The Search Engine Blog

Archive for January, 2008

A terrific new tool is available to obtain some interesting link data from the Yahoo! API. While there are still bugs in this new tool, it does provide a new look at data and even allows you to download the information in CSV format.

Link Diagnosis – examine your link competition

Microsoft will be providing advertising for the Wall Street Journal sites. This includes paid searches and contextual advertising. If you want to advertise on WSJ sites, it looks like Microsoft might be the most affordable option.

The Associated Press: Microsoft to Provide Ads to WSJ Sites

The unconfirmed position 6 penalty is now confirmed by Google and a fix is in the works. Proof yet again that Google does listen to the SEO community when they speak loudly and in unison.

Confirmed: Google Position 6 Penalty Being Reversed

The official word from John Mueller of Google is that edu links are not given special treatment in the Google index. More important is high quality, unique content that users want to read. Well duh. I do like how he politely slams the person starting the post. Well done sir.

DOMAIN – Crawling, indexing, and ranking | Google Groups

Yes Virginia, there is a Google Sandbox. Long a debate as to if a Google sandbox existed, there is now one for 5 days for any new domain. (Sandboxing a site means Google won’t give it any serious indexing consideration until it’s out of the sandbox. Google decides when you can leave the sandbox little boy.) This is designed to stop domain tasting practices, something we’ve been stung by once.

Domain tasting is when a person registers a domain name and puts ads on it to see if it will generated any solid revenue. Because there is a five day return policy on domain names, they can then return the domain and lose nothing but time. Some undesirable people watch for searches on domain names and will taste a domain you want to purchase. They will then attempt to sell the domain for a great deal of money should you try and contact them. They’ll keep it if they think they have a chance of selling to you. If you have a domain snapped from you, don’t contact them until the return period has passed.

Ok, that was a bit off topic, but it doesn’t hurt to pass along a warning. At any rate, this is a great move by Google to help protect not only the individual domain buyer but also their adwords program. We thank them for this attempt and hope it helps.

Google to kill Domain Tasting

Site scrapers will take your hard work, copy it and post a site using your content for their own profit. With so many web sites out there, how can you tell if it’s happened to you? Check out this collection of tools….

Find out who’s scraping you! – SEO – Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog

Here are things to avoid when sending email newsletters.

Emma Email Marketing Blog | Email Newsletter Tips | Email Campaign Design » Things to Avoid in Your Email Newsletters

If you are interested in easy to use email newsletter services, check out Constant Contact’s Email Marketing.

SearchEngineWatch.com has added a new forum for those interested in Social Media and Search. Something to definitely keep an eye on.

Social Media and Search – Search Engine Watch Forums

You have to love a name like “Add-in”. What marketing guru was overpaid to come up with that name….at any rate, it’s a really cool tool. You can do some pretty impressive keyword research using adCenter data and reviewing it in Excel 2007. It won’t be too long before Google and Yahoo! copy this (or so my opinion goes) and they won’t tie it to a spreadsheet program requirement that costs money. If you want to try it, you’ll need an adCenter account (search for coupons to save $$) and Excel 2007 (download the free trial if you don’t have it).

adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 – Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions

It shouldn’t be any secret that what happens at Google becomes their data to do with as they please. (Sorry that wasn’t a very catchy slogan like that Vegas place.) Google is using their Checkout data to show you shopping trends. Now of course this isn’t perfect because it only shows shopping trends for data they have access to….primarily their customers using their pay services. If you use Google Checkout on your site, how do you feel about them using your sales data? No doubt you agreed to it when you signed up for the service.
Currently it isn’t working too well, but then it’s beta. When it is up and running properly my guess is that it will provide a window into certain industries. Just keep in mind that it is not complete data and their isn’t much of a history yet either. This is why they call it Beta.

Checkout Trends