Late blogging September 1, 2005

 

Take the SEO/M exam! September 1, 2005

 

From the seomoz.org website:

"After a much longer than expected delay from May, when I posted the original SEO Quiz, we've got a new, full-featured SEM Exam. It's fun and a great way to pass the last few lazy days of summer before activity picks up again after Labor Day."

Got 15 Minutes? We've got a new SEO/M Exam

 

WinFS Preview September 1, 2005

 

Paul Thurrott is taking an in-depth look at WinFS Beta1.

Windows Storage Foundation (WinFS) Preview

 

Google outbidding the competition September 1, 2005

 

From the Search Engine Roundtable:

"AussieWebmaster asks Why Can't You OutBid Urchin & Other Google House Ads? He reports that "Web Side Story claims to have even tried $100 bid and no go...." AdWordsRep responds that she (I think a she) will look into this, but she says that "'house ads' are well outside of my ordinary realm."

Google's Urchin Out Ranks Every AdWords Competitor

 

Google Print Advertising September 1, 2005

 

From ClickZ News:

"Not content with leading the online advertising realm, Google has begun experimenting with brokering print ads.

In the latest editions of Ziff Davis' PC Magazine and Future Networks' Maximum PC, Google has purchased a full-page ad, subdivided it into five smaller ads, and resold it to AdWords advertisers. The initiative was first reported by CNET's News.com."

Google Dabbling in Print Ad Brokerage

 

Reality check : PageRank and Linking September 2, 2005

 

There are two words in the world of Search Engine Optimisation/Optimization that have the ability to set my teeth on edge. PageRank and Linking.

PageRank is a fascinating concept, and one of the factors that set Google well ahead of their competition. But today it has become the target of so much speculation and must be responsible for literally millions of wasted work hours each week.

Linking, in this case, is quite distinct from links.

Links are what makes the web unique.

Linking is the word I associate with a certain gleam in people's eyes. The one when they're explaining how they've discovered a really clever, unique and untraceable way to link their websites together, so as to raise their PageRank with no risk of being caught. They've figured out how to trick Google.

Anyone reading this who's worked in SEO will know that gleam.

Shudder.

Here, however, is a short piece by Matt Cutts entitled Text links and PageRank.

Matt is one of Google's software engineers, so it's worth paying attention to what he's saying.

The highlights:

"The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails-the best links are earned and given by choice...

At this point, someone usually asks me: "But can't you just not count the bad links? On the dailycal.org, I see the words 'Sponsored Resources'. Can't search engines detect paid links?" Yes, Google has a variety of algorithmic methods of detecting such links, and they work pretty well. But these links make it harder for Google (and other search engines) to determine how much to trust each link. A lot of effort is expended that could be otherwise be spent on improving core quality (relevance, coverage, freshness, etc.). And you can imagine how the people trying to get link popularity have responded."

Well worth a read:

Text links and PageRank

And by the way of a follow up, from seomoz.org:

"This is one of the first major upgrades I've seen in Google's ability to punish low quality links and sites (and high quality sites with low quality links). It could very well be that further crackdowns are around the corner."

Visiting Bad Neighborhoods

 

Stealing/borrowing your own name September 2, 2005

 

Kevin Lee has written an interesting article on ClickZ Experts about the dilemma of buying your own name in PPC:

"Does your competition buy your brand keyword? If so, you risk losing customers who thought enough of your brand to actually search it. That search may even have been the result of your on- or offline advertising that piqued curiosity."

Beaten at Your Own Name: Buying Your Brand

The article really caught my attention for a number of reasons. Not least of all for the fact that this is an issue that my own company deals with.

Run a Google search for shareware promotions, and you'll see that we ourselves rank in first place. Thankfully.

But you'll also see some of our competition in there too. Why? Because they're using our name to pull in traffic to their services.

Now before we get into some kind of linguistic debate, let me point out that despite the fact that both shareware and promotions are dictionary words, it's incorrect English to say that a company engages in "shareware promotions". "Shareware promotion" would be fine. "Shareware promotions" isn't.

These companies use the phrase in their title, their keywords and their description. Some of them even use the phrase in the page body in bold.

Is this legal? It probably is, although it looks like there may be some sort of grey area here that's open to interpretation.

Is it effective? Maybe. People going to Google and searching for shareware promotions are looking for our company. They may be interested in our competition, too.

Do I like it? Not really, no. We've worked hard to establish our name and reputation, and I don't like other companies tapping into this.

But let's be realistic here. If you have a recognised name and reputation, there's a good chance that some of your competition are going to try to use it to their advantage.

I'm a firm believer that in business, knowledge is power. So it's important to know what they're doing, how they're doing it, and how successfully. When you have that information to hand, then you can decide what to do with it.

Over the years, we've found a number of companies who have copied and pasted our text into their websites. One of them even copied a link to one of our pages!

Imitation is a form of flattery, but when it goes too far, you may have to fight to protect what is rightfully yours.

Keep informed. Stay on top of your competition.

 

Marketers Fret Over Deliverability September 5, 2005

 

From ClickZ Stats:

"Deliverability is the top concern for 68 percent of IT and e-mail marketers according to an online survey conducted by Socketware."

Marketers Fret Over Deliverability

 

Balmer threatens to kill Google September 5, 2005

 

From smh.com.au (and the rest of the web):

"Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive "like wolves," according to documents filed in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals.

Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled.

"I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again," the declaration quotes Ballmer. "I'm going to f---ing kill Google.""

Microsoft CEO: 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google'

and

Microsoft-Google battle heats up

 

MIVA to Announce E-Commerce, Advertising Tools September 6, 2005

 

From MarketingVOX News:

"Online marketing firm Miva (formerly FindWhat) is expected to this week announce the expansion of its Miva Merchant product line with a lower-cost version for newer online businesses and the release of various products for creating and maintaining e-commerce websites."

MIVA to Announce E-Commerce, Advertising Tools

 

Google Dropping Snippets? September 6, 2005

 

From SitePoint.com:

"I'm starting to see a lot more META descriptions and Open Directory (www.dmoz.org) descriptions appearing in Google search results, where in the past you could expect to see a snippet of text content from the listed page.

In some cases, I'm sure this is a good thing, but it can also lead to some really terrible results. Check out the Google search result for "SEO Consulting.""

Google Dropping Snippets?

 

Microsoft vs. Google - the battle commences September 7, 2005

 

From ZDNet UK:

"After weeks of skirmishes, the legal battle between the two firms has finally started in earnest with high-profile lawyers sparring in the courtroom."

Microsoft-Google battle kicks off

 

New free software license takes aim at patents September 7, 2005

 

From Reuters:

"The free software foundation said on Tuesday it would start adapting rules for development and use of free software by including penalties against those who patent software or use anti-piracy technology."

New free software license takes aim at patents

 

Google Fresh Activity September 7, 2005

 

Some of the forums and groups are starting to report that a new backlink and PR update may be underway.

Hold on to your websites. A deluge of rumours and unfounded theories are headed your way.

 

An Apple a Day September 8, 2005

 

From the BBC News website:

"Speculation is reaching fever pitch about what Apple will announce in its 7 September press conference."

Rumours fly over Apple unveiling

 

Microsoft vs. Google roundup September 8, 2005

 

From CNET's News.com:

"A Washington state court judge plans to issue a ruling Tuesday on whether former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee will be allowed to immediately begin setting up a China development center for Google.

After hearing two days of testimony this week, Judge Steven Gonzalez said late Wednesday that he would review the evidence and issue his decision both in court and in writing on Tuesday morning."

Judge to rule Tuesday in Kai-Fu Lee case

 

AdWords in Google images? September 8, 2005

 

From the Search Engine Roundtable:

"I just noticed for the the first time that AdWords ads are showing in certain Google Image search results. Has this been the case for a long time or is this new? I use Google Image search *fairly* regularly and have never seen it before myself."

AdWords in Google Images Results

 

SEO yourself to death September 8, 2005

 

e-marketing news have an article on the mathematics and science of keyword density.

While I have to admit to finding the article a strange mix of vaguely interesting and horrendously boring, it's a classic example of how far SEO can go.

This isn't a case of not seeing the woods for the trees. It's more about not seeing the woods for the bacteria growing on the roots.

The Keyword Density of Non-Sense

 

Typoglycemia September 8, 2005

 

We all know that the less scrupulous SEO "professionals" out there will do more or less anything in an attempt to boost the rankings of their websites.

Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come.

From seomoz.org:

"Msot ploepe can raed tihs, athlhuog it lokos raehtr odd. It is cllaed typoglycemia (haha). You can raed tihs eevn wehn it lkoos srtange, bceasue the barin deos not raed the wohle wrod at the smae tmie, so it semes as thguoh the wdors are selpled croreclty, utnil you take a colsoer look.

And proceeds to explain that the phenomenon of people being able to easily read misspelled words is called typoglycemia. Although Google hasn't caught up to it yet, Wikipedia has a good entry on the subject, and in fact a great entry listing hundreds of Internet Phenomenon."

Typoglycemia & Internet Phenomenon

 

Google AdWords new feature - My Change History September 9, 2005

 

The great minds behind Google AdWords have added a new feature to the tools page - My Change History.

"The My Change History tool displays changes you've made to your account in the last three months. With easy access to your account history, you can make informed decisions about managing your account for maximum performance."

Excellent.

Now if only they could stop the security information dialog stop popping up throughout their Help Centre. Hint: try removing the s from https://

What changes can I see in My Change History?

 

What's an update? September 9, 2005

 

Matt Cutts injects a little truth into the rumours.

Coincidental timing?

What's an update?

 

Much ado about Ranking September 9, 2005

 

From Lee Odden's Online Marketing Blog:

"A while back I wrote an article about whether SEO firms should offer a guarantee or not. The just of it was that search engines are in control, not SEOs. Some overzealous SEO consultants may have you think otherwise. With all the hype about rankings, many companies lose sight of what's really important, conversions and sales."

Good, solid advice from a guy who really knows his stuff.

For SEO Results, Remember What's Important

 

The importance of SEO September 9, 2005

 

There's an interesting ripple within the shareware community. For a variety of reasons, a small number of companies have decided SEO doesn't work.

One company has realised that trying to outsmart Google is as productive as trying to catch your own tail. He's right.

Another company has tried pretty much everything to get his two month old website into Google, and has decided that he's wasting his time. He's right too.

A third company has decided that after looking carefully at his web logs, he can see that Google only account for a very small number of referrals, so he's not going to spend any more time trying to boost his rankings. He's right in doing that too.

There are more, but to begin with I'd like to address these three.

How to outsmart Google

Trying to outsmart Google is useless. They have more resources devoted to staying ahead of the tricks than you can imagine.

The point here is that SEO isn't about trying to outsmart Google. Nor is it about trying to trick them.

SEO is about making sure that the people looking for your information, product or service find you. It's that simple. And doing so involves no tricks, no hacks and no cunning schemes.

SEO isn't about outsmarting the engines.

Getting a new website into Google

SEO used to be a relatively straightforward task, in the days before the dark side. Nowadays the engines are forever trying to stay one step ahead of every single trick, hack, "technique" and "method" employed by the less-than-scrupulous SEO enthusiast.

Google's ageing delay serves as the perfect example of how dodgy SEO practices can hurt everyone. You included.

The nutshell explanation: Web space and domain names are dirt cheap and easy to setup, so the PageRank Panic brigade soon realised that the easiest way to boost their link popularity was by setting up their own websites and cross linking to themselves and each other.

Sigh.

The unfortunate result of this has been that new websites often take up to six months or longer to show up in Google.

No matter what you do, all efforts to bypass the ageing delay with a new website will fail. All of your efforts are futile.

Personally I think that this will be lifted sooner rather than later, as Google are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. But time will tell.

Low rankings/referrals OR High Rankings but no traffic = no point trying

This particular attitude has many variations:

"I get no traffic from Google so it's not worth trying."

"Google only account for 3% of my traffic, so why concentrate on them?"

"I rank in first place for ten of my keywords and still get no traffic from Google. What a waste of time!"

I'll keep this brief.

Whether you like it or not, at this point in time, Google are by far the biggest of all the search engines. Most of the companies that we work with see more targeted traffic from Google than all the other search engines put together. All of our clients see Google as (at least) one of their biggest referrers.

If you're not getting good, solid and targeted traffic from Google then you need to do something about it.

And watching a company throwing a Google hissy fit is like watching a child refuse to eat their favourite ice cream because they had to wait for it.

It's pointless, and you only hurt yourself.

Google's fundamental principle is based on making sure that people find what they are looking for. If you're not in there, then you're missing out. If your competition are doing a better job than you, then they're taking your visitors and sales away from you.

Take them back.

And if you really do rank in first place, and still get no traffic, then you're ranking for phrases that people aren't searching for.

For goodness sake. Think about it.

I manage to pull in first AND second place when someone searches for shareware marketing dave collins, but funnily enough this phrase never shows up in my logs.

Stop turning your back on the single most effective source of targeted traffic. Do the research. Optimise (or optimize) your website legitimately. Monitor the results.

From there it's all down to your website and product.

 

MSN Search API September 12, 2005

 

From the MSN Search Weblog:

"There have been hints for a while that we were going to be releasing an API for Search this year, but we had hoped that it would stay quiet for just one more week. It didn't and there is no reason to cry over spilt milk. The API itself will be released next week, but you can read about it now."

Intriguingly, they then link to a CNET News.com article.

Not straight from the horse's mouth then. The other end?

Search API News

 

VMware new version September 12, 2005

 

PR Newswire are reporting that a new version of VMware is on the way:

"VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that VMware Workstation 5.5, the newest feature-packed release of its award-winning desktop virtualization software, is available for beta download. With numerous new features and significant platform enhancements, Workstation 5.5 provides unmatched flexibility for developers and testers."

If you've never used VMware, then you're missing out on one of the most powerful and useful testing tools I have ever worked with.

The new version, although still in beta, includes 64-bit support, two-way virtual snmp, and enhanced command line interface and the following gem:

"VMware Workstation 5.5 provides developers and testers with the additional flexibility to convert Symantec Ghost images into virtual machines or to open those images in their native format without any modification. Developers and testers can reuse their libraries of physical machine images when deploying or building a virtual infrastructure."

VMware Workstation 5.5

 

Making landing pages work September 12, 2005

 

From ClickZ Experts:

"This is why landing pages are so critical. The money you pay for the click is the ante, the money you spend to get in the game. The landing page is what you do with the cards you've been dealt. As a great philosopher once said, "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.""

Royal Flush: Making Landing Pages Pay Off

 

Away for a week September 12, 2005

 

Everyone needs to take a break every now and then, especially for their honeymoon. So there will be no more postings until Wednesday the 21st of August. Please check back then.

In the meantime, to keep your mind ticking over:

"The Freshness of Web search engines' databases:

This study measures the frequency in which search engines update their indices. Therefore, 38 websites that are updated on a daily basis were analysed within a time-span of six weeks. The analysed search engines were Google, Yahoo and MSN.

We find that Google performs best overall with the most pages updated on a daily basis, but only MSN is able to update all pages within a time-span of less than 20 days. Both other engines have outliers that are quite older. In terms of indexing patterns, we find different approaches at the different engines."

The Freshness of Web search engines' databases

 

More Google experimentation September 21, 2005

 

More odd search results:

Flaxen hair - scroll down to the results for scud missile???

 

Google AdWords Customer Satisfaction Survey September 21, 2005

 

From the Online Marketing Blog, Lee Odden writes about possible enhancements that Google is considering for the Google Advertising Professionals program.

These include direct billing, a Microsoft windows-based AdWords tool and more.

Google AdWords Customer Satisfaction Survey

 

More AdWords help September 21, 2005

 

From Inside AdWords:

"Recently, the AdWords team built an online forum in which AdWords advertisers may search or browse for answers, ask questions, and assist others with AdWords -- 24/7. It is our fondest hope that a strong and vibrant community of AdWords advertisers will grow there and enjoy each other's company while sharing their knowledge and skill."

AdWords Help

 

All in a week? September 21, 2005

 

I was only gone for a week, but eBay bought Skype, Google dipped their toes (quite deeply) into Secure Wireless Access, Microsoft (apparently) decided to shake up their business, and there are reports that Google may bid on AOL?

You turn your back for two minutes, and look what happens.

 

Google begin "quality" pilot program September 22, 2005

 

From Matt Cutts:

"We've started a pilot program to alert sites that we consider to be outside our quality guidelines.

Q: Can you give me an idea of what an example email might look like?
A: Sure. Here's an example one for hidden text.

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.chefrevival.com.au/,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your
pages were using techniques that were outside our quality guidelines,
which can be found here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, we have
temporarily removed some webpages from our search results. Currently
pages from http://www.chefrevival.com.au/ are scheduled to be removed for at least 30 days."

Alerting site owners to problems

 

The fat lady sings September 22, 2005

 

The well known, much admired but little used Opera browser is now completely free:

"Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available."

Opera

 

The modern rules of advertising September 23, 2005

 

From the BBC News website:

"Men are tired of their portrayal in advertising, according to a new book by Michael Buerk. But images of men behaving stupidly is not the only cliche which irritates writer John Camm.

Dad in muddy boots walking blithely across a kitchen floor just cleaned by an exasperated mum who just gives a frustrated but loving smile to her giggly children, who cry out: "Da-a-ad!".

Just one advertising cliche, and just one where no-one behaves like people really do."

The modern rules of advertising

 

The fideladeloopiedoo experiment September 23, 2005

 

An experiment on WebmasterWorld's Google AdWords forum has people bidding on a nonsensical keyword. Bids suggested by Google appear to tange from $0.05 to $5.00!

Please join the "fideladeloopiedoo" experiment

 

AdWords API causes major headaches September 23, 2005

 

The Search Engine Roundtable are reporting that a recent release of Google's API has caused mayhem:

"But supposedly it was a major issue for those customers who used the API daily (big customers). One advertiser wrote to me stating, "Their new API release erased all the destination URL's. This had a huge impact on a number of SEM firms including us." The Google Groups AdWords API Forum has more details."

Ouch.

AdWords API Bug Causes Major Issues with Advertisers

 

Bits & Bytes that confuse September 23, 2005

 

From the BBC News website:

"Most office workers find computer jargon as difficult to understand as a foreign language, a survey suggests.

Three quarters of workers waste more than an hour a week deciphering what a technical term means, the poll found."

Don't say you weren't warned.

Computer terms 'confuse workers'

 

Google continue to tighten their reins September 26, 2005

 

Matt Cutts has written an interesting entry on one of the new tests being run by Google. This time to remove unwanted results from searches.

"One request we sometimes hear is for the ability to modify Google results, especially to block unwanted sites. A few eagle-eyed people may have noticed a user-interface experiment on Google that adds the ability to remove results."

Deceit still rates as Google's greatest threat, whether through questionable search engine optimisation/optimization or click fraud.

My prediction is that the next 12 months will see a serious crackdown. And we're all going to benefit from it.

UI fun: Remove result

 

Name, perception and odour September 26, 2005

 

From the BBC News website:

"A rose by any other name might not smell as sweet, UK research suggests.
But labelling an unpleasant smell with a more appealing name can improve its aroma, an Oxford University team has found.

In an experiment, volunteers asked to smell a cheddar cheese odour rated it as more pleasant when it was labelled as "cheddar" than as "body odour"."

How do you name your software?

Words 'can change what we smell'

 

Microsoft AdWords due to launch today (beta) September 26, 2005

 

From the International Herald Tribune:

"Microsoft will unveil on Monday its own system for selling Web advertising as it struggles to compete with Google and Yahoo in the expanding Web search business. The system, to be used by MSN, is meant to improve on those of Microsoft's rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location."

It appears that for now, the battle of the search engines is at least temporarily over. Let the battle for PPC begin!

Microsoft to start own system for selling ads on Internet searches

 

MSN's paid search launches September 27, 2005

 

From ClickZ News:

"Microsoft's MSN has launched its paid search service in France and Singapore, according to the portal's SVP Yusuf Mehdi.

Mehdi described the service, which is powered by MSN's in-development adCenter platform, during his keynote address at the kick-off of Advertising Week in New York.

The features resemble those now available through Google AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing, but with some twists. They include a manual keyword selection tool, a "site analyzer" keyword suggestion module, demographic targeting, and assistance with budget allocation."

MSN Launches AdCenter Overseas

 

Happy Birthday Google September 27, 2005

 

Google are seven years old now. Do you remember a world without Google?

The Google Blog writes that to celebrate their birthday, "we are giving you a newly expanded web search index that is 1,000 times the size of our original index."

Yet go to the Google home page and the number of pages indexed is missing.

Interesting.

Follow links from the blog and you find this:

"So how big is Google's index?

Search engines' published metrics for index size measurement vary greatly and are no longer easily comparable. Often, for instance, web crawlers retrieve duplicate entries for one page or links to documents that they haven't crawled, and whose content thus isn't in the index. At Google we believe the essential quality of an index isn't the total number of documents, but its comprehensiveness - which unique documents are in the index. So we don't count duplicate or uncrawled pages. According to our internal testing, our newly expanded search index is more than three times larger than that of any other search engine."

So the size war is over. Kind of!

I find this a little amusing, as up until yesterday, Google were displaying the size of their index at the bottom of their main page. Yet this is clearly a step in the right direction.

When I go to Google for information, I really don't want 8 billion results. I much prefer a small number of accurately targeted listings.

Let's hope this is the start of a new and more relevant era. I suspect that it will be. Watch this space.

 

Search and the power of defaults September 27, 2005

 

The renowned Jakob Nielsen has written a fascinating piece on why search engine users click the results listings' top entry more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings.

"Professor Thorsten Joachims and colleagues at Cornell University conducted a study of search engines. Among other things, their study examined the links users followed on the SERP (search engine results page). They found that 42% of users clicked the top search hit, and 8% of users clicked the second hit.

What is interesting is the researchers' second test, wherein they secretly fed the search results through a script before displaying them to users. This script swapped the order of the top two search hits.

In this swapped condition, users still clicked on the top entry 34% of the time and on the second hit 12% of the time."

Great stuff, but make sure that you read the final section of the article; Default Values Beyond Search. This is where interesting become actionable.

The Power of Defaults

 

Late conversions to sales September 28, 2005

 

Jakob Nielsen is claiming that users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website.

"Although 75% of the conversions occurred within 24 hours, the last quarter took much longer to arrive. Orders didn't reach the 90% mark until 12 days after users had clicked on the advertisement, and it took four weeks to reach 95%. Thus, the last 5% of orders happened more than four weeks after the initial click."

The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying

 

Ye olde piracy article September 28, 2005

 

I recently stumbled across a slightly dated article by Tim O'Reilly (founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media), entitled Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution.

"Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

Very interesting, and well worth a read.

Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution

 

Online Holiday Sales Are Expected to Rise Sharply September 29, 2005

 

eMarketer are predicting that this year will see the largest online holiday shopping season ever. Despite the fact that it's still September.

Online Holiday Sales Are Expected to Rise Sharply

 

Piracy hurts September 29, 2005

 

From ZDNet UK:

"Li Chen has pleaded guilty to trademark infringement; documents have been found that reportedly show he sold $10m of fake software

An admitted counterfeiter has agreed to pay Microsoft and Symantec $1.1m in restitution, a victory in the software industry's fight against such criminal activity."

My heart bleeds.

Software counterfeiter to pay $1.1m

 

Ranking Factors September 29, 2005

 

From seomoz.org:

"This article contains a large list of the factors that can influence a web document's rank at the major search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves) for a particular term or phrase. Although it is impossible to say for certain which of these items affects which search engine or how important the factors are individually, I've created an estimated ranking importance scale as indicated by the following symbols (based on my personal opinions)"

Search Engine Ranking Factors

 

Brainstorming for those in the know September 29, 2005

 

Brainstorm is one of the top five most useful applications that I have ever worked with. Ever.

I am yet to find any other software application that makes planning, organising and/or writing so easy. I use it for sketching out articles, texts, press releases, website content, lists, presentations and more. It's invaluable.

But there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that it normally sells for £40 (around US $75), but you can get it for half that. Right now.

The bad news is that you need to persevere with the app. It takes a little getting used to, but I promise you it's worth the effort. Remember the first time you sat behind the wheel of a car, and tried to use the steering wheel, brake, accelerator, clutch, gears and mirrors all at the same time?

If you're interested in the software, you need to go to http://www.brainstormsw.com/welcome.html, and you'll need your special code: 2292

Note that Brainstorm Software are not our clients. Nor do we receive any form of commission or payment from them for doing this. We're passing this on simply because this is a great opportunity.

Enjoy.

 

PPC battle continues September 30, 2005

 

Shots being fired appear to be warning shots for now, and activity is fairly low key. But the great PPC conflict is definitely underway.

From ClickZ News:

"Google is testing a link and landing page combination that lets advertisers click to buy ads on individual AdSense publishers' sites.

The new feature comes amidst an environment of increased competition for publisher distribution. Yahoo! is preparing to launch a network for smaller publishers, which would compete directly with AdSense, and MSN will soon be rolling out adCenter globally, which will also need distribution."

Google Tests 'Advertise' Link, Landing Page

 

Yahoo Site Explorer September 30, 2005

 

"Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page."

Yahoo Site Explorer

 

Stating the blindingly obvious September 30, 2005

 

From TechWorld.com:

"Complexity in software design needs to be eliminated otherwise computing will remain in secure in the future."

I assume that the writer meant insecure.

"In the meantime, Brunnstein says consumers should put pressure on producers to refund them for the damage their products have caused. He singled out Microsoft's Bill Gates. "We must force him to pay for the damage he has caused," he said, optimistically."

I assume that the writer... oh never mind.

Software set to remain insecure

 

Google Eyes Classifieds September 30, 2005

 

Many websites, blogs and columns are reporting on Google's latest expansion:

"Google has asked classified-advertising sites for direct feeds of their listings, according to Classified Intelligence Report."

Is it just me, or does that appear to be a little heavy handed?

Companies who don't share risk losing out to those more willing to partner with Google.

Share and you risk losing. Don't share and you risk crumbling.

Google Looking at Classifieds Business