Tag Archives: google

The Number 1 Spot in Google Rankings with the Help of Seo Experts

February 13, 2011

The Number 1 Spot in Google Rankings with the Help of Seo Experts

SE Optimization Articles | October 30, 2010

Ready to give our customers a reliable service to get the top search engines for their main targeted keywords. We offer a range of services from search engine marketing, including organic search engine optimization.

SEO is by far the best investment you can make in your online marketing program. There are various seo firms are available that offer SEO reliable and good reputation of your site so you can invest your time and energy somewhere else. If you are looking for a search engine marketing services, these seo companies are here to help you get the results they need to succeed in online business!

These SEO experts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the website and proposes an action plan to improve the status and visibility of the area within the major search engines. Experts SEO for their website for a variety of things such as: – Keyword Analysis, page optimization and inbound link building supreme quality. Their services are a guarantee that they can only be used at all correct and acceptable to offer SEO services. These are the seo companies using advanced and unique SEO techniques. It aims to provide real concrete and measurable results in improving the quantity and quality of natural resources traffic to your site from search results pages of search engines (SERP’s).

The more your site is at the major search engines for your target keywords, the more research you will visit. Search engine optimization can also be used to influence research targeting universal image, local search engines and vertical that are specific to the industry to allow you extra traffic. Through their specialized SEO services to their customers were able to reduce some of their online marketing spend for the benefit of natural circulation, which in the long term is more sustainable. Google top spot in the rankings can not be guaranteed, no seo company can. However, they are able to provide significantly better results, rankings and traffic that the site previously. Their record speaks for itself with customers, they were able to get them ranked the top three search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN targeted keyword.

Affordable SEO, words can sometimes be confused with the word seo cheap. These search engine optimization companies are proud of themselves is to provide the best customer service and quality, regardless of the cost of SEO Package. There is nothing cheap about the specialist services for these companies. They know that not every website owner is a millionaire, but want you to be able to compete on the same playing field as them. ThereforeFree Reprint Articles, they will help you break the keywords that bring new customers and new activities to your website.

Article Tags:
Search Engine, Search Engines



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New Bing Webmaster Tools: Look Out Google

February 1, 2011

A few days ago I came across some super exciting news. SEO professionals around the globe were aghast as the news came over the wire. Bing, a Microsoft company, has now revamped its webmaster tools. The resources have been redesigned from the ground up. They now offer per day, and up to 6 months back, the number of:

Pages Crawled- Allows you to tell Bing which URLs should be included in the index.

Crawl Errors- Allows you to view details on redirects, malware and exclusions encountered while crawling sites.

Pages Indexed- Provides access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included.

Impressions- See what sites have the highest conversion rate

clicks Allows you to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages.

But are there services enough to sway Google Analytics patrons? That remains to be seen. This is a brief overview of what’s going on over there at Bing.

According to an article, I recently perused over at Search Engine Land, I learned that the intuitive at Bing was to focus on the crawling, indexing, and traffic of/to sites. As always you do need to have Silverlight installed. This has been a critique of their Webmaster Tools for a while. The undertone caught by a select few is that Microsoft is not concerned with the rest of the web, so much as the “inner Windows agenda”. The face of the webmaster tools may change after Bing merges with Yahoo.

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Associated Press Attacks Google

January 25, 2011

Feeling the bite of new media encroaching upon their old media territory, the AP says that online news portals take their links, their headlines, and even their entire articles, and then reproduce them on other sites without first getting permission and paying for the privilege.

News aggregators are countering the AP’s challenge by saying that they shouldn’t have to pay for a sentence or a headline from an AP article because of the “fair use doctrine” a copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission. Google and other news aggregators also point out the fact that the snippets of content they use often drive people to the AP’s website, so the AP should be thanking them instead of criticizing them. That stance makes sense to the AP, but their beef is with the reproduction of entire articles on news aggregator sites, including Google.

The newspaper industry in general has been taking a huge hit from new media encroachment for several years. The AP is owned by newspapers, including the New York Times, and it gathers news from hundreds of print media outlets. So with subscriptions to print media and newspaper advertising steadily dwindling, the newspaper industry—and the AP—is desperately trying to hang on to its online content and keep it from being exploited.

The AP is developing methods for tagging and tracking online content to winnow out articles that have not been paid for, in an effort to recapture some of the money news aggregators make from using AP content. For example, both Yahoo and Google make money from ads posted on AP articles that are accessed by clicking on a link in search engine results. Many newspapers have deals with the AP to use their content, but such agreements are not common with individual newspapers.

To offset the challenge of protecting their online content, the AP has announced that they will reduce rates and provide more content for subscribers beginning next year. Their goal is to be more flexible and affordable in order to remain relevant in the digital age and to try to recoup some profit from what they consider to be exploitation from online news aggregators. They say that top search engine results should point to the original source of content—sites that have paid for the AP article—rather than to sites that simply reproduce the content for free.

In their annual meeting in San Diego, AP chairman William Dean Singleton told the group that the AP wants to work with news portals who legally license AP content. But they aren’t going to be as agreeable to news aggregators who claim the fair use doctrine gives them permission to use AP content. Said Singleton, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”

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Google’s Last Dance! Could Semantic Search Mean The End Of Google?

January 21, 2011

As a full-time online marketer and webmaster I try to keep my eyes peeled to what is happening with the search engines. These complex creatures control the Internet. They truly are the heart, soul and brains of the web.

Unfortunately, they also control the faith of many struggling webmasters who are clawing their way to the top of SERPs in organic search. Being listed on these first page results for your chosen keyword phrases is the ultimate goal and it is often the determining factor in the success of your site.

Recently, I have noticed some strange movements with my closely watched keywords, especially in Google. Which shouldn’t alarm anyone because there are often sudden movements and adjustments as Google tweaks and refines its algorithm, the complex series of formulas it uses to determine which pages and sites get featured.

[Side Note: An excellent resource on Google’s Algorithm and ranking factors can be found here: Seomoz.org ]

It’s way too early to jump to any conclusions but the big question on everyone’s mind: Is Google Moving Towards Semantic Search?

Or more precisely will Google have to move to semantic search if it has any chance of surviving in our ‘here today gone tomorrow’ search world. Most of us old folks can easily recall a pre-Google web. Is a post-Google web possible?

That’s very hard to swallow but stranger things have happened on the net. But the real question should be: will Google have to embrace semantic search or perish?

Wikipedia defines Semantic Search or Semantic Web as the evolving process of taking all the content on the world wide web and “expressing it not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.”

As can be imagined, finding the formats and framework which all this data can be processed into meaningful responses directly related to a search enquiry is mind boggling. Technologies such as RDF(Resource Description Framework), data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, Turtle, N3, N-Triples), RDFS (RDF Schema) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) will all probably play a role. Many believe microformats will be very important in this evolving semantic web.

New Semantic Search Engine
We now have our first search engine supposedly based on semantics or meaning: Hakia (www.hakia.com). Is it the first in a whole new wave of search engines generated and powered by the Semantic Web which is now tagged as Web 3.0? More importantly, can it compete against a more text based search engine such as Google?

Hakia has some great features such as highlighting potential answers to your posted question. For example, ask it a question like: What is the population of Seattle? And you will get an answer. But you will also get a gallery page featuring all the relevant information about Seattle:

How to get there? Local Hotels, Restaurant Guides, Local Weather…

Of course, do the same search in Google and you will also find your information along with images and maps of Seattle. However, using Hakia will show you the relevant information faster because it is highlighted and easier to find. And in my opinion having a whole gallery page of information somehow makes your search more relevant and useful.

Can Google Compete?
Is this a better mousetrap? Maybe, maybe not… but it is definitely pointing the way to a better method of searching on the web.

Granted, this type of search engine has a long way to go to match Google’s massive resources and obvious dominance in the search market. But even the most devoted Google user like myself must admit Google’s method of ranking pages and content on the web is not without some flaws. Take for example the issue of Google Bombing where different webmasters influenced the listing of the keyword ‘miserable failure’ to point to President Bush.

Google has now solved that problem but Google is basically an elitist system where sites and content is judged by the PR ranking system and its algorithm and filters. One would like to believe it is a democratic system where the best and highest quality content rises to the top. One would like to…

For information is one thing but opinions and the quality of those opinions is something entirely different. Will the new semantic web/search be able to judge quality content and rank it as good as Google presently does?

Problems For Webmasters
Regardless of how the whole Semantic Web scenario plays out, it may have some consequences for webmasters and marketers. At least in the initial stages until you can adjust or optimize your sites to this new 400 pound Gorilla on the block.

One major concern is how will the literal translation or semantic meaning of your site’s title and URL determine your placement in a semantically themed search engine? Although most webmasters know to place their major keywords in their site’s domain name but if you cover many topics within your site this is not always possible.

Plus, does a Semantic Web mean everything will probably have to be tagged to the nth degree as we are seeing in blogs, social media and Web 2.0? Thankfully this can be easily done with free software such as WordPress which has tagging already built into its programming.

If we do get truly semantic search wouldn’t on page factors play an even greater role for ranking? Special care would have to be taken as regards to your keywords and keyword variations. Great care will also have to be taken with page Titles, Meta Tags and your URLS.

I notice I am listed in Hakia for certain keywords but those have the direct phrases in the URLS.

Keen observers will also note that Google is now listing five or six related links in the number one SERPs position for certain keyword phrases. All these links come from the same site but are they more semantically related to the search enquiry than traditional links we have seen in Google? Or are they more in line with the gallery pages we see in Hakia?

Of course, jumping to any conclusions based on just one or two examples is foolhardy to say the least. Especially where search engines are concerned.

Brave New Internet
No doubt, Semantic Search or a Semantic Web poses some difficult obstacles and challenges as we seek a more human response from all those bits and bytes. For example, will semantic search mean we will have more closely focused sites strictly sticking to the topic of the url or domain name. Will the semantic web be more restricting than liberating?

When it is all said and done, will we really be able to devise a computer/machine/system that will be able to truly interpret the vast stored knowledge and give us the right meaningful answers to our questions? Will it be able to be programmed so its human enough to not only understand but also interpret the subtle differences and meanings we have for different words in the whole context of a webpage?

Perhaps the most intriguing question, can someone take the present day ‘www index’ and then apply microformats or even new technology to this massive data and build a supplemental exclusive extension of the present day web? Turn it into a more semantic ‘natural language search’ accessible index. If such a gigantic feat was even feasible, you would also have to wonder who could have the resources to make such a creature possible!

As we have seen from Google a dance is not necessarily a dance and a slap is not necessarily a slap. Could an index be more than an index? It may be too early to tell but Google will probably be better equipped to quickly adjust than anyone to this new Semantic Web whatever shape or form it takes.

Long Live BackRub!

Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins.

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous niche websites, including two sites on Internet Marketing. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Or for the most powerful marketing software try: Internet Marketing Software

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No Google 1st Page Rank? Say Bye To Traffic. Heres 3 Reasons Why

January 6, 2011

No Google 1st Page Rank? Say Bye To Traffic. Heres 3 Reasons Why

SE Optimization Articles | October 11, 2010

Richmond, VA SEO Online Marketing Strategies – The Internet has changed the way that consumers think about businesses, how they search for products and how they find information. It has also changed the ways in which businesses market themselves and even how they interact with their customers. One of the most important things to understand in the modern world of online business and marketing is the importance of Google rankings. In essence, you need to be on the first page of Google search results for your local niche or industry.

Why do you need to be on the first page? Why isn’t the second or third page sufficient? There are several reasons for this. Below, you will find a bit more information to help you understand just how vital it is that you rank as high as possible in your local niche or industry.

Consumers Are Lazy
The first thing you need to understand is that most people searching the Internet do not want to look past the first page of search results. While Google might pull up 100 million search results for your targeted keywords, your searchers are only going to look at the first page in most instances. Some consumers will look at the second page of results, but these are few.

It Equates to Expertise
Whether right or wrong, most consumers see listings on the first page of Google search results as those most closely aligned with what they want or need. This might or might not be true, but it is the general perception. Therefore, they are far more likely to give credence to companies that rank highly, as opposed to those who do not show up until the fourth or fifth page of results. After all, isn’t that what Google is supposed to do – show the most relevant search results first?

It Boosts Traffic
Obviously, the higher your page rank for search results, the higher the chance that your company will be the one that a consumer selects. This increases the traffic to your page and boosts your profitability. Without a high Google page rank through natural search results within your niche, you will have a very hard time increasing targeted traffic flow to your website.

Of course, you should not rely on Google results solely for your success, but it is an essential consideration. Your local online marketing efforts should be strategic and diversified to help your site rank high in all search engines.

Here’s something for you to think about. If your website ranks number 1 on Google for a particular keyword, then your website will receive 41% of all clicks (or traffic) for that search. If you own position 2, then your website gets 12% of all clicks for that search. Position 3 gets 8.5%. Everything after those top three spots receives much, much less traffic. So just imagine if your website is ranked 15th for a particular keyword or phrase. By the way that’s page 2, if you didn’t know. Not a good image or feeling, is it?

Remember, consumers put more weight on natural search results than on anything else. If your potential customers, through your online marketing strategy and effortsScience Articles, cannot find you on the first page of Google or any other search engine then your website is not getting the proper traffic and you are potentially missing out on making money.

Melvin Pritchett runs VJM Enterprises, an online marketing and SEO firm in Richmond, VA. He’s in the business of acquiring paying customers, for his clients, through proven online marketing and search engine optimization / SEO strategies. Visit VJMEnterprises.com today.

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Getting Into Google News

December 16, 2010

Getting Into Google News

ECommerce Articles | February 24, 2009

As a website owner, I’m sure you are always looking for new sources of traffic. Have you considered Google News? If you regularly publish news in your industry and want to be seen as a source for news you can request Google include your site

As a website owner, I’m sure you are always looking for new sources of traffic. Have you considered Google News? If you regularly publish news in your industry and want to be seen as a source for news you can request Google include your site.

This can be a great source of traffic and an excellent way to boost credibility for your company.

There are some important details you need to be aware of in order to increase your chances of Google including your site.

First and foremost, you have to request that Google include your site by visiting: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py.

Here is some of the criteria Google is looking for.

Make sure that your pages that display the full text of news articles have unique URLs so that the Google is able to index each story individually. URLs with more than one article will not be included on Google News.

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits, and should not resemble a date. I’ve often heard you should aim for more than six digits to be safe.

Here is what Google says about this: We can’t crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html. We can, however, crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html, we won’t be able to crawl it.

Make sure content on your news site is original. You can’t republish a CNN story and expect Google to include your site in the News search results pages.

Your site should have more than one author. You should also have a page listing all of the authors with their bios. For Google this is a deal breaker, so don’t bother proceeding with your request to be included if you don’t have multiple authors.

Articles should also include the writer’s name and timestamp.

Other important details to consider:

Make sure you have information about your company/organization. This is often done in the form of ‘contact us’ and ‘about us’ pages.

Server response time is important; Google crawlers will look for pages that they can index quickly, and that will load quickly for users. So make sure your server is up to par and can handle the load.

If you aren’t already doing these itemsArticle Submission, get it all in place and run with it for a little bit before your request to be included. I look forward to reading your news in Google next time I search!

Article Tags:
//wwwgoogl Om/n

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

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Google SEO – What to and What Not to Do

November 18, 2010

In Google SEO (search engine optimization), you, the webmaster, wage war with Googlebot, Google’s listing spider. Only this war has no weapons. Instead it is your content verses the army of Googlebot’s other sites to rank.

To win this war there are things the webmaster must do, and things the webmaster must not do, should he stand a chance in winning the war and claiming a position on the top 20 results of Google.

There are many things a webmaster must do to take the edge of Googlebot. First and foremost, create the website. Let it be something unique, or better than the rest. Add pages on top of pages of content. You could put articles, information, anything. With one exception. It MUST be relevant to your website.

After you have about 10 pages worth of content, get some links to your site. Submit to directories, loads of them. Try to submit to directories without a reciprocal link requirement. Also use word-of-mouth advertising to get a view visitors. As soon as you have some links, some visitors, and loads of content, hit your view visitors with a boom. Offer rewards for who could refer the most members, or who could submit the most articles, or anything to promote your site. Also remember to include possible keywords in your content, and DO NOT forget meta tags, they are the key to SEO.

You may have noticed, I never mentioned when to submit your site to Google, that’s the thing, don’t. If google picks up your site before you submit it, you get a way better rank.

Now you have come up with a very good SEO website. Now you need to make sure not to blow it. Whatever you do, DON’T:

1: Have link exchanges with non-relevant sites, this will hurt you.

2: Do not cheat. Cheating is placing “invisible” keywords on your site.

(white text on white background) Googlebot picks it up, and boom, no more rank on Google.

3: If you find the need to submit your site, do it, ONCE. If you submit twice then, say goodbye to your rank.

That’s all and good luck with the SEO. With this, good keywords, and minimal competition, you will get within the top 20 of Google.

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Google’s Last Dance! Could Semantic Search Mean The End Of Google?

November 15, 2010

As a full-time online marketer and webmaster I try to keep my eyes peeled to what is happening with the search engines. These complex creatures control the Internet. They truly are the heart, soul and brains of the web.

Unfortunately, they also control the faith of many struggling webmasters who are clawing their way to the top of SERPs in organic search. Being listed on these first page results for your chosen keyword phrases is the ultimate goal and it is often the determining factor in the success of your site.

Recently, I have noticed some strange movements with my closely watched keywords, especially in Google. Which shouldn’t alarm anyone because there are often sudden movements and adjustments as Google tweaks and refines its algorithm, the complex series of formulas it uses to determine which pages and sites get featured.

[Side Note: An excellent resource on Google’s Algorithm and ranking factors can be found here: Seomoz.org ]

It’s way too early to jump to any conclusions but the big question on everyone’s mind: Is Google Moving Towards Semantic Search?

Or more precisely will Google have to move to semantic search if it has any chance of surviving in our ‘here today gone tomorrow’ search world. Most of us old folks can easily recall a pre-Google web. Is a post-Google web possible?

That’s very hard to swallow but stranger things have happened on the net. But the real question should be: will Google have to embrace semantic search or perish?

Wikipedia defines Semantic Search or Semantic Web as the evolving process of taking all the content on the world wide web and “expressing it not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.”

As can be imagined, finding the formats and framework which all this data can be processed into meaningful responses directly related to a search enquiry is mind boggling. Technologies such as RDF(Resource Description Framework), data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, Turtle, N3, N-Triples), RDFS (RDF Schema) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) will all probably play a role. Many believe microformats will be very important in this evolving semantic web.

New Semantic Search Engine
We now have our first search engine supposedly based on semantics or meaning: Hakia (www.hakia.com). Is it the first in a whole new wave of search engines generated and powered by the Semantic Web which is now tagged as Web 3.0? More importantly, can it compete against a more text based search engine such as Google?

Hakia has some great features such as highlighting potential answers to your posted question. For example, ask it a question like: What is the population of Seattle? And you will get an answer. But you will also get a gallery page featuring all the relevant information about Seattle:

How to get there? Local Hotels, Restaurant Guides, Local Weather…

Of course, do the same search in Google and you will also find your information along with images and maps of Seattle. However, using Hakia will show you the relevant information faster because it is highlighted and easier to find. And in my opinion having a whole gallery page of information somehow makes your search more relevant and useful.

Can Google Compete?
Is this a better mousetrap? Maybe, maybe not… but it is definitely pointing the way to a better method of searching on the web.

Granted, this type of search engine has a long way to go to match Google’s massive resources and obvious dominance in the search market. But even the most devoted Google user like myself must admit Google’s method of ranking pages and content on the web is not without some flaws. Take for example the issue of Google Bombing where different webmasters influenced the listing of the keyword ‘miserable failure’ to point to President Bush.

Google has now solved that problem but Google is basically an elitist system where sites and content is judged by the PR ranking system and its algorithm and filters. One would like to believe it is a democratic system where the best and highest quality content rises to the top. One would like to…

For information is one thing but opinions and the quality of those opinions is something entirely different. Will the new semantic web/search be able to judge quality content and rank it as good as Google presently does?

Problems For Webmasters
Regardless of how the whole Semantic Web scenario plays out, it may have some consequences for webmasters and marketers. At least in the initial stages until you can adjust or optimize your sites to this new 400 pound Gorilla on the block.

One major concern is how will the literal translation or semantic meaning of your site’s title and URL determine your placement in a semantically themed search engine? Although most webmasters know to place their major keywords in their site’s domain name but if you cover many topics within your site this is not always possible.

Plus, does a Semantic Web mean everything will probably have to be tagged to the nth degree as we are seeing in blogs, social media and Web 2.0? Thankfully this can be easily done with free software such as WordPress which has tagging already built into its programming.

If we do get truly semantic search wouldn’t on page factors play an even greater role for ranking? Special care would have to be taken as regards to your keywords and keyword variations. Great care will also have to be taken with page Titles, Meta Tags and your URLS.

I notice I am listed in Hakia for certain keywords but those have the direct phrases in the URLS.

Keen observers will also note that Google is now listing five or six related links in the number one SERPs position for certain keyword phrases. All these links come from the same site but are they more semantically related to the search enquiry than traditional links we have seen in Google? Or are they more in line with the gallery pages we see in Hakia?

Of course, jumping to any conclusions based on just one or two examples is foolhardy to say the least. Especially where search engines are concerned.

Brave New Internet
No doubt, Semantic Search or a Semantic Web poses some difficult obstacles and challenges as we seek a more human response from all those bits and bytes. For example, will semantic search mean we will have more closely focused sites strictly sticking to the topic of the url or domain name. Will the semantic web be more restricting than liberating?

When it is all said and done, will we really be able to devise a computer/machine/system that will be able to truly interpret the vast stored knowledge and give us the right meaningful answers to our questions? Will it be able to be programmed so its human enough to not only understand but also interpret the subtle differences and meanings we have for different words in the whole context of a webpage?

Perhaps the most intriguing question, can someone take the present day ‘www index’ and then apply microformats or even new technology to this massive data and build a supplemental exclusive extension of the present day web? Turn it into a more semantic ‘natural language search’ accessible index. If such a gigantic feat was even feasible, you would also have to wonder who could have the resources to make such a creature possible!

As we have seen from Google a dance is not necessarily a dance and a slap is not necessarily a slap. Could an index be more than an index? It may be too early to tell but Google will probably be better equipped to quickly adjust than anyone to this new Semantic Web whatever shape or form it takes.

Long Live BackRub!

Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins.

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous niche websites, including two sites on Internet Marketing. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Or for the most powerful marketing software try: Internet Marketing Software

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Microsoft and Yahoo!, Search Engine Partners? How Mergers and Acquisitions May Change the Search Engine Playing Field – and Where Google Comes In

November 11, 2010

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring – Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!’s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft’s board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I’m assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft’s.

Will Ask.com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with Google and to position itself as one of the top Internet search engines – period. You may remember the “algorithm” ads that it ran for a time on television. However, recently Ask.com announced that it will instead be tailoring itself to the niche market share of which it already has control. In other words, they’re no longer trying to be all things to all people in the way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo! and Google are.

What we know about Ask.com’s demographic is that it is largely female, although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing on “older women.” According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com spokesperson said that:

…reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women are false and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press article that has since been changed. Ask acknowledged that married women do compose a lot of its core users and these matronly queries are often dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia type queries – as well as categories like health and entertainment (1)…

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same time that it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no longer aiming to be considered one of the top Internet search engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine technologies dominating the entire landscape: Google and a MSN/Yahoo! search engine hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines, the industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other, smaller players like RC Cola that some people will be brand loyal about, but for the most part it’s either Big Guy One or Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that were getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the Yahoo! search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top Internet search engines, there will be less real estate to compete for and the same number of businesses vying for this real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job easier for search engine optimization companies – there’s just less algorithms to absorb and master. However, it makes the opportunity for volatility much more likely. Before, if the Google or Yahoo! search engine changed its algorithm, you had three or four other engines to fall back on while you worked to update your practices. But with only two major players, a tweak to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine algorithm could have much further reaching implications to individual companies in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the underdog in the industry – the cool, hip engine to use that’s not owned by the big guys. However, search engine optimization practitioners have started to see some cracks in that veneer. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is seen as a huge corporate conglomerate, with Google starting to be seen similarly. And now Google has to answer to shareholders, rather than just going along trying “not to be evil.” Google has its own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest, such as its recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO company. [See my recent article on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the door is opened for competition. If another company can come along technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo! search engine algorithms and that does not have huge corporate considerations, it could very well start gaining some market share in this space. I’ll let you know if I see any contenders.

Sources

1. http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/03/05/iac-ask-update-markets-equity-cx_md_0305markets33.html

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

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Have You been Google Slapped?

November 8, 2010

Getting to the top of the search engines has never been easy and the bad news is that it has gotten even harder, especially if you are trying to peak Mt. Google

Recently, with respect to information quality, Google raised the bar even higher with another algorithm tweak that effectively reshuffled (and in some cases evaporated) page rank across thousands of web pages.

Thus if your website’s PR (or that of its inner pages) recently stole quietly away in the middle of the night with nary a goodbye take consolation in the knowledge that you are not alone; this calamity has befallen countless others.

The latest Google algorithm tweak/update has been pretty widespread and non-discriminatory in nature, targeting both new sites and well established veteran sites too.

In the good ole days it used to be that a gray page-rank bar was indicative of a website/web page that had been banned from the Google index but that seems to no longer be the case. Lately it would appear that being grayed-out merely reflects a webpage/website that is under probation (of course in certain cases a gray PR band could actually reflect a banned website/web page).

So what does this all really mean?

Google Web Paradise

Understanding Google’s goals and objectives is fundamental to search-engine optimizing your website effectively and correctly within their guidelines. The first thing you need to appreciate is that online search is a business. Google is Top Dog in the search engine business for two very simple reasons:

1. Google returns the most accurate results for any given search query.

2. Of all the search engines, Google has the fastest retrieval rate for almost all queries.

Being number one for both the above listed parameters obviously has major advantages; it ensures that more people flock to use your search engine and, as has been proven time and time again, where the crowds gather the advertisers hover not far behind.

Advertisers want to get the best bang for their buck so they will naturally tend to spend their dollars where they can get the greatest percentage of targeted and relevant eyeballs; which means advertising on the major search engines (of which surprise, surprise) Google is the leader!

Google’s domination of online search is a tangential derivation of the saying “The Richer Get Richer,” because as Google gets better and leaves the other search engines floundering in their dust, more and more people (and advertisers) will naturally tend to gravitate to them!

The New SEO Horizon

The first thing that should be understood is that the debate about the existence of the Google Sandbox has been laid to rest once and for all. It exists and has become even more expansive as well as having gotten more rigid!

As of January 2005, Google had over 100,000 servers with which to store data in its cache index. The cache index is where Google stores a copy of every page that the googlebot crawls on the internet.

Those web pages that eventually make it into the Google Primary Index (the index that displays the resulting listings in response to a query) are the pages that have been evaluated as most relevant and qualified for that particular query.

Web pages or websites that Google evaluates to be comprised of largely duplicate material that is already in its index are relegated to the supplemental index (the backburner). The supplemental index contains web pages and/or websites that Google considers, for all intents and purposes, to be irrelevant.

In other words you do not want your website to end up in the supplemental index because nobody will ever get to see it!

In 2006 Google suffered a very major server-overload crisis. Since then they have acquired several more servers, but this new algorithm tweak/update tends to suggest that they are leaning much more towards the principle of efficiency-and-quality versus volume-and-quantity.

In essence it appears that Google is adopting an approach geared towards maximizing efficiency of storage and organization of data. This by its very nature means restricting the amount of content that gets crawled, cached and eventually indexed (i.e., saves server space) as opposed to trying to accommodate every single piece of data that is drifting across the internet.

This certainly may go some distance explaining the zeal and passion with which they executed operation “gray band” that affected thousands of websites and web pages.

Recovering From Being G-Slapped

If your website/web pages have recently been demoted (loss of page rank) or now shamefully display a grayed-out PR bar where once a shimmering green existed, then your website has indeed been Google slapped!

So where do you go from there?

There’s a saying that states “understanding the nature of the beast is the first step in divining its true intent” (which is just a fancy way of saying: if you know what makes something tick then you’ll be better able to predict its future actions.”

Keeping that in mind, it is possible to deduce the following aspects from the May 2007 Google update:

1. A gray PR band will be the norm for all new websites and web pages; in other words think “probation period.” The length of time the PR bar remains grayed-out for any particular website/web page is dependent upon a number of factors which include:

a) How unique the content on a web page is. Pages that boast highly original and unique content will tend to be released from the gray zone quicker.

b) A web page that has a lot of unique traffic will have a shorter probation period (note that the origin of that traffic is something the search engines factor in to rule out sneaky play by individuals attempting to game the search engines).

c) Links! Links! Links! Yes, when it comes to SEO it is impossible to ignore the link factor. A page that “naturally” acquires a good number of topically related links will experience a shorter probation period.

d) Greater link activity will increase the importance of the destination page whereby such a web page will tend to attain higher PR quicker. This makes sense because a hyperactive links denotes popularity (websites that are popular are so because people find them useful).

e) The amount of time people spend on your site is also an important parameter that the search engines take into account. People tend to spend more time on websites that they find useful and the search engines can determine that fact through the use of sophisticated tracking scripts.

Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly difficult to game the search engines (the use of blackhat techniques) as their algorithms get smarter and more sophisticated.

The May 2007 Google update amply illustrates that Google is aggressively gunning for its vision of Web Paradise which by necessity means smacking down hard on websites that offer little useful function to that vision!

Simply put, if you wish your website to advance up the SERPs you need to make it user oriented. Visitor use and appreciation of a website appears to be the single strongest factor in determining that website’s eventual position on the SERPs in Google’s brave new Web Paradise! Internet Marketing Online

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