Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Well here we are, days later and no posts. I still have dozens of emails sitting in my Inbox waiting to be answered from my week in Chicago (last) but I felt the need to post today. I'm not going to get a chance to get into great detail on the personalization session in Chicago which I was really hoping to but that will take far more time than I have (hours) and so all I will say on that tangent is that I recommend visiting www.seobythesea.com. Great info on patents. You'll also want to review my past article on the subject here.

Alright, now on to other news. Let's begin with today's radio show on Webmaster Radio. Jim and I discussed the Net Neutrality issues that Roger's (a Canadian ISP). Rogers is injecting their own content into pages (such as usage warnings) and was caught doing so on the Google homepage. The content they injected mentions Yahoo! Here's how it looks:

Not cool. Now, who owns the content? Is it Rogers for allowing the data to pass to the user or is it Google for creating the content to begin with? I have a hunch we'll soon find out.

Jim and I also went on to discuss Google DoubleClick and some of their more recent issues. Ahhhhh, will it never end (I hope not - it gives me something to chat about on the radio). :)

One of the points of interest is the filing by liberal consumer parties objecting to Deborah Majoras (Chair of FTC) being involved with the voting on the issue given that her husband (John Majoras) works for the Jones Day law firm which represents Google/Doubleclick.

While the defense of this would be that John is no part of the deal (perhaps but would likely having influence nonetheless) and that Jones Day only appeared before the EU in that battle and that they have nothing to do with the FTC. That could be but I'm not sure why their site would read that Jones Day is representing Google/DoubleClick on, "international and US antitrust and competition law aspects."

Now all this said, I think it's all silly. Google has every right to the acquisition in my opinion. The reason competition laws were made was to protect the consumer. Google product is free so really, what are we being protected from. Yes yes, if Google has too large a hold on the marketshare they will control the advertising and then they can charge advertisers what they want right? Wrong. Advertisers will pay whatever it takes as long as the money made is higher than the cost paid to provide a product or service. Whether Google controls 55% of the marketshare or 80% this won't change. They could control 100% of the market - I'm still not going to pay them more than I make to advertise my product. And have you seen what the bids are? This isn't about cost per click, it's about scale (they want more clicks) so the consumer won't really be affected and the advertisers will just have more clicks to choose from which may, I would argue, lower the cost they need to pay.

But moving on ...

We had Li Evans on the show to discuss social media and all that it isn't. She was an awesome guest and a joy to chat with in Chicago as well. I couldn't do it justice and so I'll just direct you to read her latest article (it's what the interview was about). You'll find it on her site here. Great post, recommended reading.

So that was the show. I'll give some advanced warning that I'm pretty sure we're in for a bit of a shuffle on Google this weekend. I'm not sure if we'll see one on Yahoo! but we likely should within the next week or two. Both engines have had updates recently and not all the effects were beneficial for the searcher (though in some cases the results improved - I'd have to say that overall they declined which means they will be corrected).

And to take us into the weekend and has nothing to do with Chicago or SES ...

A hilarious video. Sung to the tune of "We Didn't Start The Fire" it suggests that there's a new bubble about to burst. A good way to start your weekend (unless you work as a geek I suppose in which case it's basically poking fun at you ... ummmmmm ... HEY !!!)

Enjoy. :)

Labels: bill slawski, doubleclick, google, jim hedger, li evans, personalization, ses ch 2007, social media, webmaster radio

For those of you who are hoping from the title that I'm about to launch into a rant of some new found sp@m Google's been caught for or something Matt has said on how to detect it I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. In fact today we'll be covering three topics. The topics are ... well ...

Google
Google today announced that they will be putting tens of millions of dollars towards the creation of a renewable energy source (read: green-friendly) that is cheaper to manufacture than coal. This development would be a huge move forward for the environment and for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as coal power is responsible for 40% of those emissions.

When I first received the press release I had a mixed response. Of course I'm happy to see any actions that stand to have a positive impact on our planet and I'm more happy when it's an efficient corporation that's leading the way as opposed to governmental body that may or may not run efficiently and has little in the way of accountability. On the other side, I have to roll my eyes a bit whenever I see a large company jump on the green bandwagon for some good press. But there were two things that make this different.

First, I have to hand it to Google - they've got a great track record of environmental initiatives. It's not like this is the first such move they've taken. They've greened their plex, they've invested in green initiatives in the past, and I have to say - I actually believe that they have an interest in the subject past a little lip service.

Secondly, it's not all about good will. While I do believe that the environment is of some interest to Google - I'm not convinced they'd drop tens of millions on it "just for fun" nor do I think the shareholders who be too happy if they did. Then I got down to this part:

"If we meet this goal," said Page, "and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well."

Let's call a spade a spade, this is good business. Be the first to launch a cheaper alternative to coal that is socially preferred. Yeah, there just might be a market for that. :)

I also have a hunch that getting on the publics' good side when you're making purchases that the government (those pesky people) keep taking you to court for competition issues (or rather, the lack of competition issues) might be a secondary motivation.

Matt Cutts
Matt made a great video yesterday of snippits (the components of the SERPs). Since getting sitelinks next to our listing for a couple phrases I've become more and more curious as to how they're generated. I had my theories but recently I've started seeing instances of sites getting them that fall outside the criteria I believed were responsible (including our own). Bill Slawski did a good post a while ago on them here if you want to read a great introduction and summary of what the patents have to say. And so I watched carefully and I have to say, Matt gives some great advice but I got more information on how to get the links from Bill and some research than I did from Matt. :)

But the video is great, he has some conversion tips and even some SEO advice he passed on to Starbucks. :)

Here's the video:

And Sp@m
And now back to Bill's site. Bill Slawski has a great post on a recently granted Google patent on how they detect sp@m. A great read. It illustrates much of what we've seen over the past couple years and some obvious areas where they still need to improve. It's a longer read but well worth it. You'll find it at http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=922.

Labels: bill slawski, google, matt cutts, patents, press release

Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz (OMG, that's two post in a row about the guy) had his whiteboard Friday today (as he does every Friday). Whiteboard Friday is an "event" during which Rand uses a whiteboard to illustrate complex SEO theories, technologies, etc. in layman's terms. He does a damn good job at it too.

This weeks whiteboard was about how the engines can "sniff out" the origin of a story through links and rank the first source of a story even if a stronger source posts about it later and even if other sources have better anchor text. It's a great post that right now discusses only the news and blog searches but which Rand asks, "could this be expanded to include regular search?"

Now, in my opinion I don't believe that this type of analysis and ranking really works in the regular search arena. If I write a 500 word summary of a new Google patent and I'm the first to cover it and, after reading my post, Bill Slawski over at SEO By The Sea writes up on the patent (like he wouldn't have found it already) and writes a 10,000 word summary of it's ins-and-outs and an analysis of it's application in the real world and links to the Beanstalk blog post as the first source he found out about the patent on (thanks for the imaginary link Bill ;) which of our two pages should rank when people look up information on that patent? Heck, I love traffic but even I'd have to say that if Google wants to provide good results they're going to display Bill's 10,000 word analysis above my 500 word summary in every search regardless of where it first appeared.

Of course, Rand is covering the technology in simple terms to illustrate an idea and of course the algorithms are more complex than simply a link mapping system to determine first source with the source ranking regardless of content. Just wanted to make sure that was understood before you watched the video however. :)

So without further ado, here's Rand Fishkin explaining how engines recognize first source for blogs and news:

Labels: bill slawski, blog, rand fishkin, seomoz

Today we're going to discuss three things. Links, links and ... well ... links. Where to begin where to begin? I know, let's start with links:

Links
Today Jim Hedger and I hosted our weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio. We covered a variety of topics from Google surpassing $700/share in trading to the battle over advertising and Google's upcoming issues with Facebook (i.e. Facebook stands to provide a TON of relevant search and advertising opportunities and they're going to provide them to Microsoft).

After a brief discussion on those topics we had on patent guru Bill Slawski for the remained of the show to discuss ... you guessed it ... links. Bill definitely knows more than your average bear about search engines and links and was happy to share his wisdom bringing up important points to consider such as the move AWAY from global search results to results tailored more to the individual user's likes and dislikes as defined the the user, their search behavior and the behavior of similar users. If you're interested in this subject (and if rankings are important to you - you should be) you can read more about it in an article I wrote on Personalization as well as on Bill's blog where he lists the important patents related to personalization. To get a full feel for it you've just going to have to visit Webmaster Radio and download the podcast. :)

Links
And so let's move on to topic #2. Links. The link counts are getting messed up at Google again (not that they've ever been particularly reliable. As Jim Hedger points out, whenever we see these sorts of fluctuations going on it usually means there's something bigger about to happen.

I was already predicting an algorithm update later this week or over the weekend. Could this just be the tremors before the Earthquake. And please dear God let Google haven't learned a valuable lesson from the Florida update of 2003. ;) (and for those of you who were SEO's at the time (white hat at least) you'll shudder at the mere though)

Links
And lastly we're look at links. Well, we won't so much look at links as we will a rap about them. I've gotta say, this is a first for me. :)

Labels: bill slawski, facebook, google, jim hedger, link building, webmaster radio

I gotta say, SES San Jose was awesome. While the sessions themselves are always interesting and there's always something to pick up from them - it's usually the networking and "aside" conversation that you have that are the most memorable. This thought inspired me to post a "the people that you meet" post with some of the more memorable people that I had the pleasure of meeting in San Jose.

Jim Boykin - WeBuildPages.com
It's been a long time that I've wanted to meet my arch nemesis. Jim's site and the Beanstalk site tend to bounce back-and-forth in the rankings and have done so for the last year. If we're not #1 for "seo services" I don't even have to look to see who is.

It was great to finally meet Jim and learn that, aside from being a thorn in my side in the rankings from time-to-time, he's an alround good guy and knows his SEO (I should certainly hope so or I'd have to take it personally that they oust us periodically).

Kristine Schachinger - TravelWorm.com
Kristine was awesome to meet and a ton of fun. She managed to keep up with us SES'ers as far as the partying went but always kept her wits about her.

I also had the opportunity to meet the Travel Worm. This friendly little critter tried to eat my lunch but after a quiet threat to stick him on a hook and drop him into the ocean he let me eat in peace.

Ken Jurina - Epiar.com
Ah Ken, ya gotta love him. I had to give him huge props for this shot. The camera wasn't working properly and he managed to keep my 180 pounds aloft for quite a while. Was it worth it, not so sure.

The truly shocking things about this pic is that we'd each only had a couple beers by this point in the night. ;)

Robert Garcia (rumblepup) - Banler.com
Robert is the guy on the right. If you follow my Flickr posts as well you'll recall that I first met him at SES New York a few months ago.

I spent many hours over the course of the week discussing everything from SEO to politics with Robert and look forward to the next SES to chat with him again. A great guy and, while he won't say so, a very good SEO - even if I did make him wrong once ;)

David Brown (neo) - Neo1SEO.com
Running into David Brown reminded me that he is indeed a nice guy even though he tried to hit on my wife in New York (this is a joke). With forearms as large as my calves and a sense of humor that's even larger I'm now tagging him "the strongest SEO in the world".

In fact, if you're an SEO or blogger I'd truly appreciate if you'd link to http://www.neo1seo.com/about-neo1-seo.htm with the text "the strongest SEO in the world". It's an inside joke but it's a funny one. You can gather from this pic where the name came from and I'll note, he didn't lose an arm wrestle all night even though he was up against people coming in fresh. Nicely done David !!!

Glenn Convey - Metamend.com
Glenn is the President of Metamend, my old arch nemesis before I started competing with WeBuildPages.com. Now I hope Glenn knows it wasn't personal (seeing as how he didn't work there at the time). They're also a Victoria, BC based SEO firm so of course, they had to make my "hit list".

"Unfortunately" I got to know Glenn at this SES event and I learned, well, darn it - he's a nice guy and I look forward to seeing him again at future SES events and hopefully at some local tech functions.

Michael Gray - Wolf-Howl.com
Michael gave what was easily one of the most talked about presentations at SES San Jose 2007. He discussed paid links and basically blasted Google for having the "nerve" to tell webmasters what they can and cannot do on their own websites to monetize them.

While I don't necessarily agree with everything Michael said I do have to agree that it's Google's job, not ours, to find ways to determine whether a link should be considered a vote towards a site. And for you few Google employees who visit our site each day (and you know who you are) please note that Michael in no way paid for the link above. :)

Ken Leonard - Hackersafe.com
Ken hosted a dinner and man, can he pick great food. I had the pleasure of sitting beside Ken and he's both a gentleman and a scholar. A truly enjoyable meal with great company.

Also sitting at the table with me was Christian Wilson (see below), Bryan Eisenberg (author of a book I'm a huge fan of, "Waiting For Your Cat To Bark") - Bryan, it was a true pleasure to meet you, Cresta Pilsbury (also from HackerSafe) and others who were sitting farther away from me and thus, I didn't have the pleasure to get to know.

Christian Wilson - WebsiteMagazine.com
As always it's a pleasure to chat with Christian. I met him at SES San Jose last year, again in New York and once again had the pleasure of his company this year.

Christian is an all around great guy, a credit to his company, and was kind enough to hold on to my bag of geek-toys overnight saving me from having to hit the hotel before heading off to the Google Dance (and with the lineups to get there, that saved me about an hour).

Big thanks to Christian and his fine publication to which I am a subscriber (and you should too, heck - it's free :). Click here to sign up.


Big apologies to the many people that I met who couldn't make the list. There were a couple criteria I had to weed it down to - I needed to have a picture, I needed to have chatted with you for a while, and well - I needed to think that it was great to have met you. Admittedly, the picture issue is the most limiting as I often found myself so interested in the conversations that I didn't stop to get a picture taken such as occurred in my many conversation with Bill Slawski (and if you read this Bill - you really did make me nervous as heck in the personalization session :).

Thanks to everyone who made SES San Jose the great success that it was. Special thanks to Chris Sherman, Danny Sullivan, Incisive Media, Bill Slawski, Jim Hedger, and my wife for creating the environment that I get to share and partake of new and insightful ways to do the job I love so much.

Labels: bill slawski, bryan eisenberg, chris sherman, danny sullivan, david brown, epiar, hackersafe, jim boykin, jim hedger, metamend, michael gray, robert garcia, ses sj 2007, website magazine, webuildpages

I've always found Google shareholders to be funny animals and yesterday provided yet another example of the curiosity that is their buying/selling patterns. The big story being covered right now is the purchase of display advertising giant DoubleClick by Google for 3.1 billion (that's right ... billion) dollars. This is the largest purchase by Google to date in terms of sale price.

As Jim Hedger from SiteProNews.com points out in his article on the DoubleClick purchase, Google's paid 20 times DoubleClick's annual revenue. This is well above the standard for the purchase on online properties. Even so, Google is looking at it not as a normal acquisition but rather a means to propel themselves into the display advertising space years ahead of when they otherwise could. And of course, that they've once again trumped both Yahoo! and Microsoft (both of whom were interested in DoubleClick as well) has got to be an added bonus.

Here are some important links on the deal:

• Google's press release - hear it from the source.
• Jim Hedger's article - a great summary
• Donna Bogatin's article on ZDNet - a great eye-opener on some of the questionable sides of the deal. Of course, I've loved Donna since her article on Click Fraud.
• Bill Slawski's post on seobythesea.com - A brilliant analysis by a brilliant patent analyst (don't forget, Google gets all their patents too).
• WebmasterWorld forums - a place to read discussions and discuss the deal yourself.

So why does all this make me call Google shareholders strange animals? Because Google shares actually dropped yesterday in after-hours trading. This reminds me of the drop their shares took after their Q4 earnings report where they announced an increase in revenue but still noted a decline in share values because the increase wasn't as high as anticipated (though still in the double-digits). Sometimes it appears that good news for Google's overall health aren't properly received by shareholders who sell too quickly and miss out on the true value.

Take my advice shareholders, the DoubleClick deal is a good one for Google. While it might not look great on paper from a pure trade based on the dollar value of the company purchased, the technology and the leaps ahead this will give Google over it's competitors is well worth the investment. And hey, even $3.1 billion lighter, Google will still report net gains this year. :)

But what about this makes me

Labels: bill slawski, donna bogatin, doubleclick, google, jim hedger, press release, sitepronews, webmasterworld, zdnet