Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Well I've just discovered yet another fantastic extension for the Firefox browser that is a "must have" for people interested in SEO or just easily snooping the links and rankings of your competitors' sites. :)

First, of course, you'll need to have the Firefox browser. If you don't already have it this is reason #74 to download, install and use Firefox over it's main competitor Internet Explorer. You can download Firefox here.

After you've downloaded Firefox and if you're interested in SEO (which I can only assume from the fact that you're visiting our SEO news blog) you'll want to download a bunch of extensions for it. Firefox comes with very few "bells and whistles" but because it's open source there are developers around the world, many great creations have been built that provide services and information beyond anything that a single company could/would produce.

The extension I'm recommending here is called SEO Links and is available from WebMasterBrain here. I can't describe it better than they can on their own site so you'll just have to visit them to find out the great details it can provide.

If you haven't downloaded Firefox before and you don't have the other extensions we've recommended you'll want to check out our past blog post on the topic here for links to a number of other great tools for the SEO.

Prepare yourselves for a shuffle on Google. Different results are starting to show up on different datacenters. The rankings showing on these other datacenters will surely not be the finals however they should give a solid indication as to whether you're moving up or down in the world.

You can check a datacenter I know to have at least some of the new results at http://66.102.9.104/.

I hope it treats you well. :)

Google and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation today announced a joint effort to make the Foundation's Archive of American Television interviews available for free viewing on Google Video. So far the first 75 of a total 283 films of interviews with the leaders in front of and behind the cameras can be found by entering "academy of television" into the search box.

Interviews can be found with such notables as William Shatner, Alan Alda and Ted Turner, just to name a few.

An interesting resource well worth checking out if you're a TV buff or if you're just interested in watching some great interviews with some of the people who made huge impressions on popular culture over the past 75 years.

And as an aside, I'd like to personally thank Google for giving me the opportunity to watch a bit of TV as part of my job. :)

According to Beta News and various other sources, Google will be releasing Google Base today at it's invite-only Zeitgeist conference. Business Week and Ars Technica are also running an articles.

At the moment, visits to http://base.google.com result in a 403 Forbidden error, but that's typical of an imminent Google release of a new product.

We're all quite excited to see what the new service offers in detail and we'll post a review here later this week.

- Allan

Well the PageRank update appears to be well underway with many already noticing the new numbers in their toolbars. After doing some surfing for website affected by the update we found that the biggest hit was one that gave us quite the chuckle.

The MSN website (MSN.com) took the biggest hit and is now a PR2. That's right, MSN.com with it's over 1.4 million backlinks (on MSN.com that is - Google only shows them with 8) somehow has only earned a PR2 which leaves me with 2 questions:

1. Is Google purposly deflating the MSN site rankings, or
2. Is the a ghost in the machine at Google?

Of the two choices I lean towards the ghost theory. While I'm sure the folks at Google would love to see MSN drop off the face of the Earth, I find it unlikely that they would make such a blatantly obvious adjustment to their algorithm just to do it. Oh, I'm not saying someone there wouldn't be tempted, but to do so would undermine the entire "democracy" of their rankings.

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say that they way they are currently calculating backlinks is flawed (how obvious a statement is that?). Overall the update seems to be fairly decent (though we still haven't had time to analyze all the changes) but clearly something's gone awry. I would expect that this will be remedied in the near future but until then it's good for a chuckle.

Well it's finally here ... the PageRank update we predicted back on October 17th appears to be starting with new PageRanks being shown on at least on datacenter.

A great tool to watch the update happen can be found on the McDar site at http://www.mcdar.net/q-check/datatool.asp. I recommend adding it to your favorites, you'll want to use it again in about 3 months when the next update begins.

After this pageRank update you'll want to watch for another algorithm update in the near future. I would personally predict it to occur sometime early next week. Probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

I don't expect the full PageRank update to propegate until sometime later tomorrow. We'll probably start seeing PR update on some of the main datacenters at or around 5PM.

Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning is happy to announce the addition of a new service to help you increase your online exposure. Beanstalk today has added press release writing and distribution to our list of services that will help position your website to compete and win in today's online economy.

This service has been added based on numerous requests and years of experience in writing, publishing and distribution of article and press releases on the web. If you are interested in more information please visit our Press Release Writing & Distribution services page or contact us for more details.

The forum's are abuzz with the lastest Google update. Early indicators (as noted in the forums by some generally respected posters) are that this update puts a lot more weight on the number of links vs. the actual anchor text.

This move is being blasted on the forums as a move towards rewarding big budgets and big companies. While this does certainly positivly affect the ability for larger companies with larger budgets to attain top rankings it also follows the overall philosophy of links. The more links you have to your site the more vites, the more votes the more popular and thus, the higher you should rank.

Could it be, I would ask those who are complaining, that Google has caught on that as SEo's we're running out and building a ton of well optimized text links SOLELY to get higher ranking thus undermining the value of the democracy of links? Links with varying anchor text undoubtedly appear more natural to Google and thus, sites with varying anchor text pointing to their site are being rewarded.

I have not at this time had the opportunity to fully analyze the current algorithm however, I would speculate that this is not the last we're going to be seeing of Google shifts this month. We've still yet to see the PageRank and backlink updates so there's surely more to come.

Be sure to visit Beanstalk' SEO blog to keep updated on these events as they occur.

If you'd like more inoformation on this update and just can't wait until we post again you may want to check out the thread on the WebProWorld forum on the topic at http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54379.

I recently found a post on the WebProWorld forums from Chris Richardson, and excellent writer for the same site. In his post he lists off a sleugh of excellent SEO tools and resources. As we're always ones to not just seek out new clients but to also educate and help do-it-yourselfers (and thus this SEO news blog was born), I felt that this was a great resource to point out to our valued visitors.

There are too many tools given there to list them all of here so you'll have to check it out yourself. You can visit the forum post at http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54254.

For more great tool you may also want to check out Beanstalk's SEO Tools page at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/tools.htm.

Microsoft and Yahoo! yesterday announced a landmark agreement that will help consumers by making the two major IM systems (MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger) interoperable.

This marks the first real cooperation Microsoft has undergone with a major search competitor since launching MSN search. But are they softening their stance on competitors?

In this SEO's opinion the answer is a resounding "no". There is an old Arabian proverb that reads, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." And Google is definitely the one to beat on by both involved here.

To be sure, the agreement simply allows for users of the different IM systems to communicate, the real loser is services like Trillian that were created to allow connectivity to the various systems through a single interface.

Will we see more of these types of agrements in the future? Undoubtedly. As long as Google is developing relationships with major corporations to advance thier reach such as the one with Sun Microsystems you can count on Microsoft doing the same.

You can read the press release of this announcement on the Microsoft site here.

Back on October 4th we announced on our blog the alliance formed between Google and Sun Microsystems. If you'd like to look back for this post it's titled, "Like Google Earth? How About Google Sun ..."

In that post I mentioned that I was installing and testing OpenOffice and noted that I would report back as to whether I found it a viable replacement for Microsoft Office. Admittedly it took me a while to get used to it and the way that it functions. Similar to my switch to the superior Firefox browser from IE I found myself trying to do things the hard way out of habit and quickly realized that OpenOffice is built in a much more instinctive fashion.

Once I'd worked through all of that I did find that there were many features absent in OpenOffice that are available in the Microsoft version. I realized this through the absence of as many drop down option however I still have yet to need a feature that isn't there. :)

It easily dealt with the documents I had produced in Microsoft Office and allowed me to create and work with templates, edit past documents and provides for all the formatting considerations I need.

The spreadsheet (their version of Excel) appears equally strong and again, I have yet to find a function that I need access to that isn't available.

In short, I will be continuing to use the OpenOffice suite. To replace Outlook (my past email client) I have switched to Mozilla's Thunderbird and found it to be on par with their browser. An excellent tool. Again, it took a while to get used to doing things the easy way but once I got over that hurdle it's been smooth sailing. I did find the absence of a calendar in Thunderbird detrimental however I was reminded by Allan here at Beanstalk that Thunderbird is open source and there are tons of extensions developed for it much like Firefox. A quick search and I found a great calendar extension and I haven't looked back.

If you would like to download and test the OpenOffice suite you can do so here.
If you need to replace Outlook (as I did) and would like to give Thunderbird a try you can download it here. If you need the calendar extension you can find it here.

Our friends over at Yahoo! have recently conducted a study that shows that people place an extraordinarily high level of trust and value into results from search engines:

When it came to trustworthiness, search came in second to family and friends--but by a small margin.

The study, written up over at MediaPost Publications, is enlightening and details some intriguing statistics on what people are searching for online and how they value the results.
More proof that information is power :)

Having been caught up in incoming family, etc. for what was in Canada, the Thanksgiving long weekend, I don't have the exact time of the most recent Google update on hand but it appears that I was at least pretty close with the Friday evening estimate. The earliest mention I could find of the update was from Sunday however being the geek that I am I felt it necessary to check and confirmed changes begining on Saturday.

There has been no backlink or PageRank update however that should be expected to occur in the near future, I would predict it to happen some time later in the week. Since I really like giving a day to watch I'll predict Thursday evening (the same day/time the last PR update occured). Of course, this is just an educated guess at this point and to insure that you know as soon as it occurs you'll want to keep watching our SEO news blog. ;)

This latest update has been relatively significant. I will be writing an article in the next few days, once I have had a chance to fully analyze the new/changed factors. Another reason to watch our SEO news blog: you'll be kept informed the second this article is published.

The most recent article by Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning was just published on the launch of Google Reader. This excellent service now offered by Google stands to make content syndication a much more widely used and popular form of information retrieval and marketing source.

Read the full article on the Beanstalk site at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/se-news/google-reader.htm.

While surfing SlashDot today I discovered that Google has officially declared war on Microsoft by allowing users of the Google toolbar to access Sun's OpenOffice. This move would put a huge hit on Microsoft as users quickly discovered that while OpenOffice doesn't have all the bells-and-whistles that Microsoft Office does, it does have the features that the vast majority of us use and ... well ... it's free. :)

Well you can imagine, as an SEO this was pretty big news to read first thing in the morning (once again proving to myself that I've passed over to the dark-side of geekdom). Before posting the news on our blog however I realized that it was definitely news that had to be verified. We couldn't find mention of it on Google's own blog which pretty much cleared up whether this was an official announcement or not.

In my travels I did find an article by Jason Stamper, the editor of Computer Business Review Online, regarding all the misinformation that has been going around regarding the Sun-Google alliance. It's a good article if you're interested in the topic and can be viewed on this blog at http://www.cbronline.com/blog.asp?show=cbr/2005/10/inaccuracies_ab.html.

Forber considers the announcement of the alliance "much ado about nothing" whereas an analysis by InfoWorld disagrees. I tend to side with InfoWorld on this one.

While the "announcement" of a formal declaration of war on Microsoft is a rumor and only that, the alliance between Google and Sun Microsystems certainly involves more than simply developing a new source for downloads of the Google Toolbar and the Java Runtime Environment. The inclusion of OpenOffice in the alliance and some additional developments meant to take word processing and spreadsheets online is sure to follow.

Based on what we've seen with GMail and Google's desire to not just index everything but also to place advertising on it is sure to at least spark their interest in developing this technology. Additionally, Google (and all the other major engines I should note) are seeking new ways to tailor their search results to the individual. The ability to "see" what an individual is writing in their word processors and spreadsheet is sure to add an additional level of information to base this targeting on.

How long will this all take? Who knows, but in the end it is sure to occur though whether it ever leaves Beta is the real question. ;)

Every SEO who's been watching Google's results over the past few days (which can hopefully be read, "every SEO") is undoubtedly looking, wondering what's Google's doing that's resulting in more sp@m at the top of the results and some drops felt by totally relevant and properly optimized sites.

To those who are wondering I would suggest not to panic just yet. Base on the current flux and past Google trends this is not the end of it. Undoubtedly Google is simply applying and testing some algorithm tweaks to see how it goes on specific datacenters and sometimes even with specific industries.

I will stick with my initial prediction of the full update this Friday evening. Unfortunately I may be (oh how I hate to say it) wrong on this count. It may come a bit later than my initial projection depending on the amount of retweaking they'll have to do after this round of testing.

In short, don't panic just yet. Keeping watching the Beanstalk SEO News Blog and we'll keep you posted as to when the full update occurs. Then you can panic. :)

Alright alright, cheesy title I know. :) (I just couldn't resist)

Google and Sun Microsystems announced today an agreement to promote their products to the world. During the announcement they noted that this move will make it easier for people to gain access to the Java Runtime Environment, the Google Toolbar, and OpenOffice.

Google notes that this move will, "help millions of users worldwide to participate in the next wave of Internet growth."

Rumors of the announcement had many pundits anxiously awaiting a death blow to Microsoft and were left wanting. There was no, "shot that was heard around the world" today. Rather, this move appears one that will slowly wear away at Microsoft. That is, unless Microsoft counters with a move that will help protect their marketshare (which would basically have to be a reduction in the cost of Windows and Office to ... well ... free).

While there wasn't much hoop-la around today's announcement it's probably one of the most substantial moves that any of the major search engines have made recently. While not all the effects are directly geared towards enhancing Google's position they will all either help Google or hinder Microsoft which, in turn, helps Google.

And now I must get back to the installation of OpenOffice. :)

I'll let you know in our blog if it really does make a solid replacement for Microsoft Office.

comScore has just released it's latest findings regarding which search engines are being used by US searchers. The data is from August comparing against July results. The percentages break down as follows:

Google sites are up 1.2% from 36.1% marketshare to 37.3%
Yahoo! sites are down 0.9% from 30.6% to 29.7%
MSN sites are up 1.4% from 14.4% to 15.8%
The Time Warner network is down 1% from 10.6% to 9.6%
and
AskJeeves is up a whopping 0.1% from 5.9% to 6.0% marketshare

Some other interesting information comScore has provided is:

More than 5 billion searches were conducted by the online U.S. audience in August 2005, up 4.8 percent over the 4.8 billion searches in July 2005.

132.4 million U.S. Internet visitors conducted a search in August 2005, compared to 131 million searchers in July 2005.

A Google update will be taking place in the not-too-distant future. While I would be the very last SEO to pretend to have some sort of crystal ball that tells me exactly when these events are going to occur, I also have enough experience to recognize the signs and they're starting to appear.

That said I'm going to make a prediction ... the last big update started on a Thursday evening (the night I wrote the article "Google PageRank Update Analysis". This time I'm going to predict that it'll happen on Friday, sometime between 5 and 7PM. I'm simply going to predict this as it's the most inconvenient time for SEO's that it could possibly occur so it seems like a good time for Google to do it (oh yes, and it's the weekend which means there'll be less business searching and more leisure searching going on).

You'll just keep having to watch the Beanstalk SEO News Blog to see if I'm right. The update will be announced as soon as it's detected on our end. The only prediction I'll make in regards to what will be included with this update is that the PageRank displayed in the Google Toolbar will be updated. I would also guess that we may see a lightening of the aging delay on those sites affected by it.

Goog luck through it and watch for an analysis of the update in an article by yours truly as soon as I've had a chance to research the results.