Long, long ago it was almost a novelty to type something into Yahoo and get a bunch of results that were related to what you had just typed. The net was new and nobody knew where to find anything. At the time content was provided by organizations, often with substantial budgets. In many cases we paid money to register for the data. Web 2.0 changed that taking content from ordinary people and using it to make money.

When I look at Swagbucks.com I wonder if I'm looking at a game changer. Swagbucks is a search engine that reimburses its users for using it. After registering, using their search engine will earn you swagbucks that you can use to buy prizes. It reminds me of those ads on the backs of comics that rewarded children for selling cards but there is a critical difference.

Selling cards is not something children do. Surfing the net is. The swag prizes are clearly aimed at a young generation. If the they choose it they may stick with it. So the question then becomes: What is it really worth to know what someone types into a search engine? The next question is what other things do we all do online that are worth tracking and how much is that knowledge worth?

Recently I was talking with a client who asked a very simple question, "What would happen if we repeated a heading many times but did not actually display it on the page?" The idea behind this tactic being that when a search engine webcrawler reviews the site it will notice the headings and (presumably) determine that the website has a very high relevancy for whatever is contained within the headings. This technique has been around a long time, it may well be the original "black hat" technique of SEO and I would astonished if it still worked. By the way, there are many techniques for showing one set of content to people and another for webbots and I expect that some of them work very effectively.

The answer to my client's question is that (assuming it is done correctly meaning that the web bot is fooled into thinking that the content is real) the search engine ranking of the site will improve based upon the phantom content. That's a short answer and an accurate one however it does not tell the whole story. The crawlers are getting better all the time and phantom content is something they are learning to recognize. (For example, I would expect that many webcrawlers ignore headings that are not followed by content relevant to the heading.) A technique that works today may not work tomorrow. That's not a big deal though.

Using phantom content violates the terms of service that you have with the search engine companies. That does not make using such a technique illegal. The risk is that your website will be penalized or even banned from a search engine. The search engine companies have no obligation whatsoever to list your website. Once your website is banned or penalized it is a very slow process to get a good ranking again.

Labels: Black Hat?

One of the first lessons of search engine optimization is the importance of the text in a url (the text that appears in your navigation bar, such as www.google.com for Google) Often older sites have built good trademarks for themselves but put together a site with little thought to optimizing the site for Google. Thus, it is good to improve your urls so search engines give them better ranking but, at the same time you may not wish to loose the urls that people already use and have linked to.

This problem is easily solved with something called a 301 redirect. Here is a tutorial on 301 redirection. The 301 redirect allows you to change the url that websurfer goes to when they type in a url that belongs to your domain. As an example if you type "www.googlerank.ca/aboutseom.html" into your navigation bar you will find yourself at a site with a different name.

I've linked to a tutorial that breaks it down nicely here. Be very careful modifying the .htaccess file. Back it up if you have one before you make changes. Once you have made the changes verify that your site is working the way you want it to. If there are problems put the old .htaccess back.

There are a variety of ways of redirecting a page but the .htaccess is by far the best. It is very efficient and it will not negatively impact your search engine optimization.

Labels: What every webmaster should know

Google has a wide variety of services and I would bet that most people have never heard of them. Google Knol has been around for a while but it was news to me. It strikes me as a combination of Wikipedia and a blog. Users post entries and others may leave comments. Entries are grouped into categories.

How is that different from a blog?

• The entries stand on their own. To be effective a blog should have regular updates. In Google Knol each entry is independent and likely not updated once written.


• If you guessed that Google Knol has advanced searching features you'd be write. The top level searching system is very similar to a Google search bar but the search toolkit is what sets Google Knol apart.

The search toolkit includes many options similar to the advanced search features from regular Google. The main difference I've noticed is there are a variety of date options for searching in Google Knol. The date options are useful in this context because every entry has a precise date. Thus, you could search for information on events years after the event has occurred.

Labels: Google Services

In researching Caffeine, Google's modified search system, I found Google Squared. Google Squared is quite different in that data from a set of results is categorized and presented on a table. Images and addresses are in there own columns while other columns are chosen based upon common information.

The search results are sometimes odd. For example if you were to type "cash for gold ottawa" you would expect to find companies that recycle gold. Guess what you get using Google Squared...

Ratings, ratings and more ratings. Most of the ratings are for hockey players and hockey teams. One is for a television show.

Alex Trebek: This search engine returned "ABC's Lost delivering the highest ratings of the season on Wednesday" using the phrase "cash for gold Ottawa".

Answer: "What is Google Squared?"

Please try a search with Google Squared and post your results in the comments section!

Labels: Changes at Google?

Labels: Changes at Google?

Do you notice anything unusual about this picture? Probably not.



Google likes experimenting with search engines and this is no exception. Usually their tests for different algorithms are not public. This one is different. While most people would not notice a change those of us in SEO watch this kind of thing very carefully.

Introducing:

Caffeine

While the name is energetic and catchy the differences are subtle. I've noticed a few differences but they are very minor. Please post a comment if you've noticed any changes.

Labels: Changes at Google?

One of my clients runs a gold recycling business. His business is very interesting from my point of view because gold recycling on the Internet is very competitive. His business is split between clients who mail in their gold and clients that he meets in person. In the course of doing regular SEO for him I check his rankings for various terms. One of these terms, "cash in gold" gave me a very unexpected result. Specifically, it lead to this... business.

For some reason the business at the second link has copied data from my client's site and provided it as content for their own business. Copying information from one website to another is very common however one should ask to copy the information or, at least, provide the source of the information unless the information is designated public domain.

I'm very curious to know how effective their website really is. Would someone wanting to sell gold feel good about visiting a site with a bunch of advertisements, one nice picture and some random content that they found at another source? I feel this is a case of setting up a website without any thought given to the desired result. There is nothing wrong with making your website more appealing to search engines but ultimately every website is there to communicate to a person and that is who it should appeal to.

Labels: Blogging and Search Engine Optimization