Many webmasters have noticed that since the full implementation of the Big Daddy software update to the Google algorithm, that fewer and fewer of their pages have been finding their way into the index. What could be causing this? Is Google finally cleaning up the quality factor of their index, riding it of pages and even sites that don’t meet new quality standards?
Another email spammer gets slapped on the wrist! Ryan Pitylak, an individual who is know as the world’s fourth most-prolific spammer, has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and the state of Texas which accused him of sending up to 25 million e-mails per day. The settlement cost Ryan Pitylak 1 million dollars, as well as the seizure of many of the assets he accumulated during a short-lived career as one of the world’s worst spammers. No jail time? No lifelong banning of access to the Internet?
In the U.S. Government’s continual quest to battle terrorism and child pornography, they have recently asked Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and AOL to preserve records of customers’ Web activity. This latest move of course does not go unnoticed by privacy advocates who are complaining that the government may be intruding on the rights and privacy of law abiding citizens.
In an email sent to Froogle account holders, Google has made the announcement that Google Base, a new project thought to allow Google to compete with Craigslist and eBay, has swallowed up Froogle and that Froogle feeds will now have to be submitted through Google Base. Existing account and product information has already been transferred and is now viewable in Google Base. Along with Froogle, content should also be viewable on http://base.google.com.
Are affiliate sites going to be a thing of the past in Google’s search results? They could be if webmasters of affiliate sites do not adhere to Google new guidelines regarding them. Yahoo has frowned on affiliate sites for some time. Now has Google joined the fray?
Link building expert, Eric Ward has an interesting article that lays out some tactics of link whores. What is a link whore anyway? Typically it is a person who goes about link building using less then ethical tactics. It is a person who litters the web experience of others. Are you a link whore? Read on to find out.
In a continuation of response to what Matt Cutts had to say about links yesterday on his blog, what about paid links? How does Google view these, how good are they getting at spotting them and what actions do they take when they do find them?
Because Google focuses more heavily on links then any other search engine, people monitoring link popularity typically pay close attention to how Google views and treats links. Yesterday Google’s Matt Cutts dropped a bomb on some when he wrote up a lengthy post on the indexing timeline of Bigdaddy.
In a special edition of The Daily SearchCast, Danny Sullivan finds himself at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California where he takes the opportunity to interview Matt Cutts, a chief software engineer at Google and also quite famous as a liaison between the search engine Google and webmasters looking to market their sites.
A Pennsylvania congressman has recently introduced legislation that would ban minors from accessing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster as well as forbid libraries from making such access available. The bill goes by the name “Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006.”
