Sam's Club Now Offering SEM Services?

What next? PPC and SEO from Walmart.

And what I found most amusing was how poorly their pages were optimized. Same page titles for multiple pages, click here click here links, and no Meta Descriptions. Funny.

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More On The DOJ Online Gambling Settlement With Search Engines

Here are a couple more tidbits for reading on the recent fines paid by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft related to PPC ads and online gambling:

• This is really the first successful Sphinn item I've seen on online gaming, more about the European settlement
  

• Webmasterworld thread started on the topic that bleeds into the legality and the rumor that Google UK will open up PPC to gambling ads in 2008

• Article by ClickZ

• PokerNews take on the subject, also mentions previous settlements with the US by Disney and The Sporting News
  

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Google, Yahoo, MSN to Pay DOJ $31.5 mil for Gambling PPC

Whoa, I didnt hear this one coming. The short of it is that the big 3, Google, Yahoo, and MSN settled with the Department of Justice for running ads for online gambling to the tune of $31,500,000. The 3 will establish a fund to air public service announcements to educate the young people of the United States that online gambling is illegal (play the lottery instead). Funny, out of all this Google walked away the easiest with only $3 mil. in fines with Yahoo and Microsoft picking up the balance.

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Google Translate In Gmail Chat

This is a great feature that is really easy to use; the chat function in Gmail will now 'connect' to Google Translate. You put in a distinctive address for each language to language translation, then paste in the snippet to translate, and the translated result is returned almost instantaneously. Ex. German to English would be: de2en@bot.talk.google.com.

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Official Google Comment On The Supplemental Index

The Google Webmaster Central Blog addresses the supplemental index and it future/demise. Essentially the supplemental index is being rolled into the main index. What served primarily as just that, a supplement to the main index for more difficult queries and deeper searches, has proven to be not quite as efficient as simply combining it all in one large list. All of this took a bit of time to roll out as there were massive technical hurdles with the ultimate result being hopefully better results with a broader slice of the web for every search. All this appears to have very large implications for multilingual search.

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Creating Automaitcally Varied Anchor Text

Here's a great piece about building a broad link profile, yet focusing on key overlapping terms. Slightly Shady SEO also offers a simple piece of code to automatically generate link text.

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Googlepedia

Google launches it own Wikipedia called Knol.

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Yahoo Robots.txt Support

Yahoo has expanded the functionality of the Robots.txt tags that they support by now allow the use of NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET, AND NOFOLLOW.

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Lycos Top Search Terms 2007

The Lycos 50 Top 10 Search Terms for 2007 are:

1. Poker
2. MySpace
3. Britney Spears
4. Paris Hilton
5. Golf
6. YouTube
7. Naruto
8. Disney
9. Pokemon
10. WWE

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Cutts Clears Up Subdomains

Matt Cutts recent post on how Google will interpret subdomains in the future actually seems like less of a change that originally reported. The recent algorithmic change primarily affects longer tail terms. There should be little change to highly relevant terms or domains, ex a search for 'Google' will return a long list of subdomains, filling the first results page.

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Google To Count Subdomains as Subdirectories

This is a big change which has 2 parts and multiple implications.

• Google will start treating subdomains as they treat subdirectories
• Google will limit one URL to only 2 results in a search query

This news comes from Matt Cutts at the recent Pubcon conference. The intention here is obviously to limit domain spamming.

Its not clear to me whether or not this actually means that as far as value goes, the subdomains will be treated as subdirectories, in other words will they pass value back to the main domain as subdirectories do? Subdomains always existed as this partial exception in Google's eyes, not purely a different domain yet not purely part of the main domain as a subdirectory.

2 stories here:

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Roundtable

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Definitive Google Guide To Paid Links

Matt Cutts posted a long time line about the paid links issue at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

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Matt Cutts Confirms PR Update For Paid Links

Search Engine Journal has a quote from an email from Matt Cutts on the latest PR update:

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

PR Updates For Selling Links

ProBlogger claims to have confirmation from sources at Google that the latest PageRank updates were directly related to penalizing sites for selling text links. He got hit, then submitted a reinclusion request and got his PR back after he could show that he had no paid links on his blog.

Got His PageRank Back By Asking

This is a new one, Joost de Valk got a PR hit, submitted a request for reconsideration, then Google gave him his PR back after he proved that he had no paid links on the site. (He's going to be a presenter at SMX Stockholm)

Search This

Do a Google search for the keywords; 'Search' or 'Search Engine'. Google doesn't make the first page.

Google PageRank Update, Pt. 2

More good links to articles from the last couple days. I am starting to become more convinced that the update is to devalue a combination of reciprocal linking networks and paid links.

I thought this one was really interesting, The Harvard Crimson, www.thecrimson.com PR8 > PR4:

Search Engine Land - list of sites hit and long list of other blog posts

Search Engine Roundtable - good overview

SEOMoz - similar list of sites, tons of comments

Google PageRank Update For October

It appears that Google has done a tool bar PR update. The majority of sites are seeing drops in PageRank with several very large websites being hit. Rumors are flying that it is related to paid links and sites are getting penalized. Looks to me like its bloggers getting hit...again. People with short memories, we saw the same thing happen a few months ago to the bloggers. Here are 2 updates:

Search Engine Roundtable

Search Engine Journal

This is probably the best update:
Andy Beard

Highlights:
copyblogger.com PR 6 > PR4
searchengineguide.com PR7 > PR4
searchenginejournal.com PR7 > PR4
seoroundtable.com PR7 > PR4
forbes.com PR7 > PR5

Open Source Keyword Generation Tool

Here's an open source keyword tool that pulls keywords from Google Suggest, Yahoo Live Search, and Yahoo Related Search. You can even scrape Google Trends on an hourly basis.

Google Death Ray

Global Search Report

This Global Search Report looks at about 20 countries and their search habits. I wish they had covered France and Germany as well.

Domain Stock Exchange

Interesting idea, a stock exchange for domain names; a way to sell or buy percentages of ownership in big domains. In public beta.

List Of Links For Google PageRank Drop

This is an appendix to the post I did over the weekend about Google lowering the PageRank of sites selling text links. As a recap, Google has admitted that they are targeting sites which sell links and lowering their PR to discourage paid links.

Danny Sullivan covered the story first and SearchEngineLand has an updated list of stories and posts related to the issue.

Berkeley Search Engine Class Video

Berkeley has their own YouTube channel where they post free class lectures. I found this video series from a Search Engines class. These are from 2005 but looks like there is some good material, including one of the lecture given by Brin.

Viral Linkbait

A new online dating startup called Just Say Hi was founded by a young guy named Matt Inman(former employee of SEO Moz). He used a new domain and built up a powerful search presence in an amaxingly short amount of time. He is ranking on the first page for 'free online dating'. I just read a good interview with Matt at Search Marketing Standard.

His strategy was brilliant. He created a great collection of widgets and badges, then directed all the juice from them and the pages they resided on to his homepage with targeted text. Viola, within 3 months he had thousands of relevant links.

User Generated Content

Build it and they will come is not always the case. Vanessa Fax writes a decent post about launching a user generated component on your site. Shes got a couple of really great ideas:

• Seed the content before you launch
• Invite targeted users to seed that content and test the platform
• Reward contributors
• Good oversight to moderate quality
• Use a focused approach
• Make the experience as engaging as possible for users
  

SEOMoz Outing Sites For Selling Links

This is not the first time that SEO Moz was tattling on sites who purchase or sell text links, but finally someone did a full post on Rand's latest outing post. Kudos to SEO Refugee for bringing SEO Moz to task for blatantly targeting sites selling links.

Rand throws up these posts in his words, 'to make a point', yet fails to consider the implications. There is no question that Googlers including Cutts read SEO Moz. I would also say that there is pretty good evidence that any passing mention in forums or widely read blogs of any specific activity that is against Google's Guidelines is manually acted upon by Google in the form of filtering or penalties.

I think it is irresponsible for MOZ to write a post where he actually points the finger at specific sites by listing their URLs.

Matt Cutts Interview

Stone Temple always does very detailed and intelligent interviews which are worth checking out. He recently interviewed Matt Cutts. The first half of the interview is spent on Nofollows and Noindex. The last half is spent on hidden text since Google has recently refined their guidelines there and paid links.

Google Dropping PageRank Of Link Sellers

I've been shying away from commenting much on the entire paid link hoopla. There have been countless post of sites that are worried they have been penalized for paid links, buying or selling, only to be proven wrong.

Well, Danny at Search Engine Land is now saying that Google is manually lowering the PageRank of sites selling links and Google has confirmed that. Danny points to the Stanford Student Newspaper(which he previously mentioned in a post), where they went from a PR 9 to a PR 7.

Interesting approach, this way it doesnt hurt relevancy in the engine, just lowers the incentive for people to buy links from a particular site. Check out the article, he points to a few other examples.

SEOBook Changes URL Re-Write

I noticed that Aaron Wall's site was down for a bit yesterday. Today I noticed that his post URL's look a bit different.

Latest Post: http://www.seobook.com/major-relevancy-changes-google-yahoo-and-msn

Older Post: http://www.seobook.com/archives/002265.shtml

I always wondered why he used those rough looking URL's. The new ones look great.

Changes Across All Search Engines

Unless you've had your head in the sand, there have been some dramatic changes in the 3 majors:

• MSN-Major Algorithm change and platform update; expansion of index from 5 Bill to 20 Bill. pages.
• Yahoo-Algo update, interface update, and the introduction of universal search, pushing their own properties
  
• Google-Major shifts on single word queries, indexed pages, huge diecrepencies between their test engine and Google.com, and weird things going on at specific Data Centers.

Overall, everything seems for the better. Aaron Wall of SEOBook gives a good overview as well.

Search Marketing Map

Here's a good visual representation of Search Marketing using a cool free mapping tool called FreeMind

Google International Search Results

SEOBook has a good post listing some of his observations on the differences between Google.com results and Google International results.

Google Single Keyword Update

There is no question that there is a huge update going on at Google right now. Both SEOBook and Search Engine Land did to posts on the subject in the last 2 days. Matt Cutts sums it up with this comment on the Search Engine Land post:

"Hey Barry, these are two unrelated things, but the right teams are aware of both of them and have changes pending. The change for one-word queries is already live at some places and should be live at 100% of the datacenters in the next 2-3 days, for example."

The other item he is refering to is some heavy Chinese spam on Google.

RankPulse shows the activity clearly, massive movement mainly on single word queries. I'm trying to dig in a bit deeper, but that will take some time. One thing I did notice is that virtually all of the sites that got hit with a drop in the last couple of days are suffering from big canonical issues.

GapMinder And Global Poverty Data

I can't remember how I found this talk over the last week, but I finally got around to watching it. The video is about historical world country data, health, poverty, etc and is worth spending the time to watch. Hans Rosling puts the data in a visual context that is compelling and the guy is quite entertaining. The first talk is over a year old, but I recommend watching the 2006 talk first since its better and he goes a bit more granular on the data.

2006 TED Talk

2007 TED Talk. you can make this one full screen by clicking a button in the top right.

He also started a foundation to create a way to compile and present the data that is out there about world issues called GapMinder. Funny enough it was recently bought by Google. heres the site, GapMinder, and the tool is called GapMinder World 2006 which is pretty cool to play with.

Looking For A Web Analytics Package?

Look no further than this Web Analytics Study by StoneTemple, which covers the major packages in probably more detail than you care to read. Especially useful are the Qualitative Comparisons or strengths and weaknesses of each package reviewed; IndexTools, ClickTracks, Google Analytics, HBX Analytics, and Affinium NetInsight.

Interview With Aaron Wall

Linkjuicy.com did a great interview with Aaron Wall of SEOBook Most of the interview discusses paid links and Google.

There is a mention of the site penalty that MasterNewMedia.org recently received and that Robin Good's post on the issue is worth a read.

Text-Link-Ads Lost Rankings

Text-Link-Ads stopped ranking for their main keywords a few months ago. A number of people have suspected that there was some sort of penalty enacted by Google, but there has been no evidence as of yet. One new post suggests that it might have actually been a proxy hijack that caused the problem. Matt Cutts added a comment to the post stating:

"I know for a fact that a proxy was not the root cause of this."

Google On Paid Links

The Paid Link discussion has been going on and off for the last couple of months, mainly kicked off by Matt Cutts offering a new way for webmasters to tattle on other webmasters via a paid link report in the Google Webmaster tools. This kicked of an initial flurry of comments and posts.

Rand of SEOMoz restarted the discussion in July with a post of his own whining how the good guys can compete because the playing field isn't level. Once again the discussion was off and post after post began popping up. I commented on Rands intial post, but held off for a bit on the overall discussion.

All seemed to have come to somewhat of a head at the most reccent SES in San Jose with a panel discussion on Paid Links. After much venting by everyone involved, the dust has seemed to settle a bit and I suspect the issue will be mainly dropped again, that is until Google starts to take some serious action against those who purchase links. The reality is that paid links work and people will continue (and in many cases in order to be competitive need) to use them to improve their SERPs.

However, I think it is worthwhile to note a bit of information from the horse's mouth. Matt Cutts gave a slide show talk at the SES panel, here is the Power Point Presentation On Paid Links. Noteworthy is Matt's new paid link lingo, they are now officially known as Paid PageRank Passing Links or PPP Links for short. Also, in the talk, Matt mentioned that Google algorithmically detected and devalued all of the paid links which Rand spoke of in his July post.
Matt goes on further to make this statement: "Google is willing to take strong action against PPP Links."

Finally, hes gives a couple of examples of sponsored links or paid advertising in the slides. A bit of digging there and I found that the 2 pages he was referring to were http://www.linux.org/apps/ and http://www.nypress.com/20/35/news&columns/waterlog.cfm respectively.

•

Handy Tip For Searching Date Ranges In Google

Google System Blog has a great way to search for custom date ranges by adding a operator to the query string.

Newbodog.com, What Happened to Bodog?

Online casino, sports book, and online poker company Bodog.com has been doused with some legal hot water and forced to relaunch their site on a new domain NewBodog. It appears that what happened was Bodog was being sued for a patent infringement claim. When Bodog's counsel failed to appear in court, a summary judgment was issued and one of the terms was for seizure of all of the Bodog.com owned domains, all 3000 of them.

From an SEO perspective, this is a sites worst nightmare. Bodog.com has maintained solid rankings in top terms in the poker industry to include poker and online poker. Newbodog.com will essentially be starting from scratch in one of the most competitive SEO areas, losing literally years of work.

Though Bodog and Calvin Ayre the founder are claiming: "We are working to resolve any remaining issues on the temporary site as soon as possible, and fully expect to have our original sire back up shortly.", it seems like there are no quick fixes in this situation.

These guys will have updates and information on Bodog and NewBodog and a page about NewBodog as well.

Yesterday NewBodog.com and Bodog hit Google Trends, with Bodog coming in at #33 and showing at #50 for today.

The case was in the State of Washington, King County Superior Court, Case #07-9-21969-8 dated 8/1/07.

Users Ignore Banners But Focus On Text, Faces, And Cleavage

Eyetracking research on the blindness of online users to banner ads. The short of it is, users ignore anything that looks like an ad. What works? Incorporating your message into the content, using no feeling of separation from the flow of the page. Also, keeping these items that Jakob shares which have been shown in eyetracking studies to be the 3 most important design elements for attracting eyeballs:

• 
  
• Plain Text
• Faces
• Cleavage and other "private" body parts

Yahoo Dynamic URLs Tool

Yahoo Site Explorer recently released a new tool called the Dynamic URLs Tab. It allows webmasters to have some control over how URLs for their site are being crawled and displayed. It seems a very useful tool for tracking codes and session ids, items that might not be able to be blocked(from being indexed) via Noindex tags. I've been keeping my eyes open on the forums discussing Yahoo topics and have found little thus far about anyone's experience using the Dynamic URL Tool. I submitted some changes today and we will see what effect it will have. With Yahoo stating that the have 'slowed down' their crawl, I expect it might take about a week to really gage the impact.

College Students Trust Google Rankings

This study, In Google We Trust, though only done on 22 students, seems to indicate that they are heavily influenced in their decision to visit a site, based on the ranking of the site alone. The students were more likely to click on the top results, even if the lower ranked results more closely matched their intended query. Great news for SEO.

PPC Ad Click Thru Rate

A new study published in IEEE called Sponsored Search: Is Money a Motivator for Providing relevant Results? analyzed overall click through rates for Paid Search ads in the major search engines. Their results showed a 16 percent overall click thru rate on PPC ads. Brief summary article about the search study.

More Query Data From Google Webmaster Tools

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet but it is worth noting, Google greatly expanded the query data available from Webmaster Tools.

In Google Webmaster Tools you can look up your query data, Top Search Queries and Top Search Query Clicks. There is a link which enables you to download the data for your URL to a spreadsheet. While this has been around since February of this year, what I noticed today is a huge list of query stats that include not just searches involving the homepage, but also all the subfolders for your site that Google has indexed, broken down by country for each and also by Google search source, ie mobile, directory, web, or image. Pretty cool.

Go to: Google Webmaster Tools>Statistics>Query Stats>Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)

My Page Is Blocked With Robots.txt But Still Shows In Results.

There is much confusion on this point.

Q: "If I have some of my site pages blocked in my robots.txt file why do they still show up in Google results?"

A: Robots.txt does not remove your page from the Google Index, it only stops Googlebot from crawling your specified pages. If you have a page showing up in the search results and you apply a robots restriction to that page and that page has no external links, typically that page will disappear from the results. If that page does have external links, the page may continue to show up in the results even after the Robots exclusion is applied. Two easy ways to check that the page is no long being crawled by Googlebot is by looking at your site logs or looking at the search result itself and you will notice that there will no longer be a cache version of that page(there could be other reasons for no cache version). Also, the result will no longer show a description.

The way to 'remove' a page from the index or showing up in the results is to place a noindex meta tag on the page and keep the robots.txt exclusion as well. Another, potentially more dangerous option, is to use the Google URL Removal Request tool in the Google Webmaster Tools for your website where you can remove entire sites, directories, or even specific pages.

Details from Google Webmaster Help Center on Robots.txt and Meta Noindex

Details on Google URL Removal Request from Google Webmaster Central Blog

Keyword Research Google Gadget

Though I don't use my Google Homepage, this might prompt me to do so. SEOBook created a Keyword Research Google Gadget that is quite nice. You will need to add it to your Google Homepage, but its very easy to do. The tool is dense with features including, Google Traffic Estimator, various keyword generators like WordTracker, and competitive tools.

Internal PageRank Tool

I found this tool, PageRankBot, and have been playing around with it a bit over the last week. It's a great idea and something that I have been looking for. The tool crawls your site and models the PR flow inside the site. It allows you to 'adjust' incoming PR through external backlinks a creates a visual picture of how your internal PR would be affected. It doesn't capture actual PR but approximates it through your own internal link structure giving a good picture of PR flow internally.

I suppose by stripping out external backlink influences gives a true picture of your internal structure and a optimum view of how your site passes PR. Although it takes into account Meta Nofollows, it does not obey nofollow tags on links, which seems to be a shortcoming.

My success with the tool has been spotty. I've crawled a few sites, some seem to be accurate and some have had issues. I have not tried an extremely large site yet but I suspect there might be some issues there.

The tool was created by Half SEO and he has a good PageRankBot tutorial which should be read while using the tool. I think the original intention was to create something which would help you to pull pages out of supplemental and I'm sure it would work very well for that. Regardless, this is certainly worth a look and some time. I'll be keeping an eye on this and looking out for improvements.

Hitwise Launches Presidential Election Data Center

If you have any interest in the 2008 Presidential Elections, the new Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center is worth checking out. Coverage is candidate site traffic, search terms, and other top political site traffic. Shows just share of overall category traffic, not actual visitor counts.

Google's Double Standard

SEOBook found what amounts to Google selling links by profiling retailers who use Google Checkout. They have a straight text link off their Google Checkout Blog, which is a PR 8, to Golfballs.com and to one of their product pages using optimized anchor text. Aaron has a couple of older examples on the post and this is obviously not the first time.

Google Deletes Its Own Blog For Spam

Classic. Google accidentally tagged their own Custom Search Engine Blog as spam and deleted it. Their statement:

Whoops! We accidentally classified ourselves as spam, and our ever-perceptive Blogger settings caught us. The Custom Search Blog has since been restored, and we’re taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen with other Google blogs in the future. Other Blogger users can make sure this doesn’t happen to them by reporting any problems to the Blogger support team via the Blogger Help Center at http://www.blogger.com/problem.g. We can then investigate.

And a couple of responses to it:
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Roundtable

Google Supplemental, Again.

Back and forth we go. Google turned off the Supplemental label for Sup results. The few days after that there were a flurry of posts trying to determine a replacement query, one I listed in this blog. Alas, those were turned off as well. For the time being, it looks like Bruce Clay has come up with an alternative. I've given it a test run and it seems to work by the power of deduction.

How Does Google Handle The Nofollow?

Good question. I assumed that Google just ignored the link, but apparently thats not the case. Google(and Yahoo) both follow the Nofollow, but don't allow any of the link juice to flow so no PR is passed. They will also use Nofollows to find and index new content. Search Engine Journal has a small blurb about it.

Redirecting Older Pages To Combine Value

I really like this idea from SEOMoz, taking older pages like blog posts that target similar keywords and redirecting them all to one URL. The synergy created by increased PR should create a page that has stronger ranking power for those specific keywords.

Google Counts Links Inside Word Documents

This is a new find, Google actually counts links inside of a Word document. Not surprising since they also index Word docs and PDFs.

Clean Code Counts

This piece is taken from an interview by SearchEngineWatch with Googler Dan Crow who runs the Crawl Infrastructure Group. Google can't index the entire web so they are forced to make decisions on which pages they crawl and indexe. Certianly one limiting factor is Google's own infrastructure and crawled site inefficiencies further reduce the overall amount of the web that Google can crawl. So, does Google factor in how the actual code of your website is constructed in determining whether they will crawl it or crawl deeper pages inside the site? It appears to be the case:

What can we do to get more pages indexed? I've always suspected that streamlining HTML code is a good way to facilitate indexing. Reducing code bloat helps pages load faster and use less bandwidth. I asked if it would help to move JavaScript and CSS definitions to external files, and clean up tag soup. Dan's answer was refreshingly clear. "Those would be very good ideas," he said.

How To Create A Jump Script For Affiliate Links

This is a good bit which covers how to cloak affiliate outlinks off your site so that the URLs look friendlier and for easier click tracking.

Google, Behind The Curtain

Found this piece on Google's computing power. Surprised I've never stumbled upon it before, but it is a definite eyeopener on PR and their algorithm.

German Search Study

I found this study on the habits of German search users. It's not that long of a read but not overly entertaining. Some of the data is a bit dated, but likely does indicate overall differences in how Germans search. There are some noteworthy hiighlights(compared to US searchers):

• Germans use fewer words, avg 1.66 terms
• Boolean operators are seldom used
• Germans tend to stick to one Search Engine
• Germans search for Porn less freqently
  

Pulling Keywords From Content

Aaron Wall lists a number of great gems in his latest post about tools that pull the best keywords from content. These tools actually look at the text and pull out the top traffic keywords to target.

Coolest Google Query String

This is probably the coolest Google query string I've seen. Awesome way to check rankings.

• http://www.google.com/ie?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=minimalist
  

Google Changes Supplemental Query

Google dropped the standard supplemental query, but this simple site search seems to replace it and return supplementals:

• site:http://www.yoursite.com/&
  

Live Search Now Supporting Sitemap Discovery

MSN Live Search is now supporting sitemap autodiscovery via Robots.txt.

Local Search Terms

I was surprised by the results of this quick study. Small Business SEM assembled a list of top search queries in cities throughout the States and Craigslist related terms do very well, typically in the top 2.

Post Labels Added To OnceadaySEO

hdouble commented that subject tags for posts would be a good addition to this blog. Occasionally searching back through posts to find some gem of information or tool that I want to use also shed some light on this problem. So, I've added labels and they will be listed on the right sidebar. I'm not sure I can be bothered with going back through all my previous posts. One of the labels I will create will be a Tools label and all the Tools I've blogged on so far are fairly valuable, so I'll probably go back through those.

Tidbits From Matt Cutts Talk

Matt Cutts recently addressed WordPress bloggers at the WordCamp conference. Some of the items from his talk are notable. Here's a summary of the highlights:

• Google will now treat underscores separating words as a space. This is a big change as previously Google ignored them and a Title or URL like 'online_poker' would be viewed as 'onlinepoker'.
• Google treats URLs with query strings the same as a static URL as long as there aren't more than a few parameters
• Google does not treat deep pages in a site any differently than pages with fewer slashes ie,
  /seo/seo/seo/seo.html would be the same as /seo/seo.html. This dispels another big myth in the SEO community.
  
• File extensions in URLs do not affect rankings, except .EXE that is
• He also mentions that an important guideline for inclusion to Google News is that the site must have more than one author
  

Aaron Wall Addresses Google Ranking Factors

SEOBook discusses some reasons why your Google rankings might take a sudden dip. Most of the items deal with over optimization.

Good List Of SEM Books

SEOMoz put together a nice list of 5 good books on some SEM fundamentals, the history of search engines, site usability, and SEM strategies.

Where To Go Forward With This Bl;og

I've been posting to this blog now for a couple of months. The intention originally was primarily a summary of the items going on in the world of SEO. When I read through other blogs and news bits there is typically a bunch of fluff, stories created to make a diggable item(we are SEO's after all), industry conjecture, or just a waste of time reading. Also, I don't have the time nor do I want to waste the time spending a few hours a day writing posts. I have used this platform along side of time I spend daily reading industry news then just marking what I think is worth while.

I wanted to try to make at least one post a day and this blog started as a bit more of an experiment. My thought was to glean a few items a day, items that matter to the industry, cut through all the BS, and are truly valuable to the small group(anyone out there) of readers of this blog or its feed. As you likely have noticed if you've been reading this blog for a bit, there are occasional lapses in posts. This really isn't because I have been slacking, it's for want of solid items that are either valuable or shed a bit of light. So, rather than just post garbage, I decided to not post at all.

Though the title of this blog, Once a day SEO, really meant nothing in the beginning, I suppose it does sum up the idea of the blog; check it out once a day and you should get a few good SEO related tidbits without the crap surrounding it.

What to do here going forward? I spent a bit looking back over some of my posts and the layout. Again, I'm not going to devote a bunch of time to this, but here are a few thoughts:

• Provide a bit more detail with each post to be certain that there is enough info there so that the reader can value whether or not to click a link and read further on the item.
• Continue to put in items that also provide a bit of a chuckle, even if they are a bit off topic.
• Start to generate a bit of my own content rather than just summarizing existing items. I'm going to try to write one of my own posts once a week.

Keeping in mind that this is not an overly serious endeavor, if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please provide them.

Google Maps - Live Time DART Train Map

Google Maps is now allowing users to develop gadgets/mapplets to be developed for personal maps. Mackers created this really cool map showing real time locations of the trains running on the regional train service in Dublin, Ireland the DART.

Great Rankings Tool

With Rankmon you can compare biggest organic traffic generating sites in the world and check a specific Domain for their top 200 SERPs and keywords. Worth taking a look at.

More From Google On Use Of Flash

Search Engine Roundtable has a good summary on some more Googler comments regarding hidden text related to the use of Flash. Once again pointing to intent.

Jerry Yang, 2007 World Series of Poker Champion

Congrats to Jerry Yang, winner of the 2007 WSOP Main Event. Jerry gets to take home a cool $8 million and change. You can read more about Jerry Yang's Bio at his page at Full Tilt Poker.

SEO Page Info Checker, Xinu

Xinu is a free tool gives a bunch of info about a given page.

If You Haven't Checked This Out You Should.

Sphinn is the newest site launched by Danny Sullivan and Search Engine Land. It is Digg and a forum all wrapped into one and focusing on news in the SEM industry. Looks like it will make a great replacement for Threadwatch. Looks like Sphinn has been very well received so far and the content is pretty good as well.

60 Min SEO Site Overview

This is a good way to briefly get an SEO overview of a site. SEO in less than an hour by Small Business SEM.

Adam Lansik Dishes Out Some Tough Love

This was pulled from a thread on Google Groups and posted by SEO Buzz Box. Basically, a guy had a thin site, it got deindexed, he posed a question as to why, then got a very direct response from Adam himself. Adam made it very clear that Google takes a very hard stance with sites that are solely monetized.

Adam's response:

I think it's time for some tough love here, Alan.

Imagine this scenario. You walk into a store and some guy --
surprisingly the owner -- grabs you by the shoulder.

"How'd you like some beer? Oh, hey, we also sell coffee. Hmm... you
don't want something to drink? We specialize in air purifiers, too!
And you know what... after you drink some beer next to your new air
purifier, I bet you could use a date, right? No, no, not the eating
kind... I'm talking a really nice lady! And if she ends up stealing
your identity, well, no problem! I sell Identity Theft protection
services... and... wait! Wait...come back!!!"

How much would you trust that guy? Or his store? Sure, he may have
small leaflets on a zillion topics, but he's not an expert in any.

If you, as an independent observer, came across such a store online,
would you trust it anymore? If not, why should Google see this as an
important and relevant site?

The reductions in rankings you've experienced are not going to be
reversed by simple technical or structural changes. You may wish to
focus your efforts, add compelling, original, and substantive content
or tools, and *then* file a reconsideration request.

Jack Ury, Oldest Man Ever At The World Series Of Poker

At 94, Jack Ury is the oldest player ever to have played in the World Series of Poker. Apparently Jack, also known as Jack 'Jeffery' Ury, 'Old Man Jack', or even 'One Eyed Jack' in some circles, has become quite the celebrity at the WSOP.

Early photos of him in action at the tournament poker tables show him surrounded by adoring female fans. Jack Ury is also a big fan of the online poker room Full Tilt Poker and is no pushover at the poker table. Deflty using his age to maximum benefit, he is known to misread hands, play slowly, and mistakenly check when he should call, somehow always ending in his favor.

Securing the title of Oldest Player Ever at the World Series of Poker is no small feat, requiring a long trip from the far away land of Terre Haute, Indiana(yes, its a long way from Las Vegas). I am lucky to say that I have sat across the table from Jack many times. Cheers, Jack and please keep the dentures in.

Update, Jack Ury in World Series of Poker 2008:

I will just keep updating this post as I find new info. Old Man Jack is back into the WSOP this year and made it past day 1. There have been a couple mentions of Jack in the media already. His Grandson is also playing in the tournament and made it past day one as well, doubling through 4 times.

SEOmoz Addresses Paid Links

SEOmoz has a long post giving paid link examples. He lists SERPs for a number of highly competitive terms with examples of actual websites pointing out sites that are int the top 10 that purchase links. How he knows that they are truly paying for those links is beyond me other than speculation. Seems as if hes treading in dangerous waters.

My question to him is what is his intention for placing such a post? Moz is the biggest G.A.K.(Google Ass Kisser) on the SEO circuit, no offense Moz. He does come across as the sword carrying knight of the white hats and certianly his reputation in the business is built on that. He cannot be pleased to see purchased links in areas in which his is either consulting or in which his own site is ranking.

Google And Human Evaluators

Googler Marissa Mayer admitted in a session at a recent Seattle conference that Google uses 10,000 humans to check SERP relevancy. Dare Obasanjo mentions it in his blog.

Nice Domain Search Tool

This looks easy and quick to use. Simply type in a list of words and Bustaname pulls available domain name combinations.

Using Google As A Free Proxy

Cool Google hack for getting to sites with limited access.

Handy Notepad Tip

Ran across this tip for using Notepad and creating dated journal entries. Automatically pulls up and new date and time whenever you reopen the Notepad file.

Way Of Estimating Keyword Traffic From A Domainer

Heres a domainer that offers a way to estimate traffic. He uses Adwords, then backs out a simple calculation to estimate global traffic.

Visual Map Of The Google Empire

Google Map

Advanced Advice from SMX

There was an advanced session at SMX(heres a summary) a month ago where top SEOs gave away less known tidbits. Cutts sat on the panel, who knows why, and one of the speakers showed how to enter a search parameter to just search supplemental results. Cutts commented that he wasnt away it existed and they didnt want that to be accessible. The option is now mysteriously unavailable.

Google Search Parameters

Here is a great list of Advanced Google Search Parameters from a few sources:

Joostdevalk.nl

Google Blogoscoped

jwebnet.net

Text Link Ads Penalty?

I noticed this last week and ran across this post at blogstorm today. Everyone is conjecturing but no one knows whether its an actual penalty of not.

Explanation Of How Indented Google Listings Work

SearchEngineLand explains indented listings and how to determine the actual position of an indentation.

Make Millions And Make Change

This new book was recommended by Aaron Wall. Its a free read and is published by grassroots.org. Though I havent read it yet, looks like it a good overall view of how to approach online entrepreneurship successfully.

Buy Your Own On Ebay

Entertaining Search Ads

Broad matching in search ads pulls up some hilarious results. And, you can buy virtually anything at Ebay.

How To Get A PR 7 Link From Google

Spend $1,995 and here you go.

The Saboteurs of Search

Entertaining article about negative SEO from Forbes.com.

Marchex Simultaneously Launches 100K Local Search Sites

Marchex Simultaneously Launches 100K Local Search Sites

Domainers that essentially rolled over 100,000 parking pages into real sites simultaneously creating about 1 billion pages of content with about 31 mil unique traffic.

Domain Auction

List of selling prices at a Moniker Domain Auction in New York.

Highlights:

IrishWhiskey.com $8000

Menopause.com $1.5 mil, did not sell

Pimple.com $82,500

Shaft.com $17,500

Tart.com $30,000

Keeping Up On The Gossip

Google Phone Unveiled?

Google Sponsor Search Query by Ad Location

Query string to search just Sponsored Ads that are running in specific geographic areas.

How to Survive the Affiliate Revolution

Basic overview of how to create a strong affiliate site and what the future holds for affiliate marketing.

Keyword Research Tool

SEODigger is a free tool that finds and lists all the keywords that your site ranks for. Not sure how they do it, but they claim they have a database of 44 million keywords that they update about every 2 weeks.

Large Brand SERP Dominanace

Seobook address a great topic about Authority Sites leveraging themselves through the use of subdomains, shadow brands, and buying competing sites, all ideas we should consider. He then makes a comparison of the ethics of link buying and the behavior of the big brands.

SEO.com Purchase

Former Domainer, Mike Mann, purchased SEO.com for $5 million with the intention of starting a web optimization company.

Relevance Feedback

Great post on Relevancy Feedback in search. Specifically comments on the post I mentioned a few back about Google, clicks, and Google Analytics for search quality enhancement.

June Google Update, Pt. 2

A very notable point from the WebmasterWorld Thread is the likelyhood that the update just affected single word phrases. It matches with our own SERPs and also follows with movement I'm seeing on RankPulse. Cutts further confirms this in a comment he made in his own blog:

1. Matt Cutts Said,

   June 18, 2007 @ 12:31 am

   Joost, thanks for the reminder.

   Harith: historically speaking, summer is a good time to incorporate ideas into search, but I wouldn’t consider that an update myself. We do always reserve the right to tune our scoring algorithms or change the weight of different factors, even if it only affects a fraction of queries (things such as single-word queries).

   feedthebot, I’ve caught up on much of my internal email, but I haven’t tackled external email from the conference yet. That’s high on the list when I can find time this week though. It’s all part of the digging out from vacation + SMX Seattle + SES Toronto process. Is Isla Vista not right?

June Google Update

Everyone is now convinced that the most recent Google changes are the largest update since the rollout for Big Daddy, over a year ago, so much so that it has been given a name, Buffy. Here's an overview and a link to the WebmasterWorld Thread.

Overall, we have fared very well with all of our terms holding SERPs except for our main term, which seems to have settled down a bit.

State of Search Engine Safety

McAfee did a study on The Safety of Search Engines, links to dangerous sites.

Highlights:

• Safety overall has improved since last year, about 4% of results link to risky sites.
  
• Yahoo & MSN declined
• Yahoo nearly twice as bad as Google
• Sponsored results more that twice as bad as Organic
  

Google Earth GUIs

Guiweather has some really cool overlays for Google Earth. One is a current lightning GUI and a Sea Bouy GUI(say that 10 times fast). Their homepage also has a nice Java app that overlays temps on to Google Maps.

Plugin for Non-Personalized Search

Works with Firefox or IE7 for Google only.

Cutts on Clicks

More from the Cutts Q & A session at SMX. Summaries from MarketingPilgrim.com:

Q: What is the impact of click-throughs on authority? If a site has a high PageRank, but a low click-through rate and a high bounce—or vice versa—what is the impact?

A: We neither confirm
nor deny that we use this.
But it’s quite noisy.

(i.e. “a noisy signal” that is quite susceptible to abuse. He thinks MSN has confirmed that they use it with their toolbar.)

And Bruceclay.com:

Question: What is the clickthrough impact?

Matt: We haven't talked about if it affects regular search. If you did use it, it would be really noisy so you'd have to be careful. He mentions programming the toolbar and how then there would be "Happy face rings". Noise level would make using clickthrough as a barometer really hard.

MSN has said they use it. Google hasn't and probably won't ever say if they do or not.

The Toolbar question is something i hadnt really considered. Keyword Discovery just eliminated all of their IP capture data and are moving to tool bar based data capture. The reasoning is that IP data is not only noisy but spamable. It only makes sense that Google is using their Toolbar data as well.

Rank Checker Tool

This is an awesome new Rank Checking Tool. Downside is you have to sign up for a free account at SEOMoz and are limited to 5 searches per day unless you are a premium member. Use the Browser Button bookmark. Allows you to be on a website and simply click the link to the tool, then enter in what keyword you want to check.

Matt Cutts on Paid Links

Another comment on paid links from an interview with the MarketingPilgrim.com. Also, they don't have a way to do it automatically, yet:

Q: Are paid links going to be the death of the algorithm?
A: Many people want
to report paid links for a
level playing field.

We’re looking for a
scalable, robust way, but
we’ll do it by hand

Also: “We as a search engine can do what we feel is best to return a high quality index. Do what you want and we’ll do what we want to return a quality index.”

Google Focusing on Specific Industries

This was of great interest to me because we have had this discussion recently. Namely, how can you target an algorithmic based system at specific areas.

I watched an interview with Matt Cutts done by SEOMoz at the recent SMX conference in Seattle. The most insightful point in all 20 min was a discussion about how Google devalued what was a huge Reciprocal Link network in the Real Estate Industry.

A precedent was set early on where if I was an agent in say Cleveland with a site, I could easily exchange a link with another agent in Nashville. None competing markets, good for everyone. Well the link lists became massive. In May Google devalued all of them, but specifically focusing on the Real Estate Sites.

SEOMoz failed to ask the most obvious important question, how does Google algorithmically and fairly do that? Cutts implied that it was essentially found and studied by human review and they 'came to a decision' to do it. Additionally, this was a shot across the bow to all large scale reciprocal linking schemes. But most importantly, Cutts said that Google does focus and will focus on specific industries and can have different parameters for them.

Real Time Site Visitor Data

This new tool shows number of users on a given site in real time, even down to the specific page.

Google Using Behavior in Rankings?

Interesting stuff. This SEOMoz post goes direct to the point I raised a few posts back about the possibility of Google using clicks for authoritative sites and affecting rankings. While the evidence is not conclusive, the main points are:

• Google admits it uses click data to check the quality of rankings, especially top sites
• From a simple study that was done, clicks seemed to affect rankings slightly
• From another simple study, Google appears to be using quality factors such as bounce rate tied through Google Analytics
  

Great Quote

There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard- working, intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard- working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent, lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.

General Erich Von Manstein (1887-1973) on the German Officer Corps

Another Good article from Tropical SEO

SEO Class

Pubcon and Webmasterworld are starting a small, interactive SEO Workshop. First one is in NY, $1999. Heres the agenda.

SEO Toolkit

Blue Hat is offering his set of customized tools on a subscription basis. As I've mentioned before i really like this guy's content. The basic list includes; a quick indexing tool, SEO site analysis tool, promotion analysis tool, custom databases and scripts, all for $100 a month.

Dogpile Search Study

Dogpile.com released a study on search overlap of the major engines' results. This is a summary, but the short of it is that since the last similar study in 2005, results have diverged.

Automated SEO Software

Though the full version is not out yet, Yield Software is testing a solution to automatically optimize your website. Something to take a look at again in the future.

Google Monitor

RankPulse.com is something I ran across in Webmaster Word. Really cool graphical representation of movement within Google SERPs. Rank Pulse tracks 1000 keywords and the associated movement of sites ranking within the top 10 for those keywords. Shows really big adjustment around June 1.

Mine Your Visitors Browser History

Here's a way to check where your site's visitors have been. Though you can't create a complete list of URL's, you can develop a checklist of sites to look for.

The Mind of the Entrepreneur

This is a quote from this Tropical SEO article about entrepreneurship:

Back to that Fortune 500 company which sent me a 20 page contract, a non-disclosure agreement, and demanded to pay on net-60 terms. At that point, my business had gotten slightly off the ground, and I wasn’t exactly starving (well, if you’ve seen me, you know that I’m never starving, but I mean starving for cash ), so I asked myself, do I really want to deal with this horsesh*t? The answer was no. I replied to them: I don’t sign contracts (I know, that’s ghetto, but I didn’t want to pay for a lawyer to review it considering it was a smaller project), and I required payment upfront. I figured they would blow me off, but their response was, OK,

I like his stuff, always entertaining.

Using Log Files to Analyze Internal PR Flow

This extends a basic idea i touched on a couple of weeks ago, using our server log files for mining incoming link data and also using it for internal linking structure. Basically you create a matrix using data for a long period of time to build a 'picture' of your internal and external linking structure, then use the to optimize PR flow within the site. Pretty cool.

Google Maps Street View

Another amazing Google feature. Go to Google Maps. Zoom in on San Francisco. Zoom close enough to pick out a specific street. In the top right there is a link 'Street View', click it and move the little guy that pops up around on the map. Going to the Golden Gate Bridge is really cool, views all along the bridge. Feels like youre there.

Google Working Toward Facial Search

This is some really cool stuff. Google is using facial recognition software in their image search. With a filter tag on the end of a give image search you can search faces alone. Check out these two searches, one image search of Britney Spears, and the other of Britney Spears with face filter.

Google and Click Counts for Rankings

There is a small discussion going on about clicks effecting rankings on Google. While this is an old topic, Google does admit they use click numbers for quality control. This brings up some interesting thoughts in that our site through looking at third party data is clearly dominant in search rankings and traffic in the US. Could a small smattering of across the board click data be calculated in for authoritative sites?

Yahoo's Top 20 Misspellings

Yahoo's Top 20 Misspellings

Massive Search Engine List

Comprehensive list of 300 reviewed Search Engines.

Google Result That Includes Google Games

Thought this was interesting. Google search on US proxy for 'Online Poker'. Top Sponsor Links result is Google themselves.

Another Big Step for Google

I didnt think the translated search was going to happen for a bit but here it is in beta and its very cool. Shows SERPs side by side in both languages. Seems to be some sort of mix of a search on Google's country specific sites.

Universal Search Example

'Coke Mentos', notice the video results mixed into the page with thumbnails. Google's own results to boot.

Mystery Solved

For months I have been watching and speculating on Google Mobile Search. It does not mirror any given Google Datacenter and may even be a predictor of future SERPs. I don't know why I never thought of this before, but here is the answer.

More on Google Universal Search

This is probably the biggest piece of news to hit the search world in a while. Google says it is their biggest change in the past 5 years. I mentioned this some time last week, but waited to approach it a bit more in depth until there was a bit more info out there. It is impossible not to think about how dramatic an impact this will have not only on SEO but the user experience.

The short of it is that likely to be sucessful, more elements will need to be integrated into page design, images, video, news, etc.

This is the best piece I've found yet on the topic to provide a good overview, Danny Sullivan and it is a long article.

I've yet to see any impact or changes to Poker related search.

Yahoo Caught Cloaking

This is entertaining.

New Yahoo PPC Conversion Data

Yahoo has added a new category in PPC data called an Assist. Basically what it means is if I search for 'Poker' first and click on the ad, then search 'Poker Tip', click on that ad then convert, the first 'Poker' search counts as an Assist for the keyword 'Poker'.

Germany Study on Google Search Ranking Factors

These guys actually took a random sample of 10,000 keywords and analyzed the top 100 Google Rankings for factors that influence ranking. See a summary or go to the German study summary translated.

Yahoo Search Algo Update - Good To Us!

Search Engine Land posted last night that Yahoo said they were doing an update. It has been kind to us. Big Movement, SERPs: 'Poker' up to 17, 'Online Poker' up to 4, 'Play Poker Online' up to 1, 'Online Poker Room' up to 3. None were first page except, 'Play Poker Online'!!

Google Hot Trends and the Google Tool Bar

When you type in a URL in Google Tool Bar and the URL is down, you are directed to Google Search. This is resulting in some of the terms popping up in Hot Trends. Neat way to mine for New Topics?

Long Tail

Google says that 20 to 25% of all queries that they see in a given day are queries that have never been seen before (SEOBook)

New Feature for Google Trends

Google Trends has added a daily Hot Trends feature. At the bottom of the daily trends you can also view a broader list of 100 top daily trends. Click on the term itself and you are shown term specific details. You can also search back historically.

More About The Latest Google Update?

I found another piece of anecdotal evidence that what we are seeing in this latest Google update is something related to devaluing blogs. This post to the Google Webmaster Forum is about a site, http://www.travellerspoint.com/, that saw a recent drop in rankings across the board. Their content is primarily driven by a compilation of travelers who start their own travel blogs on the site. But the key is that most of their backlinks come from blogs.

Google Searchology

Highlights of Google's Big Day yesterday, with a look at search things to come. Some points, admitting they will be blending results, news, local, etc, new interface examples, blending of language results with automatic translation.

Yahoo Poker Makes The News

This is the first more mainstream post I've seen about Yahoo Poker. There are comments as well.

On Porn and Domain Costs

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Calls for Audits of Data Providers

Various marketing trade organizations are calling for audits of Nielson and other various data providers, including Hitwise, bringing into question the validity of such data.

Interesting Linkbait

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000071921

Amazon created this linkbait recently. They are showing about 550 backlinks on Yahoo to that page.

Ask.com: The $100 Million Brand

Ask.com: The $100 Million Brand

Yahoo Fills CFO Position With Blake Jorgensen

Yahoo Fills CFO Position With Blake Jorgensen

This is a test. What do you think?