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SEO Blog
Search engine optimization news and thoughts
Google CEO Eric Schmidt illustrates how Google tries to defend consumer privacy:In response to a question about how Google treats consumer privacy, he tried to illustrate how the company's don't-be-evil philosophy trumps technology by recounting a meeting he attended with company co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. In it, a business executive suggested a particular change at Google.
"One of the engineers says, 'That's evil.' It was like setting off a bomb in the middle of the table," Schmidt said. The concern was taken seriously: "You can pull the ripcord and stop the production line."
He added that after a long debate, the engineer's assessment prevailed over the business executive's idea. "They concluded it was (evil), and this poor person was thrown out the room."
There is an interesting thread at DigitalPoint, where members are suspecting that MSN has its own sandbox. (via).
I`m not sure it worth to discuss whether it exists or not - members are mentioning funny terms such as some weeks...
At last – AdSense reports now are available on-the-fly – which means that two days delay on channel data now is gone.
And Russian added to AdSense for context. Great!
Andy Beal reports new link appearance at Google SERPs:
One of our talented Account Executives (yes you, Dave Schebell) spotted a mysterious new link at the bottom of his Google results page. Normally, any strange links on a Google SERP would suggest some kind of malicious spyware, but these little addition doesn't appear to take you anywhere other than Google.
The link "Try Alternate Searches", when clicked on, takes you to a page that includes other suggest keyword searches, you may want to consider.
Meanwhile, Gary Price admits he couldn`t repeat this result. Me too, btw.
Yahoo! has updated its toolbar – now Linux and Mac versions are available while Windows version has got improved antispyware options.
Danny Sullivan posted short review of recent press around click fraud class lawsuit filed against Google, Yahoo and others. Worth to read.
Google Blogoscoped has great collection of today pranks and jokes around the web and search engines. SearchEngineWatch blog adds some excellent jokes about Google and Yahoo merger, for example.
Searchenginewatch.com announced today results of its 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards. Yahoo breaks Google`s monopoly to be entitled as “Outstanding Search Service” and also was awarded as best image search engine. However, Google keeps its crown as best news service, shopping search and search ads provider. And, of course, most SEO friendly search engine.
Read comments at the bottom of the article – very interesting.
WordPress has been caught by spamming search engines by Andy Baio. They created about 120,000 small webpages stuffed by high payed keywords like “cialis”, “credit” and so on, and put invisible links on main page of wordpress.org – PageRank of it is 8/10.
Inside Google has a roundup of opinions about the case and notes:
It's already starting to hit the fan. Bloggers are digging deep. Dave from Geeklife found a Hot Nacho ad offering to pay $1200 for 400 short (500 word) articles. Andre Torrez found that the site is using cloaking on the Wordpress homepage, hiding this: <div style="text-indent: -9000px; overflow: hidden;">
<p>Sponsored <a href=http://google.blognewschannel.com/"/articles/articles.xml">Articles</a> on
<a href=http://google.blognewschannel.com/"/articles/credit.htm">Credit</a>,<a href="/articles/health-care.htm">Health</a>,
<a href=http://google.blognewschannel.com/"/articles/insurance.htm">Insurance</a>,<a href="/articles/home-business.htm">Home Business</a>,
<a href=http://google.blognewschannel.com/"/articles/home-buying.htm">Home Buying</a> and
<a href=http://google.blognewschannel.com/"/articles/web-hosting.htm">Web Hosting</a>
</p>
</div>
The -9000px indent makes it invisible to all but search spiders. Cloaking is a huge no-no for Google, and all reputable search engines. GoogleGuy points out in the comments that Hot Nacho is posting the same articles in multiple places, another no-no. David Jacobs says Wordpress users should change the powered by WordPress link to point to this article. Even Jason Kottke is talking about it. Yahoo's Tim Mayer links to it. Oilman calls it "pretty freakin stupid". Greg Yardley blames Google for not having the technology to catch this itself. Ian Landsman calls them "Lying, Cheating, Rotten, Bastards". Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo says he's "nofollow"ing all links to WordPress till the pages come down.
Others: SEO Roundtable, Lisa Jill, Jonas Luster (WordPress inc.'s first employee), hmm, Elliot Back, Chyetanya Kunte, Darren Rowse, Blogosphere News, Silicon Beat, Patrick Strang, Kingsley, Spamblogging.
You want irony? Its been reported recently by none other than the San Jose Mercury News that Matt is the number one "Matt" on Google because of all the WordPress blogs with a link to his site. Doesn't seem quite as charming as it did a few days ago...
Of course, it will hurt Wordpress reputation. So I recommend to use Movable Type as we do at Blogscorp.
Google files its first annual report (10–k form) with SEC. Recommended.
Intelliseek announces Blogpulse 2.0, provides more coverage of blogs, more analytics, better search etc.
Read a full text.
Google purchases web analytics company Urchin:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 28, 2005 - Google Inc. today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance. Urchin tools are available as a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting providers. These products are used by thousands of popular sites on the Internet.
Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective.
"We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. "This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products."
John Battelle shares some insider info:
Urchin was a third party system that many used to understand their Google ads, among others. As part of a Google suite of tools, it will take on a decidedly different cast. More as the word trickles out. BTW, I was told by the tipster that the price was $30 million.
Aaron Schwartz admits that he has have some info a week ago:
Six days ago I received this anonymous tip (edited for grammar and anonymity):
In a meeting with a banker last week, he went on and on about how he is seling Urchin, Inc. to Google in March or April. He trusts me and Google does not want the news out. Isn't Google a public company?
So why would Google buy Urchin and want to keep it quiet? Thoughts?
I try to avoid rumors, but I guess I should have posted that.
And what exactly Google bought – small review of Urchin technology.
After short interruption, let`s continue…
Charlene Li has a detalied overview of Yahoo 360 with two screenshots:
Central to the whole service is the concept that you want to communicate and connect with the people that you already know, rather than try to meet new people. To this end, your home page on the service shows the most recent content published by people within your network. This might be a blog post, a photo album, review, or an updated profile item. This page is constantly refreshed as the people in your network update the information on their spaces. This fundamental concept of linking people through their updated “stuff” is what makes Yahoo! 360 unique – and inherently will drive usage of the service higher than traditional social networks. In essence, the content is being pushed to you by the service.
Infoworld reports that Google is removing AFP from Google News.
Google is in the process of removing French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) from its Google News service, which aggregates links to online articles and accompanying photos from about 4,500 news outlets.
Google's decision is a direct reaction to a lawsuit AFP filed against the search engine provider alleging copyright infringement over the inclusion of AFP content in Google News, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, on Monday.
Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, Langdon said.
"We allow publishers to opt out of Google News. Most, however, want to be included in Google News because they believe it's a benefit to them and their readers," Langdon added, reading from a prepared statement.
Great news – InterActiveCorp has agreed to purchase Ask Jeeves along with all its equities.
"We believe that in the future (Ask Jeeves) has the potential to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond," Diller said in a teleconference Monday morning. "And by 'beyond,' we mean in wireless (and) in the search for anything on any device."
…
Under the terms of Monday's deal, InterActiveCorp will issue 1.26 shares of its common stock for each share of Ask Jeeves common stock in a tax-free transaction valued at $1.85 billion, discounting any cash involved in the buyout. InterActiveCorp said that it intends to buy back at least 60 percent of the shares it plans to issue for acquisition through previously authorized share repurchase programs.
Charlene Li made some comments in her blog:
Two big challenges face the combined companies:
1) Gaining user loyalty. As I’ve written in the past (blog, and on Forrester.com), search loyalty is still up for grabs. Jeeves has only a 3% market share (based on which search engine North American online consumers use most often to search the Interent). If any of the above strategies are going to succeed, IAC will have to invest heavily to promote a repositioned Ask Jeeves strongly against formidable competition.
2) Diversifying revenues beyond their current Google revenue share (which represents about 70% of total revenues for ASK). IAC has got to be watching MSN’s new paid search product launch closely and thinking about whether to renew with Google when that contract is up for renewal in 2007 – or to strike out on their own.
Also, some comments from John Battelle:
The long and short of it is this: This is a media play, pure and simple. Here is the third paragraph of the IAC press release, in it's entirety.
The online advertising and search markets are growing rapidly; of the $260 billion in total U.S. advertising spend in 2004, less than $10 billion, or 4%, is online, with an expected annual growth rate of 13%. Search is now 36% of U.S. online advertising and expected to grow 24% per year over the next five years (Source: Merrill Lynch Equity Research.)
In other words, this makes sense for a company looking to consolidate and leverage its media assets - and IAC is exactly that kind of company.
All is not necessarily done in this deal, however. This marks the rise of a fourth network - after Google, Yahoo, and MSN - or maybe a fifth, if you include AOL. And that means that now that Diller has declared himself a player, others may see it in their interest to make their own play. It's entirely possible AOL or even MSN might make a higher bid for Ask. Now that Diller's in the game, it just might change the calculus of the others who are playing. Remember Lycos?
Danny Sullivan also reminds Lycos deal:
My first thought was how familiar it sounded to proposed (and failed) InterActiveCorp-Lycos deal of 1999, that promised mega cross-promotion but also raised the fear of a lack of diversity in results.
IAC was called USA Network at the time, undergoing a name change later in June 2003. The idea back then was that all the great IAC properties were going to gain from cross-promotion within Lycos search results and vice-versa. My Lycos To Merge With USA Network article from back then revisits this more.
Fast-forward to today and the comment from Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz on how the merger of IAB-Ask will allow people to "search, find and complete a task all within the boundaries of one company."
I have to agree with Scoble – “This space is getting very interesting!”.
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