Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

It has long been rumored that Google "sandboxes" new website targeting highly competitive phrases. The SEO community itself can't come to agreement as to whether this is in fact the case, nor whether it applies to links (i.e. do links to your site gain weight the longer they are on a site).

An application to the US patent office today confirms what many believed to be the case, the sandbox effect, it appears, does exist.

The application was submitted in part by Google software engineer Matt Cutts. Basically the application is to patent a technology that will allow documents to be ranked in part by their age. The full application details can be viewed here.

What does this mean? To me it's a confirmation of a pre-existing belief that Google took into account the age of a site when ranking it in an effort to stop spammers who pump out multiple websites to monopolize the top positions. A good strategy as far as I'm concerned that, while frustrating to those launching new sites in highly competitive industries, is effective in helping keep the top positions a little freer of spam sites and more importantly, forces webmasters to put greater efforts into a single site than simply creating 100 sites in a "shotgun approach" to SEO.

WebTrends annonced on March 28th that they are being purchased by Francisco Partners, one of the world's largest technology-focused private equity funds.

This is the second purchase of a web analytics firm mentioned in the Beanstalk SEO Blog in less than a week. What does this show us? Well, it illuminates two points:

1 - I should have developed a web analytics firm 5 years ago :) , and
2 - There is a growing interest in web stats analysis. This would indicate a serious maturing on the Internet in that it reflects an improved awareness of the importance of not just knowing how many people are visiting your site but also more about who they are and what they're doing when they get there.

Personally I've always preferred ClickTracks for it's ease of use and the detail it provides but will be interested to see what develops with the WebTrends package now.

It has been recently announced that Yahoo! has or is about to acquire Flickr, an online photo sharing company with over 250,000 members who, judging from their blog, are very loyal. While not confirmed, rumor has it that the deal was/is for $30 million.

When asked about the deal Yahoo! searches' Jeremy Zawodny wrote:

"Flickr has the potential to set the new standard for on-line photo sharing, management, etc. Why? Because Flickr...

1. does one thing and does it well
2. provides a clean and simple UI
3. has clear and helpful documentation
4. exposes core functionality with a documented API
5. account sign up is brain-dead simple
6. makes extensive and intuitive use of RSS
7. like del.icio.us, uses tags to help organize
8. doens't spam me with graphical/animated/flash ads or try to unexpectedly pop up any sort of window

In other words, it's developer friendly, user friendly, and is a web site as well as a "service" or "platform" (in the Web 2.0 sense) all at the same time.

It was around that time that I jokingly responded to every mention of Flickr at the office with "you know, we should buy them..." And I was only half joking.

Be careful what you wish for, right? :-)"

What does this mean for us in the SEO world? Just that Yahoo! is continuing to expand and is offering more and more services. I would (and will) be watching them very closely over the next year. What they may lack in search results (still good but not as good as MSN in my opinion) they make up for in services and added value for visiting them. This will draw more more visitors and loyal users which of course means more traffic for you and I from this engine. :)

You can read more about the deal on the Flickr blog at http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2005/03/yahoo_actually_.html.

Yesterday Google announced that it has agreed to purchase web analytics software company Urchin. While it's a bit too early for this to have caused a stir, it's undoubtedly coming with predictions and pontifications as to what this move means.

The biggest concern that seems to be brewing (still early though) in the forums over at Search Engine Watch seems to be the belief that as many users use Urchin to verify and monitor the traffic the get from AdWords and trust it as an unbiased party, that with Google at the helm the discrepancies between what Google themselves report through their AdWords stats, and what Urchin reports will coincidentally start showing more and more similar results indicating manipulation of the figures.

Personally, I doubt as though it really matters. Google will always base their charges on what AdWords reports. In the end you have to base your AdWords bids and decisions on ROI. Does paying x for phrase y produce more money than it costs? If the answer is "yes" then it's worthwhile and if it doesn't then it should be dropped. Unless Google somehow messes with Urchin to a point where it starts hindering your ROI then it's all a moot point.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with and how they use this already fantastic analysis tool. Congrats to the folks at Urchin and congrats to Google.

Today Beanstalk CEO Dave Davies published an article on link building. This article is not the standard "how to find link partners" article but rather outlines some of the more effective ways to get incoming links to your site without reciprocating.

Don't think this is always and easy task however the efforts put in are well worth the outcome.

The article can be found on the Beanstalk website at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/link-building/non-reciprocal.htm.

Well folks, leave it to Google to keep us all guessing.

A number of sites are currently reporting new PageRank's while others show nothing. The search engine forums are abuzz with announcements of PageRank updates while others are replying that it's premature and that they're showing no changes to backlink counts or PR.

So what's going on?

This SEO's guess ... Google is toying with us all. :) They are surely aware at how closely SEO's monitor the various datacenters and that we're all expecting a PageRank update in the very near future. Why not mess things up a little bit beforehand just to keep up as wondering?

My guess is that the PageRank update will occur on April 1st, it's just the Google way. All indications are that this is going to be a VERY major update with a number of significant algorithm changes including deeper analysis of CSS files to counter the increasing use of CSS to hide text and links.

I would guess that the update will be much more thorough than that in seeking to eliminate or at least reduce the use of spam tactics. That said, my hope is that we don't see a repeat of the infamous Florida Update during which many legitimate and ethically SEO'd sites dropped in the rankings due to what only could have been an accident. Ironically, the Florida update resulted in an increase in spam results. Hopefully they will be more wary this time, which may well account for the cases of increased PageRanks currently witnessed. Google may very well be testing their new algorithm of a small scale before unleashing it on the world.

If this is the case then Google gets a big "good thinking" from me. :)

We at Beanstalk simply wanted to take the opportunity to wish our visitors a very happy Easter weekend.

On March 21, 2005 AskJeeves announced their purchase by IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) for $1.85 billion. The addition of the vast number of services offered by IAC/InterActiveCorp AskJeeves could well become a more significant contender in the search engine arena.

This already excellent and relevant engine stands poised to take a much bigger piece of the pie. Don't expect any of the big three to drop out of the race anytime soon however they should be looking over their shoulders and trying to insure that the increase in AskJeeves usage does not come from their piece.