected by copyright law or newer books that have been exclusively approved (opted-in) for indexing by their legal representatives. From what I can gather this has placed the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers more in favour of Microsoft. That said I am sure Google looks far more appealing if an agreement can be reached; after all, Microsoft Live's search traffic is insignificant in comparison to Google's. For now, however, both representative associations are in the long process of suing Google for copyright infringement. Ross's Take: Google Needs to Re-Examine Its Values I think the concept of indexing the world's libraries is phenomenal but it should be done respectfully using an opt-in process. It is pretentious and unlawful for Google to require the rightful owners of copyrighted books to take the time to opt-out of a process that clearly violates the rights they already went to great lengths to secure. To draw a parallel... would Google argue that anyone can mass email without the permission of the recipients under the argument that they were provided with a functional opt-out mechanism? I think not.
Furthermore, Google's argument that indexing content found on the web is same as indexing books is completely ridiculous. After all, many of the books that Google will index are not already online in scanned format so in essence they are now integrating content not originally intended for online use. That authors/publishers have not placed this content online must be respected and Google should require the approval of the authors or publishers before placing any of the scanned information live. I know this will slow down the whole process of indexing the world's knowledge but that will always be more appealing than sacrificing rights.
-- Is it just me or in this case does Google seem to have forgotten their popular mantra... "Don't Be Evil"? I hope Google replies and provides further insight into their position. I wonder where the other major search engines stand in this matter?
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:41 PM
Imagine what your life would be like if your annual salary was only a dollar. What would you do with your check? Perhaps buy a chocolate bar? Well, for the third consecutive year Google top dogs Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt will each earn exactly that for 2007, a measly single dollar. Yahoo’s chief executive, Terry Semel, will also see a 1 dollar salary for 2007.
The $1 salary seems ridiculous until you look at a few other figures. Semel saw $25.7 million in bonuses for 2006. Brin and Page each have shares in Google totaling more than $14 Billion each and Schmidt has a worth of more than $5 Billion.
If my boss is reading this, and I know he is, I will happily work for $1 a year - providing I can also have $5 Billion + in bonuses. Ahh, to have even a small piece of that pie.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:33 PM
Last year they lost their case against Chinese search company Baidu.com, and this year they are at it again with a suit against Alibaba, the company which runs Yahoo China.
Plaintiffs Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and EMI have filed suit against Alibaba for the equivalent of $710,000 (RMB 5.5 million) in damages. They claim that Yahoo China is infringing on their Copyrights.
The complaint evolves around the music search at Yahoo China allowing users to find and listen to music the vast majority of which is pirated.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:02 PM
I have seen many articles and the like discussing proper use of the Robots Meta tag. It almost seems common knowledge of the purpose of this tag, but every now and then you find some confusion over its purpose and how it works.
Recently Vanessa Fox over at the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog posted exactly how Googlebot interprets this tag, and what it will do if it finds tags conflicting with the robots.txt file.
For anyone who has any level of confusion over the robots meta tag, this is a great, explanative 5 minute read.