Archive for February, 2007
Yahoo! Search Support for ‘NOYDIR’ Meta Tag Finally Here!
We’ve been asking for some time. It was even promised as a possible future development. Well now it is finally arrived – support for a “NOYDIR” meta tag. Web site owners have long been frustrated over the lack of control they have had in they way their home page appears in the Yahoo! search results if they are also listed in the Yahoo! Directory. This due to the fact that Yahoo! would use the title and description from the directory listing as opposed to the site’s title tag and meta description tag and/or snippet of content from the actual web page.
How To Get Free SEO Advice For Your Specific Web Site
The places to obtain free SEO advice are plentiful. There are forums, blogs, articles, ebooks, webinars, and even live internet radio shows such as WebmasterRadio.fm. However most often the advice given is more of a general nature involving specific techniques or strategies that can be applied to a multitude of sites. If advice is given about a specific site, such as in a forum, it is most often generalized so it can help all who visit the forum as opposed to just the site owner themselves.
PRWeb Adds New Features to Online Press Release Service
I received an email from the folks over at PRWeb over the weekend announcing some new features that have been added to their online press release service. These upgrades will enhance the effectiveness of press releases and user’s experience with their service.
Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 2/19 – 2/23
A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Business.com to provide PPC ads for Wall Street Journal Online, Viacom chooses Joost instead of YouTube to distribute commercial programming, Adware Distributor DirectRevenue is fine $1.5 million by FTC for its shady business practices, Google Apps matures and enters the business world, and finally Rebecca Kelly gives us SES London in comic strip format.
Follow-Up On Whether MySpace Passes Link Love or Not
I conducted a test last April (almost 10 months ago) in which I added a phrase to our SearchRank MySpace profile that at the time produced no search results at any of the four major engines. I linked the phrase to Justin Timberlake’s official web site to see if I could get the site to rank for that phrase even though it did not appear anywhere within his site – a Google bombing of sorts. I won’t repeat the phrase here as I don’t want any more pages ranking for it but you can read about the results of my experiment 4 months after link was originally placed.
Save $500 on China Search Marketing Tour
Just received an email from David Temple who along with Ian McAnerin have been planning the upcoming China Search Marketing Tour that will take place during Search Engine Strategies in China conference. While the conference only runs two days (May 25th-26th) the tour runs from May 19th thru the 28th – 10 glorious days in China. The reason for David’s email was to announce that they are offering an early bird discount of $500 until March 5, at 5pm EST.
MyBlogLog Tightens the Reigns
The folks over at MyBlogBlog have made some updates that will make it more difficult for spammers to game the system. This action is in response to an exploit taken advantage of over the weekend where a spammers sent multiple requests to join their communities as co-authors and then automatically approve the requests. Danny Sullivan and Shoemoney were just a couple of many impacted by this.
How To Establish Trust With Users in the Online World
Establishing trust with consumers is crucial to the success of any online business, especially those who are selling a product or service. This is oftentimes easier to do in the “real world” than it is on the Internet. For example, you as a consumer are in a brick and mortar storefront looking to buy a particular product. You can be comfortable with the atmosphere, enjoy the selection of merchandise they have to offer, and even be assured of their stability as a business because they have been around for some time. The sales person can also put you at ease if they are friendly and helpful to you. Web sites are a bit different in that they are not physical locations. Plus you are dealing with a digital medium as opposed to a real person.
Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 2/12 – 2/16
A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Yahoo’s expansion of their mobile phone advertising to 18 nations, Loren Baker writes up an excellent guide to buying links, Google will start displaying AdWords Quality Score to advertisers, Moment Magazine provides an in-depth look at Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin, and finally, Google’s latest acquisition is an in-game (video) advertising company.
NoFollow Tag is a Dismal Failure
Loren Baker has an excellent post on why the nofollow tag sucks. In fact he provides thirteen reasons why it has failed to deliver on its original purpose. I couldn’t agree more. Loren reminds us that the NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming. However this has not dealt with the real problem and that is stopping people from spamming blog comments in the first place. Things like asking a question or requiring authentication works much better in combating comment spam.
Google’s Evil Master Plan for World Domination
Is Google looking to dominate the world? Many believe so. They certainly have their hands in more things than most people can keep track of. A video entitled “Master Plan – about the power of Google” suggests that not only is Google becoming too powerful but that they have obtained a mass of information on people, disregarding our privacy. The video even suggests that Google is sharing this information with the CIA.
Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 2/5 – 2/9
A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Google adds comprehensive back link tool to Webmaster Central, Walmart enters the movie download game, Google opens Gmail to everyone, SEMPO releases “State of Search Engine Marketing 2006″ Report, and finally Michael Gray provides 13 ways to promote your local business for free or 5 ways to do it with a limited budget.
