Interview With SEO ROI

Nice interview with Gab Goldenberg of SEO ROI. I really enjoy reading his stuff. He's a guy that gets it. This piece on the ROI of SEO is great. Only 20 years old, wow.

www5.Google.com, What is it?

Checking deep search referrers and this popped up, www5.google.com. Have never seen it before. Checking the server headers its returning a 200 but resolving to Google.com. Optimus mentions it in this thread on WebmasterWorld, but no one has an answer. He also mentions seeing www6.google.com, www1.google.com and www4.google.com.

Anyone out there have an idea?

YouTube Cloaking

This is a great post by Slightly Shady SEO, "YouTube is Cloaking, So why can't I?"

For questionable content, YouTube is showing users the inappropriate content page age verify page but showing Googlebot the page behind the age verify.

More on Geo-Targeting in Google Webmaster Tools

This has been debated since it was launched. Does Geo-targeting in Google's Webmaster Tools actually help a non-local or generic TLD rank better for in country searches? Regardless, a Googler in Google Groups responds and gives some insight. Basically, it helps some but is not as good as the country specific TLD.

How Much of a Web Page do Online Users Actually Read?

Interesting study called "Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use". Jakob Nielsen summarizes it here:

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Other interesting point: Though users spend more time on a page with more words, past 100 words on a page, they typically spend an additional 4.4 seconds per 100 words. There's no way to read all that information at that rate. The more information on a page, the smaller a percentage of the total content that users are actually reading.

Study: The Impact of Blended Search Results

Search Engine Watch covers a study done by Jupiter Research on blended search. Simply put users are more inclined to click a listing in blended SERPs than they are in specific vertical searches.

* 36% click "news" results within blended search results

* Only 17% click a "news" result after conducting a news-specific search

* 31% click "image" results within blended search results

* Only 26% click an "image" result after conducting an image-specific search

* 17% click "video" results within blended search results

* Only 10% click a "video" result after conducting a video-specific search

Finding Employees Who Make a Difference

Its about the little things on a day to day basis, real progress is made incrementally. This was a nice piece by Aaron Wall, The Value of Small Daily Incremental Improvements.

I liked these quotes about employees:

Aaron: "You really need to find that 10% of people who want to add value...and
then you need to find the 30% of those who's loyalty exceeds their
greed."

Comment by timmcg: "My old football coach would say winning comes down to blocking and tackling and getting better at them everyday."

Comment by bookworm.seo: "My soccer coach in high school, when I asked him how to pick great
players for teams I would coach eventually, told me the following:

Pick players for their work ethic first, and their talent second. Skills can be taught, but a positive attitude can't."