Interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org and Joe Whyte | SEO Corner

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I was working on a new blog series on blog.lunarpages.com. I came up with the idea of interviewing some of the web’s most successful SEO and Internet Marketers. My first interview in the series is with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org. We talked about what a professional marketer needs to look for when considering a web hosting company. Stop in and take a look.

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Wiki Search taking on Google, Yahoo! and MSN?

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Author: Joe Whyte

Today I was checking out some things over at wikipedia just to keep tabs on them trying to take over the world. Well to my surprise I found a page that is requesting wiki members and developers to start creating a user defined search engine. The founder of wikipedia (Jimmy Wales) is attempting to make a search engine that fixes the “broken” search industry that is alive today. From what Jimmy is saying is that he wants PEOPLE to do what any Algorithm cannot which is probably something like Social Search. Social Search is something that Google, Yahoo and MSN have already talked about and is something that is already in development. Social Search IS the future of search but when will it be realized and will it ever be a stand alone search engine with no help from an algorithms? I think not! The time it will take for all possible search results to be customized to a user’s search behavior is a life long process so there still needs to be something that can make Social or “personalized” search move quicker and smarter.

To get a general overview on social search, see this great article over at SEroundtable.com.

Here is information about Googles Social Search.
Google’s way of utilizing social search is allowing a tracking system to follow you while you search. So if you are doing a search for cooking and you click on 2 results on the first page and 4 results on the second page then when you perform that search using “personalized search” you will have all of the results you clicked at the top of YOUR search so you dont have to digg to find them. This technique makes for a personalized Search Engine Results page FULL of results that are relevant to what you are looking for.

Here is Yahoo! Getting social: I have not seen any beta for yahoo social search YET, if someone does have a sneak peak on this please let me know. I do know that Yahoo! is starting to create a social search beta program and it seems that they definitely know the power of social search and have their eyes focused on the future of search.

Here is MSN getting social: With MSN I have not found an actual beta test for their Personalized or social search engine. MSN see’s the power in social search so they are too gearing up to create a social search engine utilizing the power of the end user.

With the links above you can see the emphasis put on social search amongs all of the major search engines. Its clear that social search is going to be the future of search as it can provide much more accurate results. Social Search is definitely a much more exact way to search for the INDIVIDUAL but there are still a ton of variables that need to be considered to make this successful. Google’s current “personalized search” is a good start but still very flawed as it sends a bot to track my current movement in the serps. For a user to completely rely on Googles personalized search this BOT would need to know what the user would PROBABLY click on for any given search term. The problem with personalized search is that it will only pull relevant results on search terms you have ALREADY searched for. In conclusion, WIKIpedia’s jimmy wales is not creating something that HAS not been thought of before he is just doing it wiki style ;-).

2006 was a big year for social search and I predict that social search will continue to be a large topic in 2007.

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First “Minute in the Life of” - Minute in life of an SEO at night!

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[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2Y3cE_nmuY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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Google sneaking images next to ads part II

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I found a forum post from Josh (SitePoint Forum Leader). It was a very GOOD post in my opinion. He took great measures to digg deeper on Googles postion regarding placing its OWN images next to ads. See original Forum post here:

Josh’s  email to Google said and I quote -

Regarding your blog post “clarifying” the image placement next to ads here: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/…nt-policy.html

While it was certainly clearer, it wasn’t clear.

Statements like this are very ambiguous and confusing to publishers:

“You can definitely place Google ads on pages containing images — just make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors. For example, if you run a stock photography site with a catalog of thumbnail images, don’t line the ads up with the thumbnails in a way that could be misleading. Consider using a full border around your ads or changing your ad colors, for example.”

So wait, does that mean if you use ads with a full border or different background color you can have thumbnails? If you offset the thumbnails so they don’t line up exactly with the ads is that okay? Your examples certainly don’t answer those questions, either (one implies it’s a no-no to put images related to the products sold in the ads, the other implies that it is bad to make your ads look like content links–but what if your adsense blocks are the only things with thumbnails on your site, is it then permitted?)

Do you have any better answers? This policy clarification still seems to leave things VERY subjective and ambiguous.

Also, given the number of people who are doing this, and how effective it apparently is, why don’t you guys just offer thumbnail ads to ADVERTISERS. Then they pick the thumbnail on their ads and everyone is happy. I’m sure you’ve gotten that suggestion numerous times.

I mean, it looks like you guys already break your own rules: http://www.joe-whyte.com/2006/12/18/…xt-to-its-ads/

-Josh

I love his email. Way to go JOSH!! Here is what GOOGLE HAD TO SAY!!!

Hi Josh,

Thank you for your email.

I understand that you have questions about the example we’ve provided. We’re trying to convey that users who naturally have smaller images on their sites (for instance, the stock photography site we used as an example) should still feel free to place ads on their sites, as long as they don’t try to associate the images and ads in any way. The provided suggestions were general suggestions that referred to our example, and do not apply to other sites.

Regarding your second question - if a site does not have thumbnail sized images for some other reason, then there’s really no circumstances under which images should be added and placed near Google ads.

We appreciate your suggestion for allowing advertisers to offer thumbnail images. While this feature isn’t currently available, I’m happy to pass along your comments to our engineering and product teams. Please also feel free to submit any future suggestions through our online form at http://google.com/adsense_features_email .

Sincerely,

Stephanie
The Google AdSense Team

I suggest my readers check out this forum post as there are going to be a lot of opinions going on over at sitepoint ;-). IMO I think Google is taking the easy way out. Yes they do explain themselves and I GUESSSSS because its christmas they have a REASON to put these images next their ads but seriously how close are they pushing the line on this?????

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Joe Whyte Mentioned on Web Pro News!

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I was doing some SEV (search engine vanity) today and I noticed that Joe Lewis from Web Pro News decided to do an interesting post about a topic that has been widely discussed in 2006 which is Google’s Supplemental Results. I recently did a post over at lunarpages about “Google Poo” and during my SEV I found a post on Web Pro News quoting me. Needless to say I was flattered and Joe Lewis wrote a great article about Google supplemental results and I recomend everyone checking out his article. I am going to have to put you in my news reader JOE!

Merry Christmas!!!

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Google Releases it’s new patent search

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Google has just recently released its new patent search. This  is going to be great for all the tech nerd geek freeks who make our country the greatest! See Googles new patent search here. The search works very similiar to the normal Google search and gives a great display on  patents including summaries and detailed patent info.

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Google Sneak’s images next to its ads

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I was over at blog.outer-court today and I could not believe my eyes when I read this. My jaw literally dropped! Something that adsense site owner’s like to do is put pictures next to adsense which helps the click through rate as people tend to identify pictures with links next to them which is a sneaky way to improve CTR that is prohibited in googles TOS.  Here is an example of an adsense site owner placing ads next to images to improve ctr.

So google seems to have done something amost exactly against its OWN TOS. I guess its ok if google does it but NOT us.

This is what they have to say about their own images next to advertisers.

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Pre-production SEO and Googles Crawl Cycle

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When attempting to launch a site it is always a good plan to come out of the gates fast. Launching a site at the right time can mean the difference between monetizing your site now or in a couple months. To many SEO’s and Webmaster’s this might not even be an issue but for an SEO professional who has time constraints and deadlines these are must have tools. Out of the majority of major search engines Google is one of the fastest for inclusion. As expected, there are risk’s and potential concerns that we need to face regarding pre-production. Below I will be addressing how to catch the googlebot, how the Google cycle works and what this means to you.

Google “dance” cycle:

The Google update cycle is more then simple termonlogy regarding the update and shift Googles Serps go through during periodical updates but most recently google has incorporated a “Google Dance” at their conventions quite literally. Over the last few years pin pointing this dance has turned out to be more of a shot in the dark then an educated guess which is due to many algorithm updates.

The process of the google crawl is as follows:
Crawl one: Google sends out spiders or (Googlebot) out to spider the sites in its current database and to spider new websites. Sometime around 2 weeks Google will show these new results within a secondary and third level serp at www2.google.com and www3.google.com. User’s of Google will most likely see shifting in results as sometimes Google moves results from its second and third database to its primary database. Another problem I have encountered is that results can be different depending on what Google server your results are being pulled from again allowing many variations of potential search results until the smoke clears.

Crawl two: Once the new results are being shifted in the Google serps googlebot will again be sent out to start crawling new sites along with the current sites within its own index. This process continues and has been the case ever since Google has been around.
Note: It is important to watch the your PR update list as well to help you gage when Google’s PR updates are coming along with the cycling.

How to catch the Googlebot:

From what experts and user’s have found is that there is an update usually at the beginning of the month and then immediately during and after the first crawl so you will want to do your pre-production accordingly.

If you are looking to have a new site included into a certain months update then will either of these crawls get you into the database? Studies show that putting your site up at the beginning of the month might possibly NOT bring your site into the index within that months update. If your new site is crawled in the second phase then you could have a better chance of seeing your site in the revised results following the next month’s first crawl. In other circumstances you will see that Googlebot only grabs your homepage and your robots.txt which is a good indicator that your site will be revisited in the next update.

Here are some helpful tips: If your site is crawled after the first crawl then you are looking at most likely having your site included in the next update which should show new rankings within a month or a month and a half. Now to plan for the exact moment to launch your site and get a few inbound links would be best planed out rather then a random guess. You can do this by watching some of your other sites crawl and update patterns and time it accordingly. This should give you the key to increasing your update schedule for your new sites.

There is no 100% sure fire way to pinpoint these updates but you can use these steps and tools to help you make the best of your efforts.

-Obtain links from relevant sites with decent PR
-Submit your site to the add url page on google and other search engines
-Install the Google toolbar and visit your own site using the toolbar

How does this relate to your SEO Campaign

The information provided to SEO professionals can undoubtedly help with any pre production site launch and SEO campaign planning. This information can help with a tight production schedule and monetizing your site as quickly as possible.

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Phony SEO companies boasting sensational claims

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It’s well known that the Search Engine Optimization industry has a dark side. The dark side of course being the companies who boast sensational claims that give us true SEO organization’s a bad name. These companies try to sell services that are unfounded or have little to know true effect on search ranking. To many search engine marketing experts we can identify these pretty easily but to the average webmaster these sensational claims could lead them down the wrong path.

When searching for “internet marketing”, “SEO” or “boost traffic” you will come across advertisements that might say something like “10,000 unique visitors for only 12.99” or “Guaranteed top 3 ranking for $50 a month”.  As a search engine marketer there are many things in these statements that help’s me identify a phony SEO company. Firstly, the amount of traffic promised for only 12.99. Driving traffic is a very dynamic process which involves creating link bait, creating content, purchasing ad space, utilizing PPC and email and print campaigns. As you might expect all of these steps take time, development and research to build proper, targeted and long term traffic.  Another red flag in these ads is the word guaranteed. No legitimate SEO or SEM will make such a boast as there is truly no guarantee that what we do will land someone’s site in a certain position. What ethical SEO’s will tell you is that we can improve your rankings but no guarantee will be given as we do not control the search engines we “optimize” you for them.

Submission’s to search engines is a way to let the search engines know about a new site but once you are submitted ONCE you do NOT need to be resubmitted. Many phony SEO companies will claim to submit you to over 40,000 search engines for a low price per month. This is a HUGE red flag because there are simply not 40,000 search engines on the net. These outrageous claims  are usually justified by these companies using automated submission software which normally do more harm then good.

Here is a top 10 list of what to look for when considering an seo or sem company:

1.    How long has this company been around?
2.    Do they list their clientele or show results?
3.    Can you find reviews or information about the seo company?
4.    Do they have a phone number or live person to speak with?
5.    Are they sensationalizing results or guaranteeing anything?
6.    Do they have a trust worthy site design or does it look  low budget?
7.    See what the industry is saying about them
8.    Call them and ask them some questions to test their knowledge
9.    Ask for a free site evaluation and compare that with other companies cliam
10.    Doe’s the company itself have ranking and PR

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Google’s fox speaks with rand from seomoz about google sitemaps

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