- Home
- SEM News
- SEW Forums
- Search Marketing Topics
- SEM Basics
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search Advertising
- Analytics & ROI
- Social Media Marketing
- Promotion & Link Building
- Local & Mobile Search
- SMB Search Marketing
- Enterprise SEM
- Vertical Search Marketing
- SEM Agency Issues
- In-House SEM
- International Search
- The Search Industry
- Search Marketing Training
- Ratings & Stats
- Members Area
- Webcasts
- White Paper Library
- Job Board
- SES Events
- Advertise on SEW
- SEW Awards
- About SEW
Special thanks to:
August 29, 2008
SEW Experts: Looking for Answers in a Search Marketing Forum? Be Specific!If you're a newbie looking for guidance in search marketing, there are plenty of places to find it, if you know how to best phrase your request for information. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "Looking for Answers in a Search Marketing Forum? Be Specific!," Frank Watson and Chris Boggs remind us that search marketing has grown into a very broad field, but if you take the time to ask specific questions, you're much more likely to get you the answers you need.
Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
January 5, 2007
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 5, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the Web: Who's Who in Google Syndication? - How To Price & Package SEO - Google Likes Sites That Have More Pages? - Giving Up AdWords and more.
Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:03 AM | Permalink
December 22, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 22, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Website Optimizer: Better Then You Think? - Will DMOZ Be Back? - Google AdSense: No Images To Be Lined Up With AdSense Ads - Pandia's Christmas Wish List To Google and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:10 AM | Permalink
December 15, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 15, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Search Marketing Jobs Slow Down? - Making the Most Out of AdCenter - Google Says Internal Duplication Is Ok - Blogrolls and Ordinary Link Exchanging, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:08 AM | Permalink
December 8, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 8, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Offer Takes on PayPal - Matt Cutts On Having Lots Of Sites - Click Fraud from Competitors? - I've Been Using Duplicate (stolen) Content - Accessibility Basics, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:58 AM | Permalink
December 4, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 4, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: New Yahoo Bidding Information - Internet Advertisers Want Sales Not Branding - Strategy Needed for New International Site - Yahoo Integrates Answers Into Search Results, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:08 AM | Permalink
November 27, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 27, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Hack Your Competition Out of Organic Search - MSN And Yahoo Join Google With Sitemaps - How Local Search And SEM Relates - What to Look for When Purchasing Links? - What Tools Does An SEO Guru Use? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 4:23 AM | Permalink
November 17, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 17, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Hack Your Competition Out of Organic Search - MSN And Yahoo Join Google With Sitemaps - How Local Search And SEM Relates - What to Look for When Purchasing Links? - What Tools Does An SEO Guru Use? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:37 PM | Permalink
November 10, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 10, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Cloaking for Religious Reasons - Is Link-bait Ruining The Web? - Yahoo To Test Image Advertising On Mobile Phones - Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates - The Reality Of SEO, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:59 AM | Permalink
November 3, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 3, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Deal or No Deal? - Turning Clicks Into Sales - The Google News Effect - Dumb Mistakes Resulting in Loss of AdSense Revenue - SEO Mythbusters, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:55 AM | Permalink
October 27, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 27, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: NYT calls Google Bombing a 'campaign tactic' - Googling With Google Is Good, But Very Bad Elsewhere - Coming Soon: Yahoo Directory Tag, With 'No' Option - Did-it President Takes a Shot at SEO - What Does Your Holiday SEM Campaign Look Like? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:17 AM | Permalink
October 20, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 20, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Link Building Vs. Brand Building - Yahoo Sales Up, Profits Down - Google AdWords Landing Page Website Optimizer - Live Search's LinkFromDomain Command - Conversion Tracking Revisited, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:42 AM | Permalink
October 13, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 13, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion - Yahoo PPC Management Crash - SEO: What Skills Are Crucial? - Hired An SEO Company & Now Feel Ripped Off - When Are SEO Firms Going To Offer Link Baiting Services? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:54 AM | Permalink
October 6, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 6, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Gadgets Now For Your Website - Is SEO a Game of Outsmarting Search Engines? - Relevant Domain Names - Business Week Article On Click Fraud, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:15 AM | Permalink
September 29, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 29, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Can We Take SEO As a Long Term Career? - Is Flash The Future Of The Internet? - Best Way To Build A New Site - New Trends in Google Rankings - Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Facebook, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:52 PM | Permalink
September 22, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 22, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Links to the week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Reports Slowing Ad Sales - Search Engines Can't Read 301's - Google Mobile Ads - MSN Search Vs Windows Live Search: What's The Difference? - Will Google Penalize for Linking to Non Related Sites? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:02 AM | Permalink
September 14, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 15, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Links to the week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Which Web Services Do You Use? - Mining the Tail? - AdSense On Home Page - Does It Cheapen The Look? - What are the Barriers to Using Search Analytics? - Digg Dealing With the Same Problems as Google? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:06 PM | Permalink
September 8, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 8, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Local Search Advertising Spend Will Double - Content Is King - Do I Need Adwords? - Organic Search Vs. Paid Advertisement - SEO Rates - Moving to Pay-For-Performance, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:42 AM | Permalink
September 1, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 1, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: TrueLocal Launches Canadian Local Search Engine - The Video Void: Where Are All The AdSense Video Ads? - Here Comes Social Media Optimization? - Google Apps for Your Domain, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:08 AM | Permalink
August 31, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Sept. 1, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: TrueLocal Launches Canadian Local Search Engine - The Video Void: Where Are All The AdSense Video Ads? - Here Comes Social Media Optimization? - Google Apps for Your Domain, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:59 AM | Permalink
August 25, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: August 25, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: What Is Social Search? - Keeping Track of Links - Virtual Servers and Subdomains for SEO - Advertising With Ask - How Much to Charge for PPC Work? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:37 AM | Permalink
August 24, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: August 25, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: What Is Social Search? - Keeping Track of Links - Virtual Servers and Subdomains for SEO - Advertising With Ask - How Much to Charge for PPC Work? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:17 AM | Permalink
August 17, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: August 18, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web:Google Buys Neven Vision to Boost Photo Management - Biggest Misconceptions People Have About SEO - Importance of Fresh Links - Kanoodle & Moniker: What unique strengths and assets do they bring together? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:31 PM | Permalink
August 4, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Aug. 4, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: The Official SES San Jose 2006 Conference Thread - Would You Tell Just One Secret? - AdSense Bad For Your Business - Yahoo! Launches A New Slurp Crawler, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:22 AM | Permalink
August 1, 2006
Forum Fodder: SES San Jose Party Update, Secrets Spilled, and 301 Redirects GaloreHot topics & discussions going on in the Search Engine Watch Forums right now:
The official party list for SES San Jose networking events has been updated as of today with a new pub crawl sponsored by Trexy.com - find more details in this thread.
Whoa! Who opened the floodgates? SEO's are sharing trade secrets left and right. Take your turn and share just one of your favorite search marketing secrets.
Recommendations on implementing 301 redirects are popping up in several discussions, as solutions for duplicate content issues, and closing an old site. On a related redirect topic, a new case of a 302 Hijack has popped up in Google.
Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:15 PM | Permalink
July 28, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: July 28, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Ranking In Other Countries - Yahoo! Korea Create Webzari Site Explorer - Google Showing Click Fraud Numbers In AdWords - Site Redesign - Does It Always Mean Lost Ranking?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:03 AM | Permalink
July 21, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: July 21, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Maps + Reviews In Main Search Results - Yahoo Panama Release Delayed - Microsoft: MSN - Strider Search Defender - Buying Brand Name Keywords On Adwords, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:25 PM | Permalink
July 14, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: July 14, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Open Letter to Google Regarding Changes to The Ad Words Program - Analytics Analysis For Search Marketers - MySpace - Highest Traffic Site on Web - Google Search Finds Widespread Malicious Code, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:49 PM | Permalink
July 11, 2006
Gabbing, Gossip & Goings On in the SEW Forums...In what should become a regular feature here on the SEW blog, here are some highlights from current discussions on the forums:
You may think it's the same old story, but Tonerman has posed an an interesting question to the group, Is SEO on Google worth the effort anymore? With a shift in organic results since Big Daddy, can a solid PPC campaign be your best bet?
Frustration continues over Google's choice to show DMOZ listings as titles for certain sites in search results.
Threads to Watch: Members also share experiences with optimizing websites that use Yahoo Stores.
One member asks, is Yahoo Filtering Internal Pages from a large site?
Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 4:40 PM | Permalink
July 7, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: July 7, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Checkout: Exaggerated Claims? - Spam is an Arms Race - So Confused About 302 Redirects - Are Outbound Links Rewarded? - A Guide to Keyword Analysis, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:05 AM | Permalink
June 30, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: June 30, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Checkout Launches - Strikes At Heart of Yahoo Stores - Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success - Guaranteed Google Listings - Link Building for Local Businesses, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:56 AM | Permalink
June 23, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: June 23, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google AdWords Scheduling/Day Parting Now Live - SEO Training- Is It Worthwhile? - Age of Links - Quality and Authority: Relevance Alone Is Not Enough, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:34 AM | Permalink
June 16, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: June 16, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Marshall Simmonds, the NYTimes & Acceptable Cloaking - What Are The 200 Signals Google Uses To Rank Pages? - CMS and SEO - An Unhappy Relation - Strategy for Domains In Multiple Languages - Is There Really a Google Sandbox? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:17 AM | Permalink
June 9, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: June 9, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: What Top 5 Skills Would You Study to Become a Better SEO? - Brin Says Google Compromised Principles - Is Reciprocal Linking Dead - June 2006: Start of the Traditional Summer Slump, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:38 PM | Permalink
June 8, 2006
Search Engine Watch Discussion Forums Celebrate 2nd BirthdayThe SEW Forums are turning two years old today. We recently surpassed the 10,000 members mark, and have well over 80,000 posts on search engine optimization and the search marketing industry. All of the SEW forum staff would just like to say thank you to the entire search marketing community for supporting the forums and helping us grow to this point. We're looking forward to the year ahead.
Come join the celebration in our forum thread, Happy 2nd Birthday SEW Forums!
Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:49 PM | Permalink
June 2, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: June 2, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AdWords To Begin Crawling Landing Pages - Full Coverage Recap - SEW Live! - Expired Domains With Good Links - How Do We Fight Back Against The Google Monster? - Ask Now With Blog and Feed Search, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 5:56 AM | Permalink
May 26, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: May 26, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo! and eBay Partner - Google Sends Out Class Action Settlement Info - Larry Page Sets Out His Vision - Opting Out Of Open Directory Listings At MSN - Say Bye-bye to Rankings and Hello to SEO Success! and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:20 PM | Permalink
May 19, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: May 19, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Matt Cutts On Big Daddy: Major Message To SEOs - PPC Analytics Is Only Wishful Thinking - Yahoo: Where to Start with Link SEO - Microsoft's Ballmer: 5 years to catch Google, Yahoo, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:25 AM | Permalink
May 12, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: May 12, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Dear Matt Cutts, I Want To Know About... Yahoo and Telemundo in Online Deal to Grab More Latino Internet Users - Two Emerging SEO Certification Programs - Are Meta Tags Still Necessary? - Microsoft Invests in Analytics Firm DeepMetrix, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:48 AM | Permalink
May 5, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: May 5, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo & Microsoft To Combine? - New Ask.com Commercials Starring Teoma's Founder - Amazon Ditches Google For Microsoft - Google Objects To Microsoft's IE7 Search Default - Thoughts On New Click Fraud Index & Network? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:27 AM | Permalink
April 28, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 28, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Ask.com Chief Berkowitz Heads To MSN - With Google's New Big Daddy Index, Crawling is Changing - Are ALT Tags Back? - Changing Dynamic URLs to Static URLs - BabelFish Re-launches as Yahoo! BabelFish, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:45 AM | Permalink
April 21, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 21, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Is Textbook SEO Dead? - What Percentage of Brand Name Traffic Should Brand Names Get? - ClickTracks Appetizer Serves Up Free Site Analytics - What Factors Please The MSN Search Algorithm? - Yahoo Testing Pay Per Call, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:13 AM | Permalink
April 14, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 14, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Confirms Mid-Page "See Results For" Section No Longer A Test - How to Approach a Company About their SEO? - Google Buys Search Algorithm Invented by Israeli Student - Should SEO Be Part of Journalism 101? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:34 AM | Permalink
April 7, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 7, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: EarthLink & Google Win San Francisco Wi-Fi Bid - Position Preference - New Feature For Google AdWords - Pros & Cons of SES & WMW Conferences - PPC Agency Key Performance Indicators, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:24 AM | Permalink
March 31, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 31, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Who Cares If Google's A Portal - Local Search Still Not Cutting the Mustard - Private Search Engines Explored - Anyone Checking Out ecomXpo? - XHTML and SEO - Ask and PPC Advertising, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:09 AM | Permalink
March 24, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 24, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Sued by KinderStart for Penalizing Site - Gold Membership for Overture Members - Is Yahoo Ousting Small & Medium-Sized Businesses? - Do Ugly Sites Earn More With AdSense? - Determining the Size of the Keyword Tail - Zeal To Shut Down, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:37 AM | Permalink
Vote For The Most Annoying Forum PersonalityThreadWatch is throwing a different kind of SEO awards contest. They are running a contest for you to pick the five top most annoying personalities at the search marketing forums. I have to admit, only a few of the people listed, I would consider annoying personalities, within the forums. You can vote yourself at this form.
Does this have anything to do with DaveN gaining fifty-percent ownership of ThreadWatch? That I do not know.
Postscript: The winner has been announced here.
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink
March 10, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 10, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Microsoft's Windows Live Search Opens; Bye-Bye MSN Search? - Demographics Added to AdWords - It's Illegal And Unethical And They Know It! - Click Fraud Issue Growing - MSN AdCenter Primer for New Users, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:44 PM | Permalink
March 3, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 3, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SEOs Spilling the Beans to Mr. Cutts - MSN AdCenter Beta - Google Offering Payment Option on GoogleBase - Yahoo No Longer Allow Bidding On Trademarked Terms - Teoma Merged With Ask.com, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:03 AM | Permalink
February 24, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 24, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Releases Web Page Creator & Free Hosting Labs Beta - MSN Rolls Out New Search Interface & Algorithm - Photos Get Google in Trouble Over Copyright Law - Link Baiting Our Future? - Search Engines: The New Battle Ground for Middle East Conflicts? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:42 PM | Permalink
February 17, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 17, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AOL #1 in Conversions - Link Development vs. Traffic Development - Google Buys Blog Analytics Firm MeasureMap - BMW Debacle Good for SEO? - Goodbye Jeeves, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:47 AM | Permalink
February 3, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 3, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Buying Links and Google - Yahoo Finally Changes Direct Traffic Center -Google Toolbar 4 for IE - Zip Code Range Optimization, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:12 PM | Permalink
January 27, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 27, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Nevada Federal Court Rules that Google "Cache" Not Copyright Violation - Yahoo Reaffirms Commitment to Search - Google Agrees To Chinese Censorship - How the Search Marketing Industry Shot Itself in the Foot, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:04 AM | Permalink
January 20, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 20, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Goes Into Radio - Click Fraud Report Gets Laugh From Yahoo Rep - Quaero to Take Europe By Storm? - Most Common Search Engine Un-Friendly Mistakes, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:50 AM | Permalink
January 13, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 13, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: New Google Devaluation & Delisting of Pages - Nielsen Says Search Engines are Leeches - How Far To Go When Linking Internally? - What's Wrong With Today's SEOs, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:22 AM | Permalink
January 9, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 20, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Goes Into Radio - Click Fraud Report Gets Laugh From Yahoo Rep - Quaero to Take Europe By Storm? - Most Common Search Engine Un-Friendly Mistakes, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:20 PM | Permalink
January 6, 2006
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 6, 2006Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: New Google "Bigdaddy" Infrastructure Live - Fortune 500 Sites Use Hidden Text To Fool Search Engines - Bad Reasons To Want A Top Ranking - Link Tracking, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:33 AM | Permalink
December 28, 2005
The Best Search Engine Watch Forum Posts of 2005Continuing our retrospective look at the year in search, today's SearchDay article features 2005 in Review: The Best Search Engine Watch Forum Posts.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:20 AM | Permalink
December 23, 2005
German SEO Forums LaunchedSprechen Sie Deutsch? Heute hab Ich gelernen ThomasB hat ihre neue SEO "forums" hier: Online Marketing Talk. And now you know why native German speakers grimace -- including my brother-in-law -- when I try out my two years of college German on them. You want to talk suchmaschinenoptimierung? That's a new place to check out.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:21 AM | Permalink
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 23, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Wish List for Yahoo! Pay Per Click Marketing - Google Groans Under the Massive Data Load - Matt Cutts Explains How Google Crawls and Ranks Pages - Content is NOT king! and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:39 AM | Permalink
December 16, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 16, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Acquires Del.icio.us - Beware the Reciprocal Link Short Sellers - Ask Jeeves Growing Like Wild Fire! - Alexa Opens Up Crawler To The Public - Google Myths Busted! and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:02 AM | Permalink
December 13, 2005
Search Engine Roundtable Launches New Online ForumsOne name that I was mentioned everyday last week during SES, was Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) who is famous for blogging live from SES shows. Many of you know RustyBrick personally. He's a great guy (some might say a mensch), engaged (yes, he's the person who proposed via Ask Jeeves) and the compiler/editor of Search Engine Roundtable (SER), a blog we refer to often here on SEW.
Today, we can report that SER now has its own online forums.
Barry writes on why he started the forums, introduces the moderators, and more in this post. Congrats and good luck to one of the hardest working people in the search biz.
Posted by Gary Price at 4:19 PM | Permalink
December 9, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 9, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SES Chicago 2005: "Triple Play Blog Coverage" - Yahoo Answers - Search Gaining On Email As Top Internet Activity - AOL to Drop Google and Sign with MSN, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:46 AM | Permalink
December 2, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 2, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Just how Important is SEO in a Business Start Up - Dealing With Negative Listings About You - AdWords No Longer Human Reviewed? - SEO Myths - Niche Sites And AdSense Resources, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:11 AM | Permalink
November 30, 2005
On SEO Myths & Getting The Balance RightThere's been a variety of articles out recently that look at search engine optimization advice that people hear, believe and perhaps act on in the wrong ways. Below, a look at some of these resources covering myths, mistakes and getting things into perspective.
The SEO Myths Thread from Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable summarizes an interesting Cre8asite thread about top SEO myths, such as oldies like meta tags being super important and others such as worries over duplicate content penalties. Of course, "SEO Worries" might be a better name for the thread, since not everyone will agree that all the items listed are myths.
Search Engine Forums & Conferences - Are they Really Helpful? from Search Engine Guide is on a related topic and a good read. It covers how tips people pick up at forums and search conferences sometimes aren't weighed properly.
It's excellent advice. SEO in particular has always been a slippery area for anyone to know exactly what's "right." What's correct for one person can often come down to the particular situation their involved in. Pushing Viagra on the web? What works for you might be completely different than what's helpful to a site that sells children's toys.
That's a chief reason why at our own SES conferences, it's extremely rare that we have a panel with only one person on it. I'm always trying to have a range of viewpoints and hoping that people will take it all in and make up their own minds on on how to proceed.
Speaking of which, SEO Overkill is a session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago next week that addresses some of the myths and "what to believe" problem. Sometimes, it's not that the advice is wrong. It's that people simply don't do things in moderation. That panel will look at some examples of going to extremes and why that is bad.
That leads me to Common Sense Algorithm Chasing, out today from Search Engine Guide. It talks briefly about trying to get that balance right, understanding what a search engine wants, but not going to the extreme of being an algo chaser nor the opposite of simply assuming that "common sense" alone is enough for success.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:35 AM | Permalink
November 28, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 28, 2005 Today's SearchDay article, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Click-To-Call - Is Top 30 Good Enough? - Google Running Ads At Bottom Of Search Engine Results Pages - Anyone Use MSN Search As The First Choice? - How to Identify a Scraper Site, and more.Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:36 AM | Permalink
November 23, 2005
WebmasterWorld Out Of Google & MSNWell, that didn't take long. I wrote on Monday about how WebmasterWorld head Brett Tabke decided to ban all search spiders including those from the major search engines in an effort to combat bandwidth loss and server sluggishness due to rogue spiders. Brett figured he had about 60 days until he'd see pages get dropped. It took two.
As of this moment, site:webmasterworld.com at Google shows NO pages being listed from the site. Prior to the ban, about 2 million pages were listed. Oddly, Google's not even returning the site's home page using the listing out of the Open Directory.
In other words on Monday, as I recall, a search for webmasterworld brought up the WebmasterWorld home page with the title and description like this
Webmaster World Brett Tabke hosts professional webmaster and search engine promotion discussions.
That title and description was being pulled from the Open Directory listing as you'll find over here.
A search today for the same thing doesn't bring up the site at all. Yes, WebmasterWorld banned Google from spidering it. However, that doesn't prevent Google from listing at least the home page by making use of the Open Directory information, which doesn't require spidering the WebmasterWorld web site.
Interestingly, checking the Google Directory -- which is powered by the Open Directory -- there is no listing for WebmasterWorld in the same exact category as you'll see at the Open Directory. It suggests that the robots.txt ban had the effect of pulling WebmasterWorld not only out of the Google web search results but Google Directory listings as well. That would be an entirely new thing I don't recall hearing happening before.
Checking with Dave Naylor, who's been watching the situation, he suspects that this is indicative of Google manually pulling everything about the site from Google.
Over at MSN, site:webmasterworld.com brings back one match, but since it lacks a title and description, this looks to be a listing of the WebmasterWorld home page based on the fact MSN sees links to it, rather than having crawled it. Google can and does do a similar thing, calling these "partially indexed" URLs. It's not doing that for WebmasterWorld, however.
To understand more about the entire situation of how a page that bans spiders might still appear, check out my The US White House & Blocking Search Engines page.
At Yahoo, site:webmasterworld.com shows 83,300 matches for me, which is steady from what I saw earlier this week.
Should the pages have dropped so quickly? With Google, things might have been helped along by the fact it has an automatic page removal system. Don't panic! It only works if a site has specifically put up a robots.txt file blocking Google. People just can't come along and remove your pages unless you yourself have installed such a robots.txt file.
Todd Freisen describes the system more in Blink And It?s Gone, and he's at least one person who submitted the new WebmasterWorld robots.txt file to speed up the removal process. Todd's also been tracking page counts for the site in various search engines: WebmasterWorld Index Watch 3, WebmasterWorld Index Watch 2 and WebmasterWorld Index Watch.
Even if this hadn't happened (submission to the automated Google page removal tool), I still thought it was way overly optimistic to assume a popular site like WebmasterWorld would be allowed to retain pages after expressly banning spiders. MSN certainly has no automated page removal system, and it matched Google in dropping pages.
Want to discuss or comment? Members at WebmasterWorld are talking in this thread, and we also have discussion starting at our own Search Engine Watch Forums in WebmasterWorld Off Of Google & Others Due To Banning Spiders.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:39 AM | Permalink
November 21, 2005
WebmasterWorld Bans Spiders From CrawlingWow. Brett Tabke drops the nuclear bomb of banning all spiders from WebmasterWorld. He explains here that heavy rogue spidering is the reason behind the move. Members worry in the thread that as pages drop out of search engines, it will become difficult to impossible to find anything at WebmasterWorld, which self-admittedly lacks good site search.
Brett figures he's got 60 days until pages drop from places like Google to get an alternative search solution in place. That seems optimistic to me. WebmasterWorld is a prominent site and should get getting revisited on a sub-daily basis. If search engines are hitting that robots.txt ban repeatedly, they ought to be dropping those pages in short order, or they aren't very good search engines. I mean, can you imagine the irony of Google and Yahoo getting pilloried on WebmasterWorld for taking so long to drop pages after they were told to do so after the ban was put into place?
A separate issue is the potential loss of search traffic. We have had the odd site from time-to-time declare that it might ban Google or Microsoft because of opposition to those companies, and we've certainly had companies ban all spiders for other reasons. But in one bold move, WebmasterWorld suddenly is about to become a big giant test case about what happens to a site if it cuts itself off from the oxygen of search results -- an incredible irony when so many come to the site looking specifically on how to gain more search traffic.
Realistically, any established site should be able to ride out having no search traffic at all. WebmasterWorld has plenty of people who will seek it out directly, plus referral links from other sites will keep traffic going and perhaps even growing. But search has been estimated to drive anywhere between 7 to 13 percent of new visitors to a web site, visitors who after they arrive continue to come back. I wouldn't want to roll the dice against losing them.
It'll be interesting to see if WebmasterWorld really sticks with this ban or seeks other ways of getting its content into the major search engine without spidering, such as via Google Base or Yahoo's paid inclusion programs, for example.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:51 AM | Permalink
November 11, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 11, 2005Today's SearchDay,
Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Realistic SEO Expectations - Yahoo Maps Beta, Ties In With Search More - Dashes In URLs - Soon To be Spam? - How To Cross Link Without Getting Penalized? - Gates Dismissive Of Google, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:52 AM | Permalink
November 9, 2005
WebmasterWorld Network TroublesWebmasterWorld, which had network problems last month, seems to be having them again. Barry's at SE Roundtable is reporting problems getting there from New York, and I can't reach it as well from the UK nor can Gary from Virginia. The Search Engine World site that WebmasterWorld fell back on last time is working, so watch that if the problem isn't solved quickly.
Postscript: Barry has a note from Brett, WebmasterWorld's owner, that all's fine. Still not for me. Over at the alternative site, this thread is where members are asking and being updated.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:35 PM | Permalink
October 28, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 28, 2005Today's SearchDay,
Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Base, Classified Ads? - Is "Jagger" A Major Google Marketing Error? - Tracking Your AdSense Statistics - New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:09 AM | Permalink
October 21, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 21, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: October 2005 Google Update - Does Your Blog Pass the Jakob Nielsen Test? - Why Should a Business Outsource a PPC Campaign - Why Should a Business Outsource a PPC Campaign, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 5:15 AM | Permalink
October 20, 2005
Threadwatch Back; WebmasterWorld At Alternate AddressFollowing up on yesterday's search forum problems, Threadwatch is now back up, and Nick (welcome back, Nick!) explains about database issues being the fault there. WebmasterWorld is still down on the main domain, but a backup/interim site on the searchengineworld.com domain is now up and running in limited fashion. A cable cut apparently took out a number of sites, including WebmasterWorld. Brett explains more here (welcome back, Brett!). Want to discuss, comment or contribute news? Visit our SEW Forum thread on the topic, WebmasterWorld, Threadwatch, SEW Forums Down.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:26 AM | Permalink
October 19, 2005
WebmasterWorld, Threadwatch -- Even SEW Forums DownI've been working on a post about the Google Oct. 2005 "Jagger" update but unable to reach either WebmasterWorld or Threadwatch to link to some posts about it at both places. At first, I thought maybe it was a connection problem with the hotel I'm staying at. Then I saw Jim Boykin post that the sites are down for him, too. So it wasn't just me -- and not just you, if you're having problems. Meanwhile, I went over to check our own SEW Forums to see if there was any news on what happened to WMW and Threadwatch, only to find our own forums were down! I think that was very brief, because a few minutes later they came back up.
I know we've been having some massive spidering attacks this week, so perhaps the same has hit the other two sites. Want to discuss? See the tw and wmw down? and SEW database problems too. Sounds like perhaps today is a good day for that search marketing day off that I wished for earlier this year. Back on the Jagger update when the other two sites are up. In the meantime, you can check out our Oct. 2005 Google Update thread and the More info on updates post from Google's Matt Cutts.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:53 PM | Permalink
October 14, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 14, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Microsoft and Yahoo to Link IM Services? - Reputable Search Marketing Companies - Google's New Webmaster Guidelines - Yahoo News Adds Blogs to Results Set - AdWords Now Allows Targeting Ads To Sections Of A Site, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:10 AM | Permalink
October 7, 2005
Welcome Back, I-Search Mailing List & Detlev!SES moderator Detlev Johnson has resurrected the twice-weekely moderated discussion list that was once one of the few sources of regular interaction for the search marketing community back in the early days. The long-lost I-Search discussion list, originaly moderated by Marshall Simmonds, predated most search forums, and was a regular hangout for most of us back then.
Detlev's new mailing list is named, appropriately enough, SearchReturn, and it has all the familiar trappings of I-Search. One of the nicest aspects of the list is that it's carefully moderated by Detlev, so you only get on-topic, thoughtful posts in the twice-weekly mailings.
It's free to sign up for SearchReturn. It's also available as an RSS feed, and you can also check out the online archives of past editions. More information is available here.
Andrew Goodman, the last editor of I-Search before it died, created his own discussion list that's also worth checking out. SEM 2.0 is an invitation-only Google group, and members are expected to have intermediate to advanced search marketing experience to join.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:54 PM | Permalink
Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 7, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google and Sun in Collaborative Effort - MSN adCenter Pilot Program - SEO For Multilingual, International & Dynamic Web Site - Yahoo & Partners Plan Open Source Digital Library - "Bad" Keywords; Do They Damage My Campaigns? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:00 AM | Permalink
September 23, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Sep. 23, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Ask Jeeves to Rebrand - How To Know Whether A Site Is Accessible - Can We Agree Automated Comment & Link Posting Is A Bad Thing? - Could Google Bid for AOL? - XHTML and SEO, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:02 AM | Permalink
September 22, 2005
AdWords Help Online Forum & API Bug Being FixedSpotted on the Inside AdWords blog, word of a recently launched AdWords online forum (via Google Groups, of course) named AdWords Help. At the moment, the forum has 267 registered members who can post post questions/responses/comments. If you don't register, you're still able to browse/read posts and search.
And while we're on the Google AdWords beat... Via Smart-Keywords.com we learn that a bug the new AdWords API caused problems for users. The Google AdWords Blog has confirmed the bug and says that the recent API update has been rolled-back. Once the problems have been fixed Google will notify API users and rerelease the code.
Posted by Gary Price at 1:30 PM | Permalink
September 16, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Sep. 16, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Offers Advice to Sites on Penalty - Yahoo! Instant Search - Google Blog Search Launched - MSN AdCenter Review - New legal threat to Google over GMail, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:13 AM | Permalink
September 9, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Sep. 9, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: What's Your Favorite Search Engine Marketing Book? - Top 20 SEO Contradications - Microsoft's Ballmer Vowed To "Kill Google" - AdSense Additions Create Opportunities - Do Redirected Links Count? - Keyword Density Suggestions? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:21 AM | Permalink
September 2, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Sep. 2, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: French To Back European Rival To US Search Players - Google Goes Into Print Ads - The Future of Search - GoogleNet: Rumors of a Parallel Internet Surface - Traffic Power Files Suit Against SEO Book - Are SEO Forums Ruining the SEO/SEM Industry Image? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:25 AM | Permalink
August 26, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Aug. 25, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: O'Reilly In Off-Topic Link Selling Debate - Google Talk Instant Messaging - MSN Search Toolbar Anyone? - Google Launches Enhanced Desktop Software - Strategies for Taking Advantage of New AdWords System, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:55 AM | Permalink
August 24, 2005
The Polarization Of Search Forums?The First SEO Republic Forumed from Jim Hedger at Search Engine Guide looks at the idea of search engine forums shaping up as an almost "horseshoe shaped congress" with black hatters on one end, white hatters in the other and some in the middle (including our SEW Forums). He finds the polarization ugly, political and producing negative repercussions for the industry.
My view is completely different. I think some forums can be assigned more "white hat" or "black hat" but not entirely. And if anything, I've felt many of the discussions on the issue of white versus black hat have been far more productive than in the past.
I know our own forums the best, of course -- and I know we work really hard to ensure people are getting along to respect each other even when views are different.
The main thing I've noticed over the past year is in my view, people do seem to be understanding other view points, at least around our place. The idea that things are all black or white does seem to me to be slowly going away, which I've felt is more a good thing. I've also seen plenty of people who have completely opposite views nevertheless agree to disagree, rather than friendships being torn apart.
It bears reminding that we've long had a wide-spectrum of political-like opinions about SEO and search marketing, as I covered way back in my Desperately Seeking Search Engine Marketing Standards piece of 2001. We even had this spectrum before the Google "monoculture" days Jim argues we're now emerging from. Yep, renewed attention is being paid to the other Bradys Of Search -- but we've always had them and did have them even more strongly in the 1995-2000 time frame.
Want to comment or discuss? Start a thread over in the Search Industry Growth & Trends section of our forums.. Want to read some past White Hat/Black Hat discussions? White Hat - Gray Hat - Black Hat has a bunch of them.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:06 AM | Permalink
August 19, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Aug. 19, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Details On New Yahoo Paid Listings System - AdWords Smart Keyword Evaluation Is Live - Any Way to Manipulate Alexa Rankings? - Avoiding Search Engine Penalties or Getting Out From Under Them - Sergey Brin Says Yahoo's Index Size Claim is Inflated, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:28 AM | Permalink
August 12, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Aug. 12, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Search Engine Strategies San Jose 05 Session Coverage - Yahoo Invests $1bn in Alibaba.com - Is Yahoo Hand Coding More Results? - Anatomy of a Successful Reinclusion Request - Google Launch Phase 2 of Longer Ad Text Beta Programme - Google Toolbar AutoUpdate Pushes AutoLink Feature, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:14 AM | Permalink
August 5, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Aug. 5, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo! Publisher Network Launches - Search Engines Really Are Different - Has Googlebot Become Lethargic? - How Best to Manage Visitors With Ad Blocking Turned On - Is Dogpile Attracting More Users? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:46 AM | Permalink
July 29, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: July 29, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SEO Is A Lot of Work, Is It Worth It? - Getting from Point A to B with Search - New Ask Jeeves Paid Listings Program Said To Come August 1 - Low Quality Clicks - Google's Cash Cow - Did Google Just Target Directories?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:00 AM | Permalink
July 22, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: July 22, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: July 2005 Yahoo Update - Redirecting Thousands of Dynamic URLs - Hiring An SEO - Do Search Engines like my-widget or my_widget.html best? - Myths - Never mind the top ten tips, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:32 AM | Permalink
July 18, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: July 18, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: How Should Search Engines Protect Privacy? - AdSense Updates Terms & Policies - What Degrees Or Professional Backgrounds Do SEO/SEMers Have? - Optical Character Recognition And Crawlers - Interlinking of Related Sites, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:43 AM | Permalink
July 8, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: July 8, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Reporting Click Fraud to Google AdSense - Google Sitemaps One Month Later - Future of Web Directories - Is There Such A Thing As Spam Anymore? - Google Teaser Problems - How Much Is An AdSense Website Worth?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:26 AM | Permalink
July 1, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: July 1, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Sued For Click Fraud - SEW Live in Atlanta - New Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 & MyRank - Google Getting New Personalized Search - Does Advertising Make Sense If You Have Top Organic Listings? - Google launches Video Player, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:20 AM | Permalink
June 24, 2005
Congrats To SEW Forums Member Number 5,000Our SEW Forums just had their first birthday earlier this month, and now we've just passed the 5,000 mark in members signed-up. We didn't drop balloons and confetti on the head of our 5,000 member, but we did shower him with a free Search Engine Watch membership and a pass to one of our Search Engine Strategies conferences. Congrats to our lucky member, and thanks to all of our members and moderators for helping build the forums!
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:45 AM | Permalink
Search Forums Roundup: June 24, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: MSN Search Update & Neural Net Tech - Adwords Algorithmic Changes - Yahoo Launching New Search Index - Google Adwords vs. Yahoo Search - MSN Debuts Local Search, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:24 AM | Permalink
June 17, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: June 17, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google, IP Diversity and eBay - Yahoo Subscription Search Service Opens - How Will Search Marketing Evolve? The Future Business Model of PPC - The Most Exciting Year for Search Engines? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:02 AM | Permalink
June 9, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: June 10, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Sitemaps Now Accepting Web Page Feeds - SEO Easy To Sell, But Can You Deliver? - AdWords Untargeted Ads Disappearing? - Significant Changes In Google Results: May 2005 - How to Find Thousands of Quality Backlinks - Shopzilla is Sold for $525 Million, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:32 PM | Permalink
June 3, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: June 3, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Secrets of eval.google.com Revealed? - Q&A Session With Jim Lanzone, VP of Ask Jeeves - What Should Google Do About PageRank In The Toolbar? - Jeeves Showing AdWords Ads on BitTorrent - Framesets: The Kiss of Death, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:57 AM | Permalink
May 27, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: May 27, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Association of American University Presses' Position On Google - Is My Site Being Hijacked? - What Happened To Google Overnight!? - Measuring PPC Success - Directories: Are They Just for SEO?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:04 AM | Permalink
May 23, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: May 23, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Gets Personalized Home Page Feature - Proposed Search Engine Standard For Titles & Descriptions - Traditional Marketing As Part Of Your SEM Campaign - Steve Ballmer: 'One-hit wonder' Google could disappear in five years - Search Engine Optimization and Gresham's Law, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:43 AM | Permalink
May 13, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: May 13, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Buys Dodgeball - Yahoo-FindWhat Patent Lawsuit Ends In Mistrial - More AdSense Ad Units = Less Money? - #1 Ranking A Business Asset? How much is it worth? - and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:05 AM | Permalink
May 6, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: May 6, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SES Toronto Live, Google Windows Web Accelerator, Where To Get Links?, AskJeeves Will Drop Ads by 31% - Yahoo To Test Banner Ads - SEO & The Zen Factor - and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:14 AM | Permalink
May 5, 2005
What Searchers Really WantAll search marketing requires making an educated guess about the needs of searchers and creating content—whether web pages or sponsored listings—that will attract clicks. Until recently, there wasn't a lot of hard data to support this process. There just wasn't much insight into the mind of the searcher.
That's changed, with a number of studies focusing explicitly on searcher needs and behavior. This reserach is gold mine for search marketers, writes Anne Kennedy in today's SearchDay article, What Clicks with Web Searchers, which recounts a recent Search Engine Strategies session that focused on searcher behavior.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:36 AM | Permalink
April 29, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 29, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AdWords Allows Site Specific Targeting - The Future: Stuff I've Seen - Identifying SEO Experts - Quick Keyword Suggestion Tool - What Is the Strategy for Groupings In AdWords? - New "Link Police" in Google Algorithm? and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:47 AM | Permalink
April 26, 2005
SEM 2.0 For Search Discussions Via EmailBefore search forums, it was mailing lists that search marketers used to talk with each other. In particular, I-Search was a venerable institution that sadly died as forums finally overtook it. But last year, the last I-Search moderator Andrew Goodman decided to give mailing lists another go. SEM 2.0 was launched. It's built up steam since then and worth a subscription. It won't replace forums for many people. However, the list has shown that discussions via your inbox can still thrive.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:40 AM | Permalink
April 22, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 22, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Enhances Personalized Search - Google Wants All the "oogles"? - Penalty for Dead Links? - Do Engines Count RSS Feeds? - Cookie Deletion Study Exaggerated - Are Google Results Sometimes Human Edited? - Usability Versus Online Marketing, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:25 AM | Permalink
April 15, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 15, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Coke vs. Pepsi Challenge for Search Engines - How Many Impressions Does AdWords Keyword Get Before It's Disabled? - Bid Management Software - Does Yahoo/MSN Like High PageRank Links? - New Google Answering Facts, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:00 AM | Permalink
April 8, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 8, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Bookmarks Seen by Search Engines? - Of Sandboxes and Toolbars: Google's New Patent Application - Attaining Quality Ranks on MSN Search - High/Low Bandwidth Version of a Site: Spamming? - Google Dynamically Changing Page Titles - Keyword Density Analysis Nonsense, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:03 PM | Permalink
April 1, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Apr. 1, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Discuss the 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards - Switching Overture Listings On & Off - Is Search Marketing Ready For A Standards Organization? - What To Do When You're Kicked Out of Adsense - Using Trailing Slash In Linking, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:19 AM | Permalink
March 25, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 25, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Can Tagging Help Search? - Yahoo Buys Flickr - Ask Jeeves Bought By IAC - Yahoo Could Be Dropping API Access to PPC - Deceptive Advertising in Search Results - Google Placing Less Emphasis On Link Popularity?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:35 AM | Permalink
March 18, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 18, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: New Search Ads Program Coming From MSN - Microsoft Search Advertisers Gets too Personal - The Complete AdSense Terms & New Features Update - Why Does Yahoo Add Strange Query String to Pages Indexed? - Click Fraud Check - How to Proceed? - Local Search Summarized: A Fascinating Lack of Data and Definition, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:10 AM | Permalink
March 11, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 11, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Cloaking and Keyword Loading On Pages - Load Balancing and Its Effects on Search Engine Optimization - Changing Domains To Be Re-included In Yahoo - Google is Now Asking for a Code if You Use a Rank Checker - Google Adds Weather Feature, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:42 AM | Permalink
March 4, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Mar. 4, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SES New York: Live Coverage - Google Hires Top Windows Programmer - Yahoo's Contextual Ads in the Wild - Can Google Push Users To Yahoo & MSN? - Overture Services To Become Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions - The Best SEO Tactic: Do Nothing at all?, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:44 AM | Permalink
February 25, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 25, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Concerns Over New Google Tool - Sued for Blackhat SEO? - Pay Per Call: The Other PPC - Little Guy Sued Over Generic Name Use - Getting an Education in Search Engine Marketing - Google's Stranglehold on Webmasters, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:23 AM | Permalink
February 21, 2005
Pandia Gives Google, Others Top Search HonorsPreviously, Gary mentioned Search Engine Watch was honored with two awards in the Pandia Search Engine Awards 2004. Here's a rundown on all the winners in each category:
- Best All Around Search Engine: Google
- Best Metasearch: ixquick
- Best Site On Searching: Search Engine Watch
- Best Site On Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Watch
- Best Search Engine Discussion Forum: Webmaster World
- Best Publication On Searching: Web Search Garage, by Tara Calishain
- Best Publication On Search Engine Marketing: Unfair Advantage Book On Winning The Search Engine Wars, by Planet Ocean
- Best Weblog On Searching: ResourceShelf
- Best Weblog On Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Journal
- Best Desktop Search Tool: Copernic
The Pandia article on its awards also recaps a number of runners-up and alternative resources, so it's worth a read-through to discover many other resources and tools not mentioned above.
What about our own Search Engine Watch Awards, that I mentioned would be happening earlier this year. Normally we do them in January, but it's been busy, and we're behind. The plan now is to open up the process in March, so that our readers can discuss what they liked best in 2004. More details to come on this later.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:02 PM | Permalink
February 18, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 18, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: NY Times Agrees to Buy About.com - Quantity of Inbound Links the Only Linking Factor Search Engines Use? - New Google Toolbar Feature Rekindles the Anti-SmartTag Debate - Keyword Themes and Google - Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion for Web Site Usability, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:18 AM | Permalink
February 11, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 11, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Ask Jeeves Acquires Bloglines - Bored With SEO - GoogleFox or FireBot? - The Case of Google and the Disappearing Employee - Does Yahoo Sandbox? - Term Weight Formula - New Google Maps, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:00 AM | Permalink
February 4, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 4, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Testing Contextual Search Tool - MSN Launches Search Engine - Turning AdWords On/Off - Does Adsense Help With Link Building? - Hand Coding vs. HTML Editors, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:01 AM | Permalink
January 31, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 31, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google to Open Up API to AdWords Customers - AOL Expands Advertising Opportunities for Local Businesses - Google Adds Video Search - Google Loses Trademark Dispute In France - Google's Supplemental Index - Google Now Allows More Than 10 Words Per Query, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:18 AM | Permalink
January 21, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 21, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AOL Search Moves Up to the Big Leagues - Google's New "Nofollow" Attribute - We Are Seeing A Rollout of MSN New Search - Organizing a Multi-Language Site - 7 Steps To Identifying Click Fraud, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:41 AM | Permalink
January 14, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 14, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: MSN Search Out of Beta Feb. 1 - How To Get Inbound Links For An E-commerce Site - Duplicate Content Penalty Time Span - Fixing IE Security Risk Blocks AdSense - Desktop Search from Yahoo! - It's Official : AdWords Policy Takes Aim at Affiliate Ads, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:50 AM | Permalink
January 7, 2005
Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 7, 2005Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Time For An Indexing Summit? - The Don'ts of Directory Development - Which Directories Would You Pay To Be Included In? - PageRank for Firefox 1.0 - The Value Of Using A Good Web Analytics Package - Blocking "Generic" AdSense Ads, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:20 AM | Permalink
December 30, 2004
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 30, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: The Little Engine That Could - What Is Your Greatest AdSense Advice? - Search Engines and FrontPage Shared Borders - Can Look And Feel Be Copyrighted? - My Experience With Site Match and Trusted Feed - Spam Reporting: Obligations and Issues and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:41 AM | Permalink
December 23, 2004
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 23, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Having Trouble Believing In Crosslinking Penalties - Directory Wars - Local Search is just Hype - 20 Guidelines To Create Successful Landing Pages - Google as Web King, For Now... - Robots.txt Issue With Duplicate Content, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:37 AM | Permalink
December 17, 2004
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 17, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Live from SES Chicago 2004 - White Hat/black Hat SEO Panel - So Now You Can Search Videos - Google Wins Major Legal Victory vs. Geico - Google Suggest Beta - The Dark Side of Exchanging Reciprocal Links, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:58 PM | Permalink
December 10, 2004
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 10, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: SEO Thoughts on Google - Yahoo! Local Listings - New Program - User Reviews and Local Search Optimization - Data Providers: The Engine That Drives Local Search - Google Affiliates Update - Confessions of a White Hat Content Spammer: What I've Learned by Ignoring Google, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:15 AM | Permalink
December 3, 2004
Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 3, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: The Great SEO Myths of our Time - Let's Test Hijacking A Google Listing - Internet Searches Getting Re-directed - Search Engines Offering SEO Services? - Shopping Search Arrives as an Important Vertical - Is Having A Yahoo Directory Listing A Hindrance? - Google Not Reporting All Backlinks.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:20 AM | Permalink
November 19, 2004
Search Engine Forums Spotlight: Nov. 19, 2004Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Launches Search for Scholars - Adwords to Ban Affiliates? - MSN's 'Near Me' Search Button - The Difference In Traffic for #1 and #10? - Robots.txt & Security Issues - One year anniversary of the 'Florida' Update - What is the Future of the Niche Directory.
Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:27 AM | Permalink
November 16, 2004
Keeping SEO SecretsNick from Threadwatch has an interesting post today about how the real "secrets" of SEO never make it onto search forums. I agree, but it's not a reason for most to panic.
Nick puts himself out there by discussing how when he saw an effective but generally unknown technique, he got the person posting to remove their post.
This leads into his discussion that the "good stuff" doesn't generally make it into forums -- or more important, if it does, it doesn't last long given that search representatives monitor forums closely.
The statement is both true and false. Absolutely, there are secrets and tips passed among friends that never see the light of day on forums. That might make some people feel panicked. Don't.
I've never been a big proponent on trying to have people follow "secret" techniques. For one thing, if I did write about a particular technique, the exposure wouldn't let it last long.
Much more important is the fact that such loopholes generally aren't long-lasting. Those who've built SEO work around such techniques also understand this. They'll move on to the next technique and ride it for as long as it lasts.
In contrast, if you haven't used such secrets, you might actually have a better foundation for longer-lasting success. Remember, even the most closely held secrets eventually get detected. And when a big algorithm change rolls along that wipes out a number of secrets, you may be largely immune to this.
It's also important to remember there plenty of "good stuff" out there that's not so secret, helpful tips that you can employ that will bring about improvements. It's still the case today that simple title tag changes bring people better rankings.
In the end, I think it helps to understand what style of SEO you follow. I've got a bicycle race metaphor I like to roll out to explain this more.
Those who go after really specific SEO techniques, "secret" style efforts, can be like sprinters. Those focusing on content, tried and true things like good page titles -- they're riding along at a standard pace.
The steady rider may watch a sprinter overtake them and may think, "Well, I ought to do the same." But at some point, the sprinter can't keep up the pace. They fall back, and the steady rider pulls ahead. Then the sprinter catches their breath, digs deep and sprints ahead again -- only to fall back, letting the cycle repeat.
OK, maybe it's just the tortoise and the hare on bikes! But the difference is that I'm not saying there's a particular "winner" in the story. Rather, the emphasis is more on the style of racer you want to be.
If you want to go to SEO secrets route, you've got to understand that your life will involve a lot of flux. If you go the steady riding route, you've got to understand that yes, sometimes people may shoot ahead of you or that you may never crack a particular term. However, the time you put in overall may be much less, and the consistency of your traffic might be more assured.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:30 AM | Permalink
November 12, 2004
GoogleGuy, Meet MSN DudeAfter a pretty unlikely suggestion that MSN is somehow grabbing listings from Google, MSN's forum poster MSN Dude popped up in a WebmasterWorld.com thread to deny the accusations. That brought out Google's long-time forum poster GoogleGuy in the same thread.
A punch up? Not at all. Instead, a chummy welcome to the world of crawling and support that Google thought the accusations didn't hold water. But in another thread spotted by Peter Da Vanzo, is GoogleGuy suggesting that site owners get to work reverse-engineering MSN's search algorithm?
Well, it's not unprecedented. Back in 2003, GoogleGuy had some suggestions in terms of search engine optimization for...AltaVista!
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:02 AM | Permalink
October 12, 2004
Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search BlogvangelistJeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).
Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.
That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.
What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.
Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.
Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.
As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.
Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.
Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.
A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.
Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 5, 2004
Threadwatch Tracks SEM ForumsSearch engine marketing forums can be great reading, but finding the best stuff among the chaff can also be hard. Threadwatch is a new blog from long-time forums participant Nick W, where he highlights threads he likes. Thanks to SEO Book for the catch!
Want more forum recap resources? Search Engine Guide has for ages given a rundown on the best three or four threads from various forums in its free daily newsletter. Search Engine Guide also kindly provides a recap of these for our own SearchDay newsletter, which runs on Fridays (here's an example from last week).
Need to search across the many search marketing forums out there? Check out Marketing Forum Watch for that. OK, our own Search Engine Watch Forums aren't yet indexed there, but they're working on that.
Finally, where are these forums? We have a small list in the lower left-hand corner of our own forum site -- look for the Forum Roll box. We've also just had a discussion on this topic naming even more: Important/useful SEO/Webmaster Forums. Head over to that thread if you want to comment or discuss this post.
Postscript: I should have also mentioned originally that the Search Engine Roundtable blog from Barry Schwartz (AKA rustybrick) is an outstanding place for forum recaps, as well. It's definitely worth a subscription or regular visit, if you want to keep up with topics. It does a great job recapping various key issues.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 17, 2004
Search Forum Roundup: Sept. 17, 2004Today's SearchDay article, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, has links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Amazon Launches A9 Search Engine - FindWhat Announces Pay-Per-Call Ad Option - Sitemaps On The Homepage - Optimizing An Annual Reports Page - Jeeves goes to the Himalayas - How to boot someone out of Google.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 16, 2004
Welcome To The Search Engine Watch BlogOur Search Engine Watch Blog is now live, and we hope you'll enjoy this new way for us to communicate about search engines.
The blog isn't going to replace what Search Engine Watch already does. Instead, it's going to let us better publish some items that may not come to your attention.
In particular, the monthly Search Engine Report newsletter that I've sent out since 1996 always contains a rundown on search engine news from around the web. Many of those entries are very blog-like, in offering both news and commentary on the developments.
About 130,000 people get that newsletter, so the items are well seen. However, it takes a month to see them, and the newsletter format makes it difficult to reference an item you may want to share with others.
For example, in the last newsletter was an item where I mentioned that MSN told me that it plans to release its own desktop search tool before the end of the year. I'm fairly sure this is the first time they've publicly put a timeline on that, so it's a great news tidbit. If you knew to look for the hidden bookmark, you could even link to the item like this.
Unfortunately, few know to look for those hidden bookmarks. Over the past year, I have experimented with manually adding permalinks, visible links that bring you straight to an item, as you can see with this example about search deals from earlier this year. But manually inserting these links was a cumbersome process. In addition, even with the links, the mixture of items all together can cause some to be overlooked.
Blogging solves these problems. It's easier in my view to blog a news tidbit and not feel compelled to dive into an entire article about the subject. The format and style of blogging also lends itself to more informal reviews of topics and provides a more personal tone than a regular article allows. Permalinks are automatically created. Items can easily exist on their own.
In short, Search Engine Watch has been blogging for ages, since before blogging software and feeds were out there. Now our spirit is catching up with the proper technology.
As said, the other things Search Engine Watch is known for will continue. Chris Sherman will carry on providing daily, in-depth coverage of various search topics via our SearchDay newsletter. I'll continue to produce articles throughout the month on search topics myself, in particular longer pieces that try to tie together various tends in the industry combined with tips for searchers and search marketers alike.
I'll also continue to write the monthly Search Engine Report newsletter and the twice-monthly Search Engine Update newsletter that goes out to our paid Search Engine Watch members. So if you like those formats, don't panic! You'll continue to get a round-up of significant search news and commentary in one place, via email.
Gary Price, who joined as our news editor last month, now gets to thrive in his element. Gary's been actively blogging about search through his own ResourceShelf site since 2001. That site continues but is focused now on information about library science and research. Gary's great coverage and observations from search now will flow primarily through the Search Engine Watch Blog. His post yesterday about the new changes at Amazon's A9 search site is just one example of that.
It's Gary that you'll see primarily posting on a daily basis (though ironically, he's off today!). I'm more likely to blog on a weekly or twice-weekly basis. I've found it useful over the years to sit back and let the news accumulate for a week or two, then see what trends have emerged out of it. I want to preserve that perspective.
Chris Sherman may pop-up from time-to-time. Either he or Gary will always keep you informed of new SearchDay articles that have been posted. However, Chris may occasionally want to do blog posts on various topics, as well.
Similarly, forums editor Elisabeth Osmeloski will be keeping Gary updated about any key discussions or news out of our Search Engine Watch Forums that were launched in June. She's done a great job of managing the area, which has now surpassed the 1,500 forum members mark. Thanks to those who've participated there and to all our volunteer moderators!
Our forums are where we invite you to comment on any blog posts, just as we currently use them for those who want to comment about regular news stories that we write. Comments are welcomed. It's easy and free to open a forum account. You can start a new thread about something we've blogged or contribute to existing ones that may already be going.
Please consider the blog to be in beta format for the next month or so. We've already had an alpha test, where I blogged a number of items out of my September 2004 Search Engine Report newsletter, to see how the system would work. We also added a number of items since then. But none of this was visible to readers.
Now it is. We'll likely make further tweaks and changes to the site over the coming month or so. FYI, you can reach the blog via http://blog.searchenginewatch.com, though the URL will redirect to http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/. That longer URL will help with some further integration into the regular Search Engine Watch site for later this year. But bookmark either URL, and you'll always reach the blog. (FYI, those wanting more about what we use should see my blog entry, Why We Went With Movable Type.
Blogs, forums, SearchDay, Search Engine Report, Search Engine Update -- what do I read? How do I take it. Don't worry. Very shortly (like in a day or so) I'll update our Search Engine Newsletters page to better explain things and outline the various feeds we offer.
Want to comment about the blog launch and it in general? Please visit our forum discussion here: New Search Engine Watch Blog
NOTE: This post is identical to today's SearchDay article, as it made sense to run the same thing in both place. This is about the only time you'll see this type of duplication.
NOTE: This post is identical to today's SearchDay article, as it made sense to run the same thing in both place. This is about the only time you'll see this type of duplication.Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 3, 2004
Search Forum Roundup: Sept. 3, 2004Today's SearchDay article, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, has links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: SEO for an eBay store? - Who Benefits Most from 3 AdSense Ads Per Page - What SEO Guarantees Do You Offer? - Keywords In Quotes Vs. Keywords In Italics - Yahoo Local Match & Yellow Pages
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
See More Posts From:
- Send us feedback |
- Technical questions or bug reports? |
- Newsletter problems? |
- Receive news via SEW RSS feeds
- Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. 2009 All rights reserved. | Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions |
- Privacy Policy |
- Affiliates
Senior Digital Planner
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States
Senior Search Analyst
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States New York, United States
Webmaster - Marketing
West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Lewisburg, United States
Web Marketing Manager
Harvard Business Publishing Watertown, United States
