Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz takes some time to explain PageRank as it was when it first came about vs how it is today. Admittedly, it's greatly simplified in this video BUT it's probably the most easy-to-understand explanation I've heard to date and covers the changes in the system well. For those of us watch the PageRank on our homepage and internal pages it we've likely witnessed a lot of what he's taking about.

To candy-coat it even more, Rand covered the explanation as part of his Whiteboard Friday series so you don't even have to read. :) Here's the video:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-Has Pagerank Changed? (visit for the comments) from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Labels: google, pagerank, rand fishkin, seomoz

Inspired by a combination of an excellent research paper from Richard Stokes of AdGooroo, Google's Q2 earnings report and the recent happenings in the now getting tiring story of Yahoo! and Microsoft - the most recent article by Beanstalk's Dave Davies is out today. Titled, "The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results" it discussed some of the recent changes, how they're affecting the search engines themselves and what we can expect to see in the paid and organic results because of this.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Labels: adsense, adwords, google, msn, ppc, seo article, yahoo

Google Keywords

Google has just started showing the estimated monthly search numbers in their keyword suggestion tool. For the first time in a long while we're now able to see the estimated search numbers on the engine who's results we most want to see the results of.

As a word of warning, after using it and comparing the numbers with the click through volume for a number of phrases, the number appear to be a bit high - that's because it defaults to Broad Match but you can select Exact Match from the drop-down and get the the numbers you're looking for.

You'll find this new feature added to the Google tool here.

A Test Of Links

Also, there was an interesting test run by Johannes Beusand published on the MarketingFan.com site regarding the value of multiple links to a single page on residing on a single page of a website. He basically strives to answer the question, if there are two or more links on a single page of a site and they point to a single page on another site - how are they treated?

I'm not going to be mean and note everything from the site here and steal their traffic. :) You'll find the link to this interesting test here.

Webmaster Radio

And today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Ryan - the man behind SES. Kevin discussed the show, the organizing of it, and some of the great sessions that'll be held in San Jose.

After that (and some ranting by both Jim and myself about the stupid fees we Canadians are charged for cell phones and specifically web usage on them) we had on Dave Szetela from Clix Marketing discussing the recent changes Google has made to the quality scores for it's AdWords advertisers.

Again, I could repeat the discussion but it was based on a couple posts covered elsewhere here and here.

Labels: adwords, google, jim hedger, keyword activity tool, link building, webmaster radio

Sometimes it takes a few days before I can test new features the engines offer. Such is the case with Google's new benchmarking tool. I got my notification of it's launch back on the 9th but unfortunately it was last night before I could actually do anything about it (darn those "pesky" clients for keep us so busy here :) Then - when I went to look into what other's thought of it I discovered that there are those out there (likely the same ones who use Google Analytics as their primary analytics tool) who've know about it for about a month.

So there we go, that'll teach me for using ClickTracks and relying on notifications from Google about new products. :)

Once I finally had a chance to login, let Google use my anonymous stats, and peek at the benchmarking data I have to say that while the date they are accessing is still VERY limited - you can definitely tell how powerful this information will be when more website data is included.

Basically what they're doing is allowing users to specify their industries, share their data anonymously with Google who will gather together people from the same industry, combine their data and present it to you as the benchmark average for your industry. VERY kewl.

I was going to put up some screenshots and then I thought, gee - do I really want my competitors coming to my blog and peeking on my traffic stats? Heck, it took enough thought just to decide to check that box that allowed Google to share my stats in a non-individualized way. :) So instead I'll send you to Andy Beal's blog where he shares some if you'd like a peek.

OR

You could just login to your Google Analytics account and see it for yourself. It's definitely worth the time - or at least, when more people start sharing, it will be.

Labels: andy beal, google, google analytics, google benchmarking

In today's episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm Jim Hedger and I discusses a couple recent events at Google. Namely the release of their Q1 earnings (SURPRISE - they're up over last quarter) and Yahoo! using Google's paid ads instead of their own. Rather than re-hash "old news" (OK - it was earlier today but you can listen to it all by downloading the podcast here) I'm going to cover a new issues - Google's latest update.

Recently there's been much news about a massive shift on Google named the "Dewey Update". The update itself caused much chaos as SEO's around the world reported huge swings in rankings. The forums have been abuzz and the update, unlike most, took place over weeks with some sites changing positions wildly 3 and even 4 times in a day. The update appeared to have settled late last week with only minor tremors affecting the rankings in what one might conclude to be a new way of adjusting rankings on Google's end - a more fluid approach to rankings.

Tonight however there's been another significant shift however there's a pretty major difference - this one is much more in tune with the updates prior to Dewey which took place on an almost weekly basis,usually starting on Thursday or Friday evening.

A major difference between what we're seeing now and what we saw with Dewey in that the effects and changes appear far more logical whew one can look at the results across numerous sites. The changes seem to take into account adjustments made to the sites and increases in backlinks rather than massive adjustments to the ranking system affecting what can only be described as almost random factors (I'm sure they weren't actually random however it was impossible to get a lock on what was being tested with the changes occurring too often for any proper analysis).

Obviously as an SEO I'm very happy to see this return to stability and as a searcher I appreciate that what I see today is likely going to be similar to what I will see tomorrow. Helps instill in me faith that the results I'm being presented with are actually relevant. Or maybe I prefer it as it reduces the frantic calls from clients asking why they dropped positions from where they were 2 hours earlier and my only reply being, "well - check it again in a couple hours". ;)

Labels: google, google update, jim hedger, webmaster radio

In what can only be considered a devastating leak of information from Google HQ in Mountain View, a confirmed but as yet publicly anonymous executive from Google has leaked papers detailing some of the key fundamentals to Google's link value calculation system. The announcement by Google earlier today details some of the contents of this information as they work hard to minimize the effect that this will have on their algorithm as SEO's around the world scramble get their hands on it. The news, first leaked by SEO-guru Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, comes as a shock of sorts and leaves SEO's scratching their heads figuring out what to do. There has been startled reaction from the community but first - let's cover a few of the key points (we'll provide a link to more thorough information below).

The leaked information confirmed and illuminated the following information:

• The PageRank we see in the green bar has no bearing on how a site will rank. This information is generated internally based on user expectations and not as a ranking factor.
• The weighing of factors occurs in the following order: Google's internal PageRank, position on page, number of links on the page, anchor text, relevancy. I found it VERY interesting that trust is not yet a calculation on link worth though this may be an omission in the information provided.
• Reciprocal linking is detectable and while it is not penalized, no value is given for the links. A limitation outlined in this is the Google apparently has little ability to to detect legitimate linking sites that happen to link to each other.
• Paid links are not detectable. There is currently no architecture for the automatic detection of paid links. Google relies on reporting by SEO's and webmasters.
• There's a lot more in there - this is just what I've gleaned at the time of this writing. There's a link below to the documents themselves.
  

I had a chance to have a very brief chat with Matt Cutts (quality control guru from Google) who has told us he will be responding on his blog once more information on the leak becomes available (and I'm sure when he's given the OK by the Gods of Google to talk). His response to this leak was, "... this is obviously an issue we are going to have to deal with quickly. We expect SEO's to take quick advantage of this information and a strategy is being developed to deal with this and make adjustments to the algorithm shortly." You can monitor Matt's comments on his blog and a big thanks to him for taking a moment out of his understandably hectic schedule to answer a couple questions for me.

On the other side of the coin sit the SEO's. While we're all obviously reading all the information we can on the leak - we do so with some concern. In an email from Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz he noted, "You might think this is a great opportunity for SEO's but it's not - in fact this is one of the worst things that could happen. All the information we're all reading will be invalid by the time we could employ the tactics and we're about to head into a period of significant instability in regards to Google's rankings . Not only do we have to fear for the rankings we've worked hard to attain over the years - we also have to deal with rankings that will be in a constant state of flux over the next few months. Clients are NOT going to be happy." Good call Rand and you can monitor his comments on the subject on their blog at http://www.seomoz.org/blog.

This is obviously an issue you're going to want to research this issue - there's a lot more about this and links to the documents on the cnet site at http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9907571-36.html. Well, the article is actually about Google's April Fool's Day joke but we think ours was fun too. :) Enjoy the day. ;)

Labels: april fools day, danny sullivan, google, google update, link building, rand fishkin, seomoz

Yesterday while talking to a potential client I noticed a new feature that Google had implemented into the SERPs in the US (If your outside of the US add &gl=us to the search URL, or &gl=ca to see how it doesn't work out side of the US). The search term the client was interested in was Used Cars Utah, and various other permutations and themed terms. If you Google the term Used Cars Utah, you get an input box and two select boxes for "Location", "Make", and "Model". Having searched for Used Cars Utah "Make" was selected as all with a "Model" of "Utah", okay so its definitely beta point taken.


So next I Googled the root phrase "Used Cars", up popped 1 input and 2 selects but with different names "Location", "Make", "Condition" with Used selected as the condition so now we have two different forms based on the search phrase. Playing around I next Googled Cars Victoria (my home city), and go the results with the Model select box and Victoria selected, with Ford the Make (Okay so I'm assuming Google recognized a Ford Crown Victoria).

Lastly I was curious where the exceptions are if you Google terms like "Cars Acura", "Cars Lexus", "Cars BMW" or other makes you don't get any results with the manufacturers being #1 respectively for their terms. Now if you change it up a bit and add the term Used Cars Manufacturer, you get the search box for Lexus + Acura, but not BMW. Once again definitely beta, but I'm sure they'll be making adjustments as time goes by.

If you own a dealership and your interested in getting your vehicles listed you'll want to know that it is powered by the Google Base API. Once you start searching through the results you can quickly find vehicles in your region. Currently there are 79,666 used Acura's on Google Base Vehicle Search. Now thats a bit of a selection!

Labels: google, Google Base, SERPs

The fine folks over at SaveTheInternet.com are at it again. Thanks to Rep. Ed Markey the Net Neutrality issue is back on the table. For those of you who don't know the net neutrality issue, you can ignore this unless you have a website or an Internet connection.

I'm not going to get into a lesson on net neutrality - it's a huge topic that's been better covered by others. Here are some links to important information on it:

• Wikipedia
• Google
• Webmaster Radio

If you agree that net neutrality is an important issue and show be the law (read: if your website and/or Internet access are important to you) then please sign the petition on the SaveTheInternet.com site here.

Labels: google, net neutrality, savetheinternet, webmaster radio, wikipedia

I received an email the other day from someone who needed help. Now, this happens on a daily basis in regards to sites we see that aren't ranking well ("they could sure use our help") but every now and then I see something I just have to get my hands into.

The issue started when the gentleman received an email from Google. The email informed him that he had malware on his site and that he was potentially infecting his visitors. This not-coincidentally matched pretty well to the timing of his site losing all it's PageRank and rankings. He wasn't sure what to do and then I got an email.

The gentleman forwarded me the email (I'll be honest - I didn't even know Google sent those). It included the page in question and a method for requesting reconsideration (basically, go into webmaster tools an request re-inclusion).

So why do I mention all this? Well, I've personally never seen it and I assume many of you are in a similar situation. I'm helping this gentleman free of charge in exchange to the right to document it (without names) here on our blog.

As of today I have scanned through the site, removed all the offending code (it was on a LOT more than one page), uploaded the clean files and submitted the re-inclusion request. I'll be monitoring the site carefully and documenting the changes.

As it stands today, the site has all it's pages still in the index (site:www.domain.com) and a search for a phrase from a page that wasn't affected produces the domain as a result. A search for a phrase from the affected pages does include the affected page however it appears VERY low in the results of hat once was a strong site.

I'll post updates in the blog as the development progresses. I'm personally very interested in tracking the timelines involved with this type of re-inclusion request.

Labels: google

Well the fine folks over at Google have come up with a response to Friday's bid by Microsoft for Yahoo! Now, believe me - I understand that business is business and that Google has to respond with a negative spin against their competitors but the blog post and press release they put out made me smirk more than think. The official line, put forth by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google, was:

"So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."

Ummmmm, OK - you've got to be kidding me. Now I mean no offense to Google - love them to bits and use them daily but seriously, the two properties search market share combined still only account for slightly over half of Google's so exactly what is the threat to competition? Google will still have the overwhelming majority of search so really - they can decide how much innovation goes into it. And please - openness !!! When I get my weekly email updating me on the algorithm or when the numbers get put out on searches/day even - THEN that argument might stand. :) He then writes:

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers."

Ouch.

Now, they raise decent points regarding the past practices of Microsoft but again - what competition? If anything the deal will raise the bar on competition in the industry - but Google knows that. Whenever Google's doing something or buying someone everyone makes a big to-do about it. Well now the shoe is on the other foot and Google gets their chance to point the finger.

In the end the likelihood of Google getting their way and the deal being blocked is low. Heck, the fact that Google's against it probably has some FTC people thinking it's a pretty good thing and heck - it might be good for Google as well. Let's consider this - who is the master of search? (hint - it's Google).

People will choose MSN/Live because it's easy (part of their browser, etc.) people will chose Yahoo! because it's part of other services they use or because it's not Google. Well the former will see their services changed dramatically when Microsoft takes over and the later won't like being part of Microsoft any more than Google and so they'll either give up and go to Google or, the company that I view as the true likely winner in this - Ask (come on - give them a chance :)

Of course only time will tell but I'm looking forward to the journey. This is going to be a very VERY interesting story to follow.

Labels: ask, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

In a move that oddly seemed to surprise many, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! today. How much? - only $44.6 billion dollars. This would pay investors $31/share - a 62% premium over the previous day's close.

Steve Ballmer is confident that this is the right move for Microsoft. He's also confident that it's the right move for Yahoo! But is he right?

Based on the discussed layoff of a thousand employees from Yahoo! (as well as their current financial slump) combined with Microsoft's huge wallet, inability to get any solid foothold on the search market and control of the desktop and OS makes this an interesting notion. And it comes an an ironic time ...

A couple days ago I completed a survey for SEOmoz (you can too at http://www.seomoz.org/seo-survey) and one of the questions was, "how (if anyone) can challenge Google". My response was Microsoft based on 2 things; their control of the desktop and their ability to simply purchase Yahoo! which they pitched for last year. And it appears that it just *might* happen.

The combined exposure of these two engines would be roughly 33%, still only slightly past half of Google's and there are other considerations. Yahoo! has a large hold on a variety of other properties that Microsoft would obviously leverage to increase their exposure and work to further monetize. Sites such as Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. (these are my two favorites so that's why they're the ones listed :)

The down side, many people use Yahoo! as "the Google alternative". If Yahoo! is combined with Microsoft it loses the appeal of being an alternative and becomes a cog in a bigger machine. Will users who've been loyal to Yahoo! leave? Also in my questions list: which algorithm will they lean towards? Will they keep all the Yahoo! properties or spin them off. What will happen to Yahoo!'s staff? (not that they have a ton of security right now anyways)

I have a different take than a lot of people I suppose, I like it and hope it goes through. As much as I like Google and appreciate their excellence - I'd like to see at least some kind of quasi-competition for search dominance. Heck, with a third of the market share when combined maybe I'll here something other than (I don't care about anyone else - I just want to rank on Google) from clients. ;) If the deal goes through then my job gets a bit more interesting and to me, that's a good thing. :)

Now I'm not an economist, nor can I predict the future. I've given a quick summary here of what it a HUGE issue and could change the search landscape dramatically. I highly recommend reading up on this further and keeping up with it as it progresses. To get you started, here are some great resources on the story thus far:

• CNN on the bid
• PC World writes about web users' concerns over the deal
• CNET provides a great walk through on why Microsoft made the bid public this time rather than privately as they did last time (very interesting to learn a little bit about the tactics behind the offers and what we can expect to come)
  

And as a final note, I find it very funny that this deal is going to be reviewed by the anti-trust folks. How's THAT for a waste of the tax payers dollars? Two companies merging so they can together be half of what the leader is. This is building competition not eliminating it. But it'll probably cost a few million dollars for them to sort that out and come to the same conclusion. ;)

Labels: google, microsoft, yahoo

Today on Webmaster Radio I had to host the show solo. Our sympathies go out to Jim Hedger who had the unenviable task of heading to Toronto for a funeral. Our hearts go out to Jim and his family.

Todays show however was a great one. We launched our 10-show series on SEO with a show dedicated entirely to keyword research. We're also supplementing each show in the series with an article on the subject at hand. You can find the article here.

Speaking with me on the show was Ken McGaffin from WordTracker, Richard Stokes from AdGooroo.com and Curtis Dueck from Epiar. Each lent an interesting angle to the keyword research discussion and I thank all of them. You can visit the Webmaster Radio site and download the podcast if you missed it.

And from Google ...

While all SEO seems to involve Google, some news came from them today specifically in the form of their 2007 Q4 earnings. Here's the summary:

Revenue of $4.83 billion
51% increase over Q4 2006
14% increase over Q3 of 2007
Google owned sites $3.12 billion
AdSense sites brought in $1.64 billion (up 30% over Q4 2006)

Revenue from outside the US totaled $2.32 billion (48% of revenue - up 4%)

Now here's where I saw something a bit unexpected. Traffic acquisition costs paid to partners increased from $1.22 billion last quarter to $1.44 billion in Q4. Compare this with $1.45 billion generated last quarter vs $1.64 billion in Q4. That means that the amount paid to partners increased by about 18% while the amount earned only increased by 12%. So Google is paying out as a % of revenue more than they were in Q3. That's assuming we all trust stats. :)

Congrats to Google on yet another great quarter. And ya gotta love investors. With a bunch of positive press out prior to the Q4 earning announcement the stock dropped to a low of $534.29 per share at 10am this morning and then rose to a high of $573.00. Basically, someone made 7% ROI in about 6 hours. More than I get in my saving account that's for sure. :)

Labels: adgooroo, epiar, google, jim hedger, webmaster radio, wordtracker

I realized upon setting up to write this post that I need to apologize to you, our valued blog visitor. In logging into Bl0gger I noticed that it was in fact a week ago that I wrote last. Unacceptable. To remedy these delays between posting I'm going to try to post more often AND within the next couple weeks you'll start reading from some new voices over here at Beanstalk including those of Daryl Quenet and Ken Nichol. This will also provide some different perspectives and topic than just my one lone voice can provide. So stay tunes and don't forget to Bookmark us (and if you use Google bookmarks or one of the other great social bookmarking sites ... all the better :).

But now onto the real post:

Today, being Thursday - I did my weekly show on Webmaster Radio. It was a great show with a great guest and, as always, I was joined by Jim Hedger. As we usually do, Jim and I spent the first 15 minutes discussing some of the major goings-on in the search engine world. Today this included:

• Jim Lanzone leaving Ask - The Internet Marketing community mourns the loss of Jim Lanzone from Ask. Jim revitalized Ask.com and under his leadership turned the engine into a world leader (if not in market share then in technology). He will be missed but at the same time we're all excited to see what his successor Jim Safka can do.
• Microsoft To Buy Fast Search Engine - Microsoft has made an offer of $1.2 billion for the Fast search engine. This move stands to shake up Enterprise search considerably and will be a "need to watch" issue after the sale completes (likely in Q2 of this year).
• Google hits 66% market share - Hitwise has releases their stats for December in regards to search market share. It appears Google is up yet again. The stats are:
  
  Google - 65.98%
  Yahoo! - 20.88%
  MSN - 7.04%
  Ask - 4.14%
  
  
• Aaron Wall PPC v SEO Debate - Aaron Wall yesterday posted a blog on the SEO vs. PPC debate. Jim and I quickly discussed how one affects the other and how it's difficult to track what campaign is providing what result when the combination may be increasing overall conversions. We skipped through this section and when we came back we were able to discuss it with ...

Andrew Goodman from PageZero.com. Page Zero just launched into organic SEO - a jump from pure PPC Management they have provided thus far. Jim and I pelted Andrew with questions and got some great info. I'm going to be a jerk though and make you visit the Webmaster Radio site and download the podcast or read the transcripts on the Webmaster radio site. They should be available in the next 24 hours (at least the podcast - the transcripts can take a bit longer).

Labels: aaron wall, andrew goodman, ask, google, market share, microsoft

Today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the opportunity to discuss a number of topics. You can download the podcast of the show (recommended) in the next couple days from the Webmaster Radio site. It's also a good idea to visit it as there are many great shows and information for all levels of listener.

In every show Jim and I take some time to discuss the latest goings-on in the search engine world. Here's what we had for our listeners this week:

• ComScore metrics - ComScore released it's totals for the holiday season of 2007 with a 19% increase in sales over 2006 reaching over $28 billion in online sales. On boxing day the total crossed $545 million doubling boxing day sales from last year.
• Danny Sullivan Article - Jim and I discussed one of the best pieced of predictive writing I've ever seen. Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece as a time traveling reporter from 2010 discussing the breakup of Google. While I doubt it'll come true it's an awesome piece that helps give us a small glimpse and one possible future we SEO's and search marketers have in store for us.
  
• Traffic Power and Matt Marlon - Sometimes bad things happen to good people and that's always a sad day. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and that's ... well ... karma. Matt Marlon, ex-CEO of Traffic Power (an SEO firm that got all their clients banned by Google) was arrested for ... you'll never guess ... fraud. Just like those website owners that he helped scam and get banned with Traffic Power, Matt seems to like kicking people when their down and has taken advantage of a horrible situation and (pardon my French) screwed people out of their homes during the forclosure issues. Personally I'm happy with the outcome and this time I don't think he can try to sue Aaron Wall for reporting on it. ;)
• Aaron Wall's rants - and speaking of Aaron Wall, he's been ranting over the last few days about the state of SEO. I can't do justice to his comments save-to-say ... I agree. THe lines of Walmart coming into the arena devalues the service. Fortunately (unfortunately for clients) they're sure to realize that this isn't the kind of service that can be bulk packages and whipped out at discount prices and still have some reasonable amount of quality control.
  

After a brief commercial break Jim and I came back with WeBuildPages' own Jim Boykin (who I had the pleasure of meeting at SES San Jose last year. Jim has just launched InternetMarketing Ninjas.com where he provides videos from some of the SEO greats and many free tools (if you're willing to pay the $2,995 per year for the videos). I haven't had a chance to view the videos and, as Jim notes, the service is offered more to do-it-yourselfers than SEO's so I likely won't however the names and topics covered are definitely spot-on. Maybe Jim will give me a free sneak-peek (hint hint Jim ;) and I can report on it more thoroughly.

Good luck to Jim and the ninjas !!!

And in other news:

The latest article by Beanstalk is out. I wrote and article that changed considerable from idea to finished product (meaning there's another coming out soon). The article is on finding a good SEO-friendly web designer and can be found on the Beanstalk site here.

Labels: aaron wall, comscore, danny sullivan, google, jim boykin, jim hedger, traffic power, webmaster radio

Today is a good day. As we all look towards a weekend that extends for a couple extra days, as many of us share the opportunity to get together with friends and family and as we ponder all the resolutions we're going to break in the new year. But for none of us is today as special as it is for the folks at Google - well - perhaps even happier are the folks at DoubleClick.

Today Google, "... welcomed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's clearance of its planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc." This opens the door for Google to purchase the provider of display advertising technology earlier this year (on the last day of SES NY in fact).

Now all that stands between Google and the deal is the European Commission. Eric Schmidt obviously " ... hopes that will soon reach the same conclusion."

But what does this mean for us? Not a whole heck of a lot really - it means that Google get to get better at targeting ads. Yeah, not something they'd do anyways right?

In this SEO's opinion, the deal in no way compromises the right or ability of other companies to compete with Google. In fact, it appears to be the companies themselves that are helping Google take more and more market share. Yahoo! focuses too much on communities, Microsoft got in the race too late, Ask dropped Jeeves, etc. etc. Google has yet to make a major misstep and has enough trust and market share at this point to live through one.

I would also argue that the purpose of insuring competition is to protect consumers and to insure that better products get a shot rather than being crushed by larger properties. That fact of the matter is, the product (search) is free to consumers - the advertising side isn't free but is fixed in it's cost by what the market will bear (which is the same as it would be if Google did have a monopoly) and let's face facts - while I'm not happy with every algorithmic shift, Google has the best and most comprehensive search utility ever created. They aren't crushing their competition unfairly - they're just producing a better user experience.

Now I'm not trying to say that they're completely following their "Don't be evil" motto to the letter each and every day. They're definitely done some questionable things but overall they're providing the service they promise and they're providing it well. And to their favor, when something they do screws up, they can shift the algorithm again a couple days later. If only Microsoft had that same ability when they put out Vista. ;)

If you'd like more information on this purchase you can find a great overview on the Business Week site.

Labels: ask, doubleclick, google, market share, microsoft, yahoo

I've gotta admit, I can't confirm whether this is true or not and I found this info at TheInquirer.net so it's worth noting that it's likely true - but not 100% guaranteed (you know - like our SEO services ;).

Microsoft has been subpoenaed by Grisoft, developers of the AVG anti-virus software (great software - I use it at home) for allowing the website www.avg-soft.com to appear in the SERPs.

Well, at least it did. A search as of a few moments ago for the domain by URL produced 0 results - on MSN/Live at least though it can still be found on both Google and Yahoo! engines but not in what any of us would consider to be "prominent positions". :)

And if you decide to visit the site in Firefox you get the friendly warning "Suspected Web Forgery". You can see an image of it above. You know, in case any of you might want to go there to download the AVG anti virus software.

So it appears supoenas work - at least, if the story is true. :) And to give credit where it's due - you can read the full story on the Inquirer website here.

Labels: firefox, google, microsoft, msn, yahoo

Alright, I just realized that I've been missing some press releases from comScore over the past week (caught in filter) and of course - that's when all the news comes in. Here's a summary of what the stats are saying this week:

December 13, 2007:
Between the dates of November 1 to December 11, more than $20 billion was spent online showing a whopping 19% increase over last year. eBay has coined the second Monday of December as Green Monday (it is the heaviest online spending day of the season) and this year showed retailers $881 million in love, up 33% over last year and setting the record as the heaviest online spending day in history.

December 16, 2007:
The week of the 9th to the 15th marks the heaviest spending date of the season (likely) with $4.7 billion in sales showing a 22% increase over last year.

Today (December 19, 2007):
Top 50 Websites released. Comscore's report of the top 50 website rankings is released. And here are the results:

1. Yahoo! sites: 136,180,000 uniques
2. Google sites - 131,538,000 uniques
3. Microsoft Sites - 119,194,000 uniques
4. Time Warner Network - 119,084,000 uniques
5. Fox Interactive Media - 81,325,000 uniques
6. eBay - 80,510,000 uniques
7. Amazon Sites - 59,058,000 uniques
8. Wikipedia sites - 55,157,000 uniques
9. Ask Network - 51,636,000 uniques
10. New York Times Digital - 47,997,000 uniques

And for the rest of the list you'll just have to read their press release ont he topic (there's lots of other interesting figures in there as well) at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1974.

You can view their other press releases at http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, microsoft, time warner, yahoo

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

Today's post is a rushed hodge-podge of topics. A lot is going on and yet - time is short. I'm rushing through last-minute stuff to make sure I'm ready to head to Chicago tomorrow morning for SES. SES Chicago is already underway but I only get to be there for the two days I'm speaking. Fly in Tuesday, fly out after Jim and I host our radio show on Thursday afternoon (it's going to be a great show so be sure to listen to WebmasterRadio.fm). :)

If you want to keep posted on my sessions, the session I attend, eta. you can do so on our website at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/ses/sesch07/.

Blogger has now stripped links from comments. It appears that Blogger-run blogs no longer accept you to post a link to your site as a comment. As a move to combat blog sp@m this is going to be highly effective. An incidental victim of the move are people who use blogs heavily and comment legitimately. They will lose some of their links and they likely deserve some of them however I'd say that those spanked with just cause will outweight the innocent bystanders.

And putting their money where their mouth is, Google has dropped paid listings for text link ads. My question to them would be however, why are you advertising them on my site?

If you look at the add that appears just today on our site:

Now I'll admit that I'm not particularly offended by displaying the ads. We don't buy text links but I don't have any special vendetta against people that do (Google seems to be taking care of that themselves) but if the folks at Google feel it is unethical to advertise paid links on their own site, why are they OK with pushing the ads onto mine?

Labels: blogger, google, paid links, ses ch 2007

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

ComScore released it's numbers for October and, oh my goodness, Google is up. In a rare turn of events the folks at Google appear to have won over some users, increasing their marketshare by 1.5%. The number now break down as follows:

• Google showed a 1.5% gain from 57% markshare in September to 58.5%
• Yahoo! realized a 0.8% loss going from 23.7% to 22.9%
• Microsoft took losses (surprise surprise) going from 10.3% to 9.7%
• Ask (YEAH !!!) held steady at 4.7%
• The Time Warner Network lost 0.1% marketshare ending at 4.2%
  

Now, that said - it's not as bad as it looks for the non-Google site. Let's look at the number of searches conducted on each engine in the month of October which, overall, were up by 11.8%:

• Google was up 14.8% with 6.151 billion searches in October over 5.356 billion searches in September
• Yahoo! realized an 8% gain in total searches ending with 2.405 billion searches (up from 2.227 billion in September)
• Microsoft showed gains in search number though more modest with a 5.6% increase in October going from 969 million searches to 1.023 billion
• Like Google, Ask's gains were in the double digits (and since I have a soft spot in my heart for Ask I'm happy to see this) jumping from 444 million searches in September to 491 million with a 10.7% gain in October
• And the Time Warner Network gained 9.4% in search numbers going from 405 million to 443 million

You can read more on the ComScore site at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1908.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, time warner, yahoo

For anyone who's read my blog posts for a while or who saw me speak in San Jose earlier this year you'll know that I'm particularly interested in personalization and specifically, Google's patents on the subject. It's because of this that the launch of 23andme yesterday was particularly interesting though I have to say, I haven't seen anything in any of the patents on how this ties together.

For those that haven't heard yet, 23andme is a DNA testing facility of sorts. For $999 they'll send you a saliva kit which you mail back and a few weeks later you can logon to their site and see how your DNA looks as far as a few conditions and diseases go (heart attacks, strokes, etc.). Now the real curiosity to me is that this company is funded by Google. Why?

Well one reason could be that one of the founders is Anne Wojcicki, who has a background in health-care investing and is married to Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin. Good reason HOWEVER Sergey can't just hand over millions of gBucks whenever he likes so there has to be a benefit for Google.

There is the chance that the folks over at Google simply believe that this is an interesting project and lucrative in it's own right and thought to diversify their funding sources. Of course! Advertising is sooooo yesterday. Time to move on. ;)

Or there is some data that the gPeople are hoping to get? Is this the first step in a larger project to get our DNA. What personalization options will Google have if they know you're going to die at 45? You'll know you're in trouble when funeral home ads start popping up when you're partner is surfing the web.

It's definitely WAY too early to come to any conclusive idea as to what the folks at Google are really hoping to accomplish but it'll be interesting to watch them and how they use the data they collect.

The issue I find more immediately concerning is the privacy issues. While the 23andme website claims high levels of security (and I have no doubt they're telling the truth there) the government can step in and demand the files. I'm not saying they're going to do it, but they could. And to me, that's a bit frightening [ i don't know what my DNA says about me but I don't know if I want my government and, worse yet, my insurance companies to know.

Some other sources of info on this launch:

• Reuters


• SFGate

Labels: google, personalization, privacy

Every now and then one sees a result in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that you know isn't going to change. If I enter windows I'm going to get the Microsoft site. If I search again in a year, it'll be the same. In the realm of SEO these exist as well, or at least I thought they did.

For those of you who are SEO's or are learning SEO you've likely heard of Matt Cutts (and if not, you will now and it was worth the trip to this blog if for no other reason). Matt Cutts is easily the most public of Google employees who publishes tip s and information on Google (and other ramblings) on his blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

With the massive number of links (literally in the many hundreds of thousands) to his site he basically owns the phrase "seo blog". I monitor the phrase as it's one of our secondary terms and have basically known that until Matt quit Google, grew to be 100 years old, died, and about 100 more years passed and noone bothered to renew the domain - only then would someone else rank for the phrase. And yet I was wrong.

I happened to be searching for SEO information (it happens) and so I looked up blogs to see if there were any new ones I hadn't been watching. That's when I noticed it, Matt was now in second place. I was shocked but not by who it was. if youw ere to tell me that Matt would lose his #! ranking and made me guess who I would have been right - but I was still very surprised to see him drop at all.

So who toppled the king? None other than Rand Fishkin and the SEOmoz team at http://www.seomoz.org/blog.

Congratulations Rand !!! That's definitely a job well done.

On the plus side for Matt and Google, at least we know you're not cheating. :)

Labels: google, matt cutts, 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

Today I feel sorry for my kids. Every parent reading this will remember those times when they heard a loud BANG and assumed incorrectly who had done it. TELI !!!

"But it wasn't me !!!"

A couple days later the milk's spilled all over the place. KAEMON !!!

"But it wasn't me !!!"

Well now I know how they feel.

I got into work this morning, launched my browser. When Firefox loads it starts with 4 tabs, one for each of the major engines and a second datacenter for Google - all with our primary phrase preset for easy reference. All looked right in the world. Then I went to our blog. It took a second to realize that the little green bar had changed. What was once a 6 was now a 4.

Hmmmm. This sometimes happens when the PR of the last page I was at holds so let's go to the homepage. OK, now the homepage in a new window. OK, let's try a different browser altogether. OK, now it's time to stop - You're a PR4.

What could I have done "wrong"? I don't sell links. I had couple paid links but I got rid of any that weren't producing some decent traffic ages ago so really I was using text links to buy traffic. Surely Google of all people can't have a problem with that. I did have a few outbound links from our left nav on our homepage but they weren't paid for - they just pointed to resources such as SearchEngineWatch.com. You know, resources I really did feel worth passing a vote for. Meanwhile there are sites I can see up against me that I can confirm buy links (and some that sell them) that actually attained increases in toolbar PageRank (though we still beat them in the SERPs so ... :) So why do I lose toolbar PageRank and my brother doesn't?

Well, for anyone who read my now ironic though well-timed blog rant from last week on PageRank you'll know that while I might be obsessed with search engines and I might be obsessed with Google, I care a lot more about where a site appears in the SERPs than I do about a little green bar.

A lot of sites have been blasted in the last couple rounds of PageRank updates. Here are some blogs and forums where you can go for discussion on this topic:

• Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update - SearchEngineJournal.com
• Real or Fake PageRank Update In Progress (round 3) - AndyBeard.eu
• Hilarious PageRank Update Impacts Google Badly - SearchEnginePeople.com
• Google Rumors: Google PageRank To Be Reset - GoogleLady.com

A simple search on Google's Blog Search Engine (should I rel="nofollow" that just to be cheeky? - you'll notice .... I didn't ;) for "pagerank update" will provide you many more hours of reading.

Good luck to you all as this continues. Maybe in the end my wishes will come true - the green bar will go away and we'll all be stuck building links for relevancy and judging our results by our rankings. For some reason the Beatle's "Imagine" is running through my head. :)

And Google, just so you know - I wasn't selling links ... it was my brother.

Labels: google, google update, pagerank

Yesterday I published a rant about PageRank. The post picked up some steam and was well read on Sphinn. And then there was Halfdeck. For those of you who read my subsequent post you'll know that Halfdeck is a Sphinner who whole-heartedly disagrees with my stand on the issue of PageRank.

After he read my reply he posted again as did Jill Whalen. As I don't allow comments in the Beanstalk blog (this is simply because I don't have time to moderate them) I'll post their replies here as well as mine to their comments. Their comments will be in blockquotes:

Jill:

PageRank is indeed very important to Google still. It's unfortunate that toolbar PageRank has nothing to do with actual PageRank though. I think that's why debates such as this one will continue to occur.

I have great respect for Jill as does the majority of the SEO community but I still have to disagree. PageRank is a factor, certainly more important than some but it is not, as Halfdeck notes, the equivalent to SEO that gravity is to human life.

Halfdeck:

"At the time of this posting there are PageRank 3's beating out PageRank 7's."

That is one of the weakest arguments against PageRank ever invented.

There are also sites that have no keywords in the title outranking sites with keywords in the TITLE element. So from that let's conclude that keywords in the TITLE doesn't matter.

I would say that titles are a factor among many. My response to your comment was based on your assertion that PageRank was to SEO what gravity is to humans. I said in my initial post that PageRank has weight, just not as much weight as it's getting credit for and certainly not what we're chasing after.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=seo&btnG=Search

keyword: [SEO]
Wikipedia.org TITLE: "Search engine optimization"
Spanish Wikipedia TITLE: "Posicionamiento en buscadores - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre"

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=ice+cream&btnG=Search

keyword: [ice cream]
haagen-dazs.com TITLE: "Häagen-Dazs®"
bluebell.com TITLE: "MyOrganization: Home page"

So its official then. Keywords in TITLE doesn't matter.

That's right. PageRank is the gravity after all, do titles even matter?

Actu