Google’s Matt Cutts talks about search engine optimization traps
| The head of Google’s anti-spam team Matt Cutts publicly reviewed some web sites at the 2006 PubCon in Las Vegas. Some statements in these public reviews might help you to improve your rankings on Google and Yahoo.
Duplicate content can create problems
One of the web sites that Matt Cutts analyzed had a problem with duplicate content. The owner of the web site had more than 20 other web sites that offered overlapping content and overlapping pages on different URLs.
Search engines can find out which other web sites belong to you. For example, Alexa shows the different domains that a webmaster owns (these are displayed in the “See other sites owned” column on the left side of the traffic details page).
In addition, the web site used the same meta description tag on dozens of pages. This can cause problems with search engines.
Matt Cutts suggests to vary the pages by adding user comments or reviews. He said that varying the duplicate pages by adding a few extra sentences or by scrambling a few words wouldn’t work.
Very big sitemaps can cause problems
Another web site did fine in Google but it couldn’t get high rankings on Yahoo. The site had a very large sitemap-type page that listed hundreds of articles on one page. This could trigger the filters of some search engines. Matt Cutts suggested to split the sitemap into smaller pages.
You should use the correct letter case in sitemap files
The same site might had problems with Yahoo because there was a mismatch between the uppercase URL titles on the live pages and the lowercase URL titles according to Yahoo’s Site Explorer. That might trigger cloaking filters.
You should focus on quality back links
If inbound links are built too quickly, they don’t have a positive effect on the link rankings of a web site (details can be found here).
Reciprocal links should be from related sites that have something in common with your own web site. Reciprocal links with unrelated sites don’t help. We recommend ARELIS to find quality links.
Avoid session IDs if possible
Matt Cutts indicated that it makes sense not to use URLs with session IDs. Long URLs with many variables can cause problems with search engine spiders. This is also mentioned in the Google guidelines:
“If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a [simple] text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.”
Having too many web sites and private WHOIS might hurt your rankings
Matt Cutts indicated that it might hurt your rankings if you have too many sites and if you use these web sites just to display PPC ads:
“Having lots of sites isn’t automatically bad, and having PPC sites isn’t automatically bad, and having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”
If you try to cheat Google then it’s likely that one of Google’s filters will apply to your web site sooner or later.
Your web site should be useful and interesting to web surfers. If you have such a web site, make sure that there are no technical errors that prevent search engines from indexing your web pages.
Make it as easy as possible for search engines to parse your web pages and get good inbound links to show search engines that your web site is important. |
Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
Nielsen//NetRatings Announces December U.S. Search Share Rankings
NEW YORK, NY — (MARKET WIRE) — January 23, 2007 — Nielsen//NetRatings (NASDAQ: NTRT) reports December 2006 data for the Top U.S. Search Providers.
Top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.
Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for December 2006,
Ranked by Searches (U.S.)
| Provider |
Searches
(000) |
YOY
Growth |
Share of
Searches |
|
| Google Search |
3,035,617 |
22.6% |
50.8% |
| Yahoo! Search |
1,412,904 |
30.1% |
23.6% |
| MSN/Windows Live Search |
499,946 |
-9.7% |
8.4% |
| AOL Search |
362,140 |
7.8% |
6.1% |
| My Way Search |
141,527 |
4.7% |
2.4% |
| Ask.com Search |
128,452 |
17.2% |
2.1% |
| EarthLink Search |
31,930 |
17.6% |
0.5% |
| Dogpile.com Search |
30,487 |
2.1% |
0.5% |
| Comcast Search |
26,931 |
N/A |
0.5% |
| NexTag Search |
26,835 |
123.2% |
0.4% |
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, January 2007
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=206586
I got this e-mail this morning – looks like the pay per click model has changed drastically. It is strange that the highest bid no longer is going to be the way they gauge the ads. What I find curious is how Yahoo gauges the relevancy of each ad. This makes the black box concept of Pay Per Click more pronounced – for now you are not in control – Yahoo is. I think the key issue is to make sure whatever description you place in your ads must also be on the web page. – If I understand how this works.
Bid Amount and Ad Quality will Determine an Ad’s Rank in Search Results Beginning February 5, 2007 in the U.S.
With new features like ad testing, geo-targeting and fast ad activation, the new Sponsored Search system gives you more ways to connect with customers searching for what you sell.
On February 5, 2007, we are introducing a new ranking model in the U.S. that considers an ad’s quality and bid amount. The new model is designed to help you spend less time in bidding wars and more time creating the most relevant, effective ads, which can help drive better results for your business.
Here’s a quick summary of this important change:
- Both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007.
- This will replace the current method, in which ads in search results are ranked by bid amount only (bid-to-position).
- This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.
- By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and/or a lower cost for your ads.
Example of How Ads May be Ranked
The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from this change:
Note: The graphic above is provided for illustrative purposes only, and will not actually appear in your account.
What is “Ad Quality”?
Ad quality is determined by:
- The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to competitors and normalized for position.
- The ad’s expected performance – determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time.
Overall ad quality is displayed in graphical form by the quality index.
Other Important Things to Know
- We recommend that you review your current max bids. Keep in mind you may be charged up to this amount. Learn More.
- Standard match type ads will no longer receive priority placement over Advanced match type ads. Learn More.
- Fewer Sponsored Search results may now appear at the very top of the page for certain search terms. Learn More.
Once you’ve upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system, you’ll be able to gain an understanding of your ad’s overall quality by looking at its quality index. If you would like to upgrade now, please submit your request to our Online Reservation Page, and we will try to accommodate your request.
The virus is called – Trojan.Peacomm: Building a Peer-to-Peer Botnet
Symantec Security Response has seen some moderate spamming of a new Trojan horse. The threat arrived in an email with an empty body and a variety of subjects such as:
A killer at 11, he’s free at 21 and kill again!
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel
British Muslims Genocide
Naked teens attack home director.
230 dead as storm batters Europe.
Re: Your text
The attachments may have any of the following filenames:
FullVideo.exe
Full Story.exe
Video.exe
Read More.exe
FullClip.exe
The attachment is not a video clip, but a Trojan horse program, which Symantec heuristic technology already detected as Trojan.Packed.8. Today’s LiveUpdate definitions detect it as Trojan.Peacomm. Users of Symantec’s Brightmail Anti-Spam are also protected from this spam email.
Click Here For complete details:
Search Engine Marketing is making it’s way to the mainstream newspapers. USA Today posted an article that should drive home what most web site owners need to read and understand. The article offers basic ideas and provides some insight.
How to get Google to notice you
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
Well, It looks like some of us will have to deal with the issues of the clock changes this weekend. I guess if it’s spring, we need to move the clicks ahead 1 hour.
Keep an eye on your systems, computers, and anything else electronic with a date/time.
