Blog the lastest Google and search engine marketing news. Topics include anything about Google and search engine marketing.
Google Search Engine Marketing Blog
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Measure your success
Many people try hard to get hits, but have no idea what happens to them other than when they actually make a sale. In each sale there are many micro sales, and thus it is vitally important to track the progress of visitors through a website. Two of the leading tracking programs are ConversionRuler and ClickTracks. ConversionRuler is more basic, whereas Clikc Tracks is FULL feature. This may be more data than most need or want. Each has a sliding price structure. Conversion Ruler starts off at $20/month for the first 2000 click throughs. Free 1 Month Conversion Ruler Trial Clicktracks starts off at $49/month for 150,000 page views. Try ClickTracks
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Amazon to enter search field
Amazon has recently started a commercial search developement firm under the name of A9. The goal of A9 will be to produce enterprise search technology focusing on e-commerce. The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Amazon startup A9 entering Google turf
Thursday, September 25, 2003
AllTheWeb now requires a code to submit your site
In a move to reduce spam submissions AllTheWeb has recently started to require a code to be submitted with new URLs. AlltheWeb.com: Webmaster Resources - Add AlltheWeb to your site
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Stop Verisign DNS Abuse Petition
VeriSign has recently changed how misspelled URLs are treated for .COM and .NET domain names. VeriSign has created a search program full of paid sponsors, which has enraged many members of the internet community. Multiple lawsuits have already been filed. Stop Verisign DNS Abuse Petition
Interested in the Open Directory Project?
Interested in the Open Directory Project? About the ODP ... Mirror Site which works off an old feed. The Google Directory is powered off an ODP dump and has the links organized by pagerank. Add a site to the ODP and when that does not work read the ODP Weblog and go to the Open Directory Public Forum where you can talk to some of the ODP editors
Google offers Search by Location
Similar to the project created by Overture, Google is now offering search by location Google Search by Location
Saturday, September 20, 2003
VeriSign getting sued for Site Finder
VeriSign recently announced the advent of Site Finder. With .COM & .NET websites VeriSign redirects misspelled or incorrect queries to Site Finder. Lets say you searched for www.blasdadfsadfadfsadf.net this would return the Site Finder site where a suggested sites are listed followed by a paid search box and categories. While this technology may help some people find sites quicker, it places a large amount of responsibility in the hands of one company. MSN search is one of the most money grubbing searches on the web, and their default 404 error page that comes with their windows operating system directs people to MSN search in a similar way. The biggest problems most people have with the Site Finder service is that 1) it is unproven 2) it offers paid advertising categories for people to search for - this is essentially a useless feature if a person is already searching for a specific domain Problem 1 would not be considered a big deal if problem 2 did not exist, and problem 2 was not earning a large sum of money for VeriSign Site Finder Sparks Lawsuit - SiliconValley.com
Choosing a page title
Many sites have "WELCOME TO" or other nonsense in their title. An optimal title should contain the keywords you want. After you develope sufficient link popularity you may be able to add a call to action in the title. A good page title can contain multiple keyword phrases that overlap. An example would be a title containing "dragon naturally speaking medical" "dragon naturally speaking" "medical transcription" and "medical transcription software" using the link text below as the page title would cause direct title matches for those searches. in addition it would pick up phrases like "dragon transcription"... Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical Transcription Software
Google Tests
Neat little ideas to prove what google doesGoogle Tests - Finding stuff out about Google
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Google Code Jam 2003
Talk about a cheap means of recruiting great workers... Google is hosting a code contest offering the top 25 an all expense paid trip to the Googleplex. The winner is to receive $10,000. The real reward will most likely be future job openings offered to the winner of this contest. Google Code Jam 2003
Monday, September 15, 2003
anacubis combines Amazon and Google Web Services
anacubis has created visual analysis software which shows a graphic relationship between elements of a topic from the Amazon catalog with backup data being provided from Google. anacubis combines Amazon and Google Web Services - EContentMag.com
LookSmart Settles Class Action Suit
LookSmart shifted its revenue model from a flat fee to price per click. Many people hated this move and labeled LookSmart as "scumbags" for making this move. In an attempt to make things right LookSmart has settled its class action lawsuit. LookSmart Settles Class Action Suit - search engine news blog
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Viewing Source
Many people try to hide their source by disabling the right click feature. It is still easy to view the source using the source option under the view category at the top of the web browser. Some pages use redirects to prevent people from seeing the data. Typically this is a technique which prevents people from finding the source. If the redirect is server side you will not be able to see the page. If the redirect is created using meta tags or a script then you can still view the source by typing "view-source:http://www.domain.com" into the web browser.
BLOGGER: to give away many of its advanced features
BLOGGER Pro is now being folded into the regular BLOGGER service. BLOGGER: Important Blogger Pro Announcement
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Google Robots TXT file
Do you have content you do not want indexed? here is an example robots exclusion file from Google
Google 5 Year History
Google has just reached its fifth birthday. While Google is young relative to its peirs, you can see all the amazing things Google has done over time. Google Corporate Information: Google History Google Corporate Information: Google Timeline
Overture Research
Just as Google labs is working to make new innovative discoveries in the search field, Overture Research has its own projects at hand. One example of what Overture is doing is its local search which will provide street information to a websearch town by town. While it still has some flaws, it is easy to see the practicality and usefullness of this project. Overture Research
Friday, September 05, 2003
SquawkBox.tv - Interactive weblog commenting
SquawkBox offers free interactive comments features to many top weblogs. SquawkBox.tv - Interactive weblog commenting
FindWhat.com Purchases Miva Merchant
FindWhat, the third leading price per click search supplier in the United States, recently announced it would be purchasing Miva Merchant. Miva is a powerful web based shopping cart provider. This move by FindWhat came 3 months after its $160 Million dollar merger with Espotting. Here is the official report from the FindWhat website. FindWhat.com Purchases Miva Merchant
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Wildcard Domain Search Lookup
An easy tool to find your domain IP and who shares it with you. Whois Source - Wildcard Domain Search Lookup
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Tagwords - a new adwords type of advertising
While DMOZ is a vital directory, it has been viewed as unreliable by many sources. Essentially Tagwords is going through the open directory to check and see how reliable the DMOZ data is to see if they can reliably use that information in their future products. TAGword - text ads on your site with flair and style
Monday, September 01, 2003
Adding SSI without changing to shtml
You can add server side includes to a website without changing the file paths or filenames by simply adding a few lines of code to your .htaccess file. Options Includes AddType text/html .html AddHandler server-parsed .html You Need SSI Right Now! by Bob McElwain
T online back to Overture listings
Court injunction makes T online switch back to Overture listings. T online switched to Google recently, announcing the Yahoo merger as the reason for the switch. Latest internet business news : News
Use CSS instead of Java for rollovers
Using CSS we can do many great things to improve the fuctionality of a website. When the web was created one of its fundamental concepts was that display and content can be kept apart. Using CSS you can make rollovers which search engine spiders can follow. I found this extremely important idea on SearchGuild and he found it on A List Apart: CSS Design: Taming Lists the HTML markup would look like {table id="rollover"} {td}{a href="/info/"}Info{/a}{/td} {td}{a href="/contact/"}Contact{/a}{/td} {/table} please note that i replaced the <> symbols with {} in the above HTML sample the CSS markup would look like #rollover td { background-color: #EFEFEF; color: #03699C; border: 1px solid #4892b7; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 15px; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; } #rollover td a { display: block; width: 100%; background-color: #EFEFEF; color: #03699C; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; } #rollover td a:hover { background-color: #03699C; color: #fff; } visit SearchGuild visit A List Apart: CSS Design: Taming Lists
Link Building Tip - Google Alert
SEO chat is one of the better search engine marketing forums on the web. Darin Ward is a creative programmer with a deep interest in search engines. Frequently it is not the tools you use, but how you use them that bring sucess. Google alert keeps track of anything on the web and emails you once change occurs. Google Alert - Track a Web Search Automatically Here is the tip on how to use it Link Building Tip - Google Alert
Are words in links important?
When viewing the google cache fo spamdex.org I saw an alarming line. These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: directory spam This page has a top ten listing for the term "directory spam" without any words on the page. Google Cache of Spamdex.org are links important - YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Keywords on eBay
Now you can buy keywords on EBAY - well sort of. When people search for products on EBAY you can list above the EBAY results with a cost per click banner add. The reason EBAY made these banners and not text based is that they did not want to blend them with their results and sacrifice the usability of their web site. While the text in text based adds is what really sets them apart, these banners are directed at a somewhat targeted market. Its seems to me that those advertising multi level marketing and other junk like that could make a killing with this program. Keywords on eBay
Web Search Content Ads Seen Falling Short
Many people want to place ads and see instant returns. Every environment is competitive. Some ill informed marketing companies are pulling their clients contextual ads claiming these ads perform more like banners than search marketing. Education is the key to success in these markets. Having a ton of clients is a treat. It places a ton of data in your hands. I only wonder if these marketing firms have asked themselves to learn how to properly use this data - or if they felt better laying ignorant. Boston.com / Business / Technology / Web Search Content Ads Seen Falling Short Buy the Google AdWords report today ($49)
