Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Flexing their collective muscle, the blog community has struck again. Many of you may remember the "miserable failure" incident pre-election where the blog community managed to get George Bush's biography ranking #1 on Google for the phrase "miserable failure" (done so effectively that the ranking still holds today).

Well it appears that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is the most recent "victim". His biography now ranks #1 for the single keyword "liar".

Displaying the significant power of the blog community to influence both search engine rankings and through that, public opinion. You can view the results of a Google search for the keyword "liar" by clicking here.

On a slightly related note and because it's Friday and it's always good to have something a bit humerous to take with you on the weekend, we found this clip from The Daily Show with John Stewart on blogs and bloggers. If you're interested in a bit of a chuckle you can download the clip by visiting here.

Through a new contest named "Think Big" launched by Yahoo Search Maketing, formerly Overture, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin will be awarding one lucky business owner with 10 million free add impressions throughout the Yahoo network.

The overall goal of the contest is to show all of the search advertising options that are available to you through Yahoo Search Marketing.

Entries for this contest may begin being submitted on April 28th through to May 20th.

You can find out more details here, or read an article found on MediaPost .

Search engine AskJeeves today reported their first quarter revenue showing a significant increase over last year. For the first quarter of 2005 AskJeeves reported revenue increases from $39.2 million in the first quarter of 2004 to $94.9 million for the first quarter this year.

This tremendous increase (of 142% growth) plus the purchase of Interactive Search Holdings, Inc. on May 6, 2005place them in a strong position to advance on their current marketshare over 2005-2006. To be sure, they will likely not oust one of the big three however they have a strong engine that provides very good results so the are likely to establish more solid alliances and gain increases in direct access to their website. the best bet would be that the most significant gains for AskJeeves will be had in Europe.

And so, SEO Blog readers, our predication is that AskJeeves will show further increases through this year and 2006, definitely crossing the $100 million mark for the first quarter of 2006 and probably well surpassing it. It's an engine to consider if you play the stock market or have a website (which I know you do) and want to consider more than just the big three engines.

Believe it or not ... Google dominates the search engine marketplace. I know, I know ... you can't believe it so remember ... you heard it first on the Beanstalk SEO Blog. ;)

A series of report have recently been released outlining usage statistics for the various major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN), their marketshare, and the marketshare the hold in various parts of the world. While the nubmers in the various reports vary the general concensus seems to be that Google leads with Yahoo! running in second and MSN pulling in, in thrid place worldwide. The gap is relatively small in the US however in Europe the dominance of Google is FAR greater with Yahoo! in a distant second and MSN WAY behind to the point where AOL and AskJeeves are the real threats).

Now, with this in mind it is important to consider that Microsoft is only now really pushing their MSN search feature through advertising and it will undoubtedly be far more integrated into their next operating system which should launch later in 2005 (remember, this is Microsoft so that really means sometime between now and spring of 2007). The integration of MSN search into their new OS in ways I probably couldn't even think of will undoubtedly increase significantly their percentage of search and, to be fair, I've found the MSN search to provide equal and often better results than Google (though guess what my default engine still is?)

If you would like to read more on the various marketshared the engines hold as well as a snapshot of how various regions search (very important for those selling abroad) you can do so on the SearchEngineWatch.com website at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3500356.

Recently launched "Brilliant Shopper" is a new kind of search engine. Just lauched (and still in beta) this engine makes finding a researching products much easier.

Created by vetrans of Disnet, AskJeeves and IBM Brilliant Shopper is slated to hold it's official launch on Wednesday. This search engine operates as an interesting combination of engine and quasi-directory (based on search queries) giving it a unique "flavor" and providing useful related links in the left hand navigation based on the search entered.

While I'm not entirely sold on the results provided at this time this is definitely an engine to watch due to the influence of it's founders and also the direction it could go provided that the owners do not get overly distracted with corporate sponsorship and ruin an otherwise good idea by providing the same results as a PPC engine.

If you're interested in previewing this unique "evolution" in search engines you can visit their website at http://www.brilliantshopper.com/.

While it comes a couple weeks later than expected, Google has finally updated it's PageRank and backlinks. To check your backlinks on google simple enter link:www.yourdomainname.com into the search box and off you go.

To find your PageRank you'll have to install the Google toolbar with enhance features which can be downloaded from http://toolbar.google.com/googlebar.html. Currently the toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer so if you're a Firefox user (and congratulations if you are) you can download a great little enhancement that'll show you your PageRank from http://www.quirk.co.za/searchstatus/.

The SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) have not been affected at this time however watch for movement based on this update sometime in the next week or so.

Good luck and may the SERPs be with you.

Have a great weekend all.

For many months there has been rumor the Google is developing it's own browser. This was reinforced by their scooping of some tech staff from both Microsoft and Firefox and also the purchase of gbrowser.com.

Recently some site stats have shown in their browser lists "Google 0.x". Is this an indication that the Google browser is in beta and being tested or, as some argue, is this simply the Google MediaPartners bot visiting when users of the ad-sponsored versions of Opera 7 or 8 visits.

If the former, this could be a very interesting launch that explains the prefetching the Google included for Firefox uses as reported in our SEO blog on April 7.

Why not test it out on someone else's browser before including it in yours? :)

On April 18th Adobe announced that it was purchasing Macromedia for $3.4 billion. For those who don't know, Macromedia is the company that produces Dreamweaver, the GUI web design tool used by millions of webmasters around the world.

According to the Adobe press release, this purchase with strenthen their ability to help people communicate better. But what does it really mean?

While only time will tell there is concern that the quality of Dreamweaver will decline or worse, disappear altogether. While I don't see this happening anytime soon Adobe may plan "upgrades" or "useful additions" that could impact the quality of this design tool.

As a Dreamweaver user myself I'll be watching the upcoming announcements and new products very closely.

If you would like additional information you can view the release on the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html.

In my daily perusal of SearchEngineWatch.com (if you haven't been there before I highly recommend it) I was informed of a new form of advertising that it absolutely brilliant. We've all heard of pay-per-click advertising but how about pay-per-call?

Essentially, rather than having a URL display they will ahve a randomly generated 800 number in their PPC ads (or at least some of them). If the number is called it will route the caller through to the sites actual phone number and bill them a fee for the advertising.

This is a fantastic advancement that should hold great appeal to complex industries that need to understand the client's personal needs more than those that can easily be defined on a website.

AOL, it appears has followed suit.

You can read the full details in an article by Patricia Hursh on the Search Engine Watch website at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3498311.

Just found this interesting resource. This site allows users to search both Yahoo! and Google at the same time and will display the results side-by-side.

Interesting idea and useful for those who like to compare what sites each engine is ranking. You can visit the website at http://www.yagoohoogle.com/. (link disabled as host not found)

This neat little tool reminded me of one I'd found a few years ago but hadn't used recently. For an awesome little comparison tool visit http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html. Scroll over the dots for the URLs.

Yesterday Yahoo! announced the launch of Yahoo! News to compete with Google's Google News. The news engine pulls feeds and information from a small number of resources than Google however it allows users to submit site/forum/blog they believe are suitable provided that it has an RSS feed.

I ran a few searches for news and it seems to have provided some good results though it did tend to have more duplicate content showing up from different sites (for example, the same press release that was picked up by a few different sites). That said, the results were very different from those provided by Google so while I wouldn't use it to the exclusion of Google News the results were nonetheless good and I would definitely switch to it if I can't find what I'm looking for on Google.

You can visit the new Yahoo! News beta at http://beta.news.yahoo.com/.
If you want to compare it to Google you can visit Google News at http://news.google.com/.

Well this should have gone out yesterday however I was so tied up in publishing our bi-weekly newsletter that it simply slipped by. Ironically, it's the announcement that our bi-weekly newsletter was just published and is available online that was to be yesterday's blog.

You can view the April 14th edition of "Climbing The Beanstalk" online at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/newsletters/14apr05.htm.

You can also sign up to receive our free SEO Newsletter by entering your email below and hitting "Submit"

For any of you who have ever wondered what your website would read like if it was developed in "the hood" there's a website out there just for you.

Not of any real SEO value but still amusing you can visit Gizoogle.com, simply enter your URL and they'll translate it for you in about a minute. Good for killing a few minutes with a couple chuckles along the way.

Yahoo just announced that they will be providing free websites to businesses serving local areas. In addition to the free website that business will also automatically be included in Yahoo! local search.

Only time will tell but this appears on the surface to be a great opportunity for small businesses who couldn't otherwise afford. The free package offers a 5 page website based on a Yahoo! template that can be customized with the business logo ond obviously content.

For more information and to try out this new feature on Yahoo! (have to admit, the price is right) you can visit their website at http://listings.local.yahoo.com/.

If you've ever complained that you're not being paid what your worth then cheer up, your salary is significantly higher than Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. You even make more than it's CEO, Eric Schmidt. In fact, you make more in salary than all three combined!

According to the company's latest proxy, all three have agreed to $1/year salaries. But before you shed too many tears, wondering how they're going to live off the one coke they can buy this year it should be noted that Schmidt owns approximately $2.7 billion in Google shares while Brin and Page each own $7.1 billion.

So while the salary might leave something to be desired, they offer a great retirement plan.

You can read more about this on the CNN website at http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/technology/google_salary/.

Anyone who has kids old enough to work a mouse has the natural inclination to fear what will happen and what they might see when they first start using the Internet. If your children are old enough to type, what might they find?

Chris Sherman, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com has recently published an excellent article outlining some of the things we can do to help safeguard our children from material we don't want them to see including a list of search engines we can introduce them to and let them use in confidence.

Kudos to Chris for publishing this useful article on a subject we all know is important but which is often overlooked in the SEO community. The full article can be read at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3494986.

The first ever lawsuit regarding click fraud has been launched against many of the most-popular search engines including Google and Yahoo! The class-action lawsuit, led by Lane's Gifts & Collectibles LLC, alleges that these companies knowingly overcharge in order to increase their own revenue from advertisers.

Click here to read the full details of the story on CNN. (linked page no longer present)

Yesterday MSN announced significant upgrades to both MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces. According to Microsoft these advancements will help users share files and video much more readily and easily.

It's the addition of blogs to the MSN Spaces that initially caught my attention. There's a lack of customization options with the MSN Spaces blog and it's much more difficult to set up than Google's Blogger (which is what was used to create Beanstalk's SEO Blog).

A nice addition for those with MSN passports who want to simply share a few photos with family but if you actually need a blog for anything business-related then I would highly recommend choosing a different option.

You can read the release on these upgrades and more on the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-07GlobalMessengerSpacesPR.asp.

Google has added a unique tweak to their results but only for the growing number of users of the Firefox browser. The Firefox developers were wise enough to add to their development the ability to the website owner to define "prefetched" pages. Essentially this means that a website owner who knows what the majority of their users are going to do can take advantage of the browsers downtime (that time when the visitor is actually reading the content) to have specified pages downloading behind the scenes thus reducing the load time of that page shoudl they in fact visit it.

Google, in it's wisdom, knows that when somepne runs a search for "IBM" that chances are they're looking for the IBM website. Aside from ranking that site number one they have also added in prefetching which means that should the user click through to the IBM website it will take far less time for that site to load as much if not all of it will already be in the cache.

The advantage here is an improved user experience at both Google and once they click through to your site. The disadvantage for website owners occurs in the event that the user does not actually want to visit your site yet you have had to pay the bandwidth for it to be cached on their computer anyways.

All-in-all the pros outweight the cons. Kudos to Google for this recent development and do I have to say it again? ... kudos to Firefox.

To read more about prefetching (and how you can integrate it into your site) you can visit the Mozilla websitea t http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefetching_FAQ.html.

I've long touted the benefits of Firefox over Internet Explorer for security and functionality reasons. What I've never delved too depply into is the benefits to the end user of it's Open Source status. Open Source means that 3rd parties can develop utilities that enhance the product and oh how they have.

With everything from tools to help the user more easily navigate webpages to some great SEO tools that will make finding information regarding yours and other's sites much easier and quicker, there are extensions available to help pretty much anybody surf better (apart from the product itself).

If you haven't yet, I highly recommend trying our this browser. it can be downloaded free from http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. If you already use Firefox or are just interested in seeing the variety of extensions available you can visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/. I should note that there are other extensions available from individual developers. One that I've found very useful is Search Status from quirk.co.za which enables you to view the PageRank and Alexa rank of a site through Firefox (it also privides access to an assortment of other information to ease the life of an SEO. You can get this extension off the quirk website at http://www.quirk.co.za/searchstatus/.

Labels: firefox

Google's debut of it's satellite images as part of Google Maps was received by me as a relatively hum-drum development in their technologies. And then I went to visit the site. If nothing else it's very VERY cool.

They say an image is worth a thousand words so you're best to simple visit their site at http://maps.google.com/ and take a look for yourself. Find your city in the map mode (the default when you get there) and once you've located it click the "Satellite" link on the top right.

And so I have to say it, yet another great development from this search engine giant. I may not love everything they do but this is just a downright cool addition to the world's biggest search engine.

There has recently been a pretty major update on Yahoo! it appears to have begun on April 2 with sites going from top to drop and some from pages deep in the SERPs suddenly finding themselves in the top couple pages.

Beanstalk benefitted from the recent changes on Yahoo! as did many of our clients. It appears that the new algorithm from Yahoo! supports the best practices including clean code and clear titling practices.

Obvioulsy we're very happy about this update. :)

In a groundbreaking development in their desire to insure that absolutely everything (including the magnetic chatter between the stars) is indexed Google will be establishing a datacenter on the face of the moon in 2007.

Named the "Copernacus Center" it will be able to take advantage of virtually unlimited solar energy to power making it worth the enormous cost. Google is currently looking for staff with the appropriate technical knowledge and willing to relocate for extended periods of time.

One has to hand it to the folks at Google: they remain on the very cutting edge of technology and business. You can read about this incredible development and their job posting on their website at http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job2.html (link intentionlly not hyperlinked as this page will certainly be taken down after April Fool's Day is over ;).