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November 18, 2009

AdGooroo Unveils Academic Program Featuring Free Tools for Educators

AdGooroo is launching a new academic program that provides free resources to educators wishing to teach their students about search marketing. The program provides free academic licenses to AdGooroo's SEM Insight.

"Supporting the academic community is a top priority for AdGooroo, and we're offering them free access to SEM Insight, our flagship research tool. Commercial users are paying at least $399 a month to use this tool," said AdGooroo Founder and CEO, Rich Stokes. "It's important to AdGooroo and me personally to cultivate the understanding of accountable online advertising and particularly search advertising at the student level. We'd like to serve as a helpful resource to academic departments and professors around the globe."

The University of Chicago is one of the first educational institutions to sign up for the program.

"Search engines and the Web in general have had a huge impact on the world around us, and this partnership program not only helps the University of Chicago expose students to the world of Internet advertising. It allows us to submerge them into actual marketer campaigns and let them see for themselves what a competitive channel online advertising has become," said Linda Darragh, Clinical Associate professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago's Polsky Center of Entrepreneurship. "Having access to resources like these from AdGooroo enables us to provide this experience for students and take the lesson from figurative to real world."

The program is open to faculty and staff, both part and full-time, that work at a qualifying educational institution, such as public and private vocational schools, correspondence schools, colleges and universities. The institution must have been accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 30, 2009

Bryan Eisenberg Shares 69 Free (or Low Cost) Tools to Improve Your Website

Bryan Eisenberg, the co-author of the bestselling books "Call to Action", "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?" and "Always Be Testing", has a new personal blog named, Bryan Eisenberg. (Does he owe his parents royalties for using that name for his blog?)

And he's just posted an incredibly useful list of 69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website.

(I should disclose that I'm mentioned in the 69th listing, which is for Market Motive, but so are Avinash Kaushik, John Marshall, Todd Malicoat, Matt Bailey, and Jennifer Laycock, who are also members of the Market Motive faculty.)

So, check out the complete list of low-cost and free tools. Yes, yes, you'll find ones like Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, that you already knew about. But there are plenty of others that I'd never heard about before.

And while you are visiting Eisenberg's new blog, let him know if there are other free (or low cost) tools that should be added to the list. Hey, improving your website is hard, so we want to know as many options as possible.

Oh, and if you come to SES Chicago 2009, thank Eisenberg in person. You can't miss him. He's the New York Yankees fan being interviewed by the Boston Red Sox Nation citizen in the video below.

Bryan Eisenberg, Future Now, at SES London 2008 on SEO

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 10, 2009

Marin Software Adds Features, Experiences Client Growth in Tough Economy

Marin Software has added new features to its enterprise paid search management application, Marin Search Marketer. The new additions employ advanced ROI-based campaign management features to help search marketers move beyond a singular focus on bid management.

"Today's search market place is highly dynamic with growing competition, the ever-present need to drive additional traffic, as well as ongoing quality score and match type changes," said Chris Lien, chief executive officer of Marin Software. "To maximize overall search profits, one has to address all of these factors via effective campaign management, including down to the actual ad group structure."

The new features include Raw Term Expansion, Creative Auto-Tester, and Ad Group Optimizer and are available to Marin Software customers at no additional cost.

Meanwhile, Marin Software is also reporting that their client base is growing despite a tough economy. The company now boasts over 130 customers which collectively manage $500 million in annual paid search spend across 100 million keywords using their proprietary software.

"Marketers today need to every means possible to acquire and retain new customers," said Lien. "Paid search has always been the marketing technique that allows brands and companies to attract the most new customers to their sites, efficiently and cost-effectively, and we're pleased that so many high profile companies and brands have adopted our enterprise-class solution to help them realize the most return on their search marketing investments."

Marin's recent client additions include Angie's List, HealthCare.com, InsuranceQuote, and People Search Media. Agencies who've recently signed on include Draftfcb, Ionic Media, Neo@Ogilvy, Salmat Digital, and Tightrope Interactive.

These join an existing client base that includes Razorfish, Reply.com, Trouvé Media, and Zip Realty.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Acquisio Acquires Landing Page Maker Emovendo

Acquisio, a provider of paid search management software, has announced the acquisition of landing page maker Emovendo. The acquisition includes Emovendo's flagship product PageVester, a landing page application.

"We're thrilled to announce the latest addition to our offering. This is an important milestone. Our customers will soon be able to gain control over the part of their marketing campaigns which has been in the hands of IT for so long, the infamous landing page" said Marc Poirier, Co-Founder of Acquisio.

Now search marketers using Acquisio's SEARCH platform will be able to control the entire cycle of a paid search campaign.

Alexandre Pelletier, founder and former CEO of Emovendo, explained, "Not only does PageVester allow users to rapidly build and deploy professional landing pages, it also supports the creation and management of A/B tests with Google Website Optimizer".

Marc Poirier added "Tweaking ad copy and bids is essential stuff, but it will only take you so far. You need to work on post-click activity. This is where PageVester comes in. It delivers instant value to its users by simplifying landing page creation and A/B test implementation."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AdGooroo Adds Three New Features to Search Marketing Tool

AdGooroo announced today at SES San Jose that they've added three new features to their search marketing tool, SEM Insight. One of the features is called Budget Analyzer and it helps track what competitors are spending on paid search impressions, clicks, click-thru rates (CTR) as well as their total spend.

"With the addition of Budget Analyzer to SEM Insight, advertisers can now see not only their competitors' search traffic, impressions and other optimization efforts, but also what they spend," said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes. "Enabling marketers to see how competitors spend their ad dollars online offers a leg up on the competition and the ability to achieve the greatest possible return on their search investment."

The other two tools are AdWords Data Calibration and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Traffic Estimator. These features allow SEM's to import Google AdWords campaigns with the purpose of improving budget estimates. They also assist in obtaining competitive intelligence data such as organic search clicks and paid search CTR.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 20, 2009

New Version of SearchIgnite Features Click Attribution Solution

If a customer clicks on three separate links before making a purchase, oftentimes only one of the links gets credit. But with the new version of SearchIgnite, all three clicks can be attributed to the purchase.

"With the right tools in place, holistic management of online media provides a tremendous opportunity for sophisticated marketers," said Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite. "Attribution of customer conversions across multiple clicks and exposures, as well as managing search and display campaigns together can lead to more optimized efforts across these channels, improve campaign effectiveness and increase return on ad spend."

Also included in the update, verson 3.2, is Dart for Advertisers (DFA) impression and click integration.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 25, 2009

SEO Samba Releases Updated Search Management Platform with Google Tools Integration

SEO Samba has updated their search management platform. The update includes integration with Google Tools. Here's what to expect:

Google Analytics (GA) tab that displays website usage data - Automatically adds GA code to your site. Email marketing communication is enabled, allowing marketers to access Clickstream data.
Google Webmaster tools that help Google better index your site - Creates and uploads verification files as well as XML sitemaps for both Web and news to Google Webmaster tools automatically. SEO Samba also checks robots.txt files for errors, and makes the Google 404 widget available within the integrated CMS.
Google Website Optimizer (GWO) to test landing pages & improve conversions - Automatically adds GWO experiments code to your site without having to switch between screens or involve your IT department. Add/delete experiments and monitor the progress of a landing page experiment.

"We have now made it possible to use your Google login account to link your existing account with SEO Samba," said Michel Leconte, founder & CEO SEO Samba. "Once logged into SEO Samba, you will notice three new Google colored tabs. Each tab enables you to make use of Google tools, including Google Website Optimizer for testing A/B variant of landing pages and Google Webmaster Tools to access search engine early indexation, ranking and analysis feedback."

What do you think of the new SEO Samba? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

March 2, 2009

New Engine Ready Tool Aids Landing Page Creation

Search Engine Watch has written much about the need for landing page testing, but how do you know what to test in the first place? A new tool from San Diego-based search marketing agency Engine Ready helps you design the very pages you need to test.

The tool is dubbed Conversion Critic and the great news is that it's FREE.

Engine Ready Vice President Brian Lewis (who I met at SES Chicago) walked me through a demo of the tool last week.

After you sign in, you'll see the start page. Simply type in the URL for the landing page you want to examine and then press the Start button.

The next page will bring up your page inside a frame - with a drag-enabled box that asks you questions about your page.

There are 37 questions across 4 categories, with a super-easy acronym to remember:

M - Market effectiveness O - Offer clarity R - Readability E - Engagement

Once you've answered the questions, Conversion Critic returns a chart reflecting your answers. From that you can determine areas of the landing page you need to work on and see your strengths.

Lewis said most people of their users score highest on Readability. Of course, it's all subjective, so that's where you'll want the testing to come into play.

If for whatever reason you can't test, at least get another pair of eyeballs to use Conversion Critic to see if they view the page the same as you do. Perhaps the Readability is strong for you but not someone else. These are things you want to know, and Conversion Critic can help you do that.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 9, 2009

Kenshoo Integrates Negative Keyword Management

Kenshoo has integrated negative keyword management into its search marketing management tool, KENSHOO SEARCH. Kenshoo says the following data represents average improvements attributable to the cross channel negative keyword manager:

CTR increase by 40-80%
ROI increase by 20-60%
Conversion Rate increase by 30-50%
Profit increase by 30-50%

Print-on-demand site CafePress has seen success using the feature. Jeremy Post, Sr. Manager, Acquisition Marketing at CafePress explains, "We manage massive amounts of keywords, so it was critical that our campaign managers have a way to easily manage negative keywords. This feature not only delivers value by increasing our campaign quality but it also saves us countless hours of work by not having to copy and paste keywords into every part of the system. "

Kenshoo expects additional clients to experience similar results. "Our commitment to Quality Management focuses our efforts on developing features which increase the overall value and effectiveness of search marketing," said Alon Sheafer - VP of Products and Marketing at Kenshoo. "Users of the negative keyword tool are already seeing increased ROI - up to 60% - through cost reductions and improved targeting. By filtering out irrelevant traffic, their ads are being displayed more often on value-driving keywords that increase CTR and conversions."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Clickable Updates Search Ad Management Tool, Includes Emerging Google Ad Formats

Clickable has released the newest version of their search advertising management tool. The version is Clickable Pro 2.0 and includes:

Emerging Google Ad Formats – including Image (banners), Local Business (maps) and Mobile (text and image) – to give marketers more opportunities to connect with their customers. Customers now can add and edit new ad formats right alongside text ads. Clickable is offering this beta functionality for free to Clickable customers so they can experiment and guide Clickable’s development around new advertising formats.
Keyword Filter And Bulk Edit to empower agencies and advertisers to quickly search, edit and export high volumes of keywords across all advertising networks and accounts, all at once and with great flexibility. Bulk editing reduces tedious spreadsheet analysis, saves time and reduces errors.
Clickable Conversion Tracking, which moves out of beta and into the Clickable interface, enabling advertisers to easily measure ROI with one simple, independent tracking system. This powerful reporting tool also informs Clickable’s ActEngine in real time to deliver campaign recommendations with better return.
An Improved ActEngine, including new recommendations to help advertisers more precisely set keyword match types to drive higher quality traffic; properly set up campaigns for content versus search keyword inventory; and optimize long-tail keyword bids. The ActEngine now includes a history of campaign recommendations accepted or ignored; this is the first in a series of enhancements to report results pre- and post-recommendations and drive overall transparency.

“Clickable is transforming search advertising for small to midsize advertisers and agencies on the principle of simplicity,” says David S. Kidder, co-founder and CEO of Clickable. “We’ll continue to rapidly release meaningful product iterations that cultivate best practices, save time and drive performance and profitability. In this down economy, our promise is to help advertisers’ drive better results in less time, and constantly improve.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2009

Two New Free SEO Tools Released by Bruce Clay

The folks over Bruce Clay have released two new SEO tools and the best part is that they're free.

The first one is called the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool. It helps you know how competitive the keyword term or phrase is that you wish to optimize for. Just type in the keywords and the results appear in a chart below. Here's a screenshot of how it works.

The second tool is the SEMToolBar. It's only available for Internet Explorer. Use the search box with the toolbar to conduct a search for the keyword or phrase you're interested in. Once the regular results load, wait a few moments as the toolbar performs its magic. Underneath the results, you'll see a variety of competitive intelligence data including page rank and inbound links.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

October 16, 2008

Internet Marketers Handbook An Impressive Effort

A SEOMoz member Danny Dover has pulled together quite an impressive list of links to tools, impressive articles and in general a great list of must see links for all search marketers.

I have bookmarked this one already and will be using it later today to run a report for a client. Hats off to the effort mate.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 20, 2008

SearchIgnite Releases Version 3.0 of Media Optimization Platform

SearchIgnite has announced the release of the next generation of its media optimization tool. The updates featured in Version 3.0 are:

Full multi-channel media tracking and reporting: Track and report on paid search, display, paid inclusion, organic search, e-mail and more to better understand the consumer sales funnel and properly attribute online media channels that lead to a sale.
Assist keyword reporting: Run assist reports to view which keywords play a role in the customer search cycle - from generating interest up to a conversion.
Custom KPIs: Input specific metrics or formulas to generate custom metrics in standard SearchIgnite reports.
44 new reports available: 44 new reports that can be run with the push of button, including creative and landing page testing reports.
One page access to all reporting functionality: All reports and reporting functionality accessible through a central dashboard, with everything available in one click in both a graphical and “data only” view to make reporting on campaign performance faster and more efficient.

“We are pleased to release what we believe is simply the most advanced optimization and reporting technology currently offered for sophisticated marketers,” said Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite. “For marketers with large or complex search campaigns, SearchIgnite offers unmatched algorithmic, manual and rules based optimization to save time and improve ROI. The latest platform now provides the most comprehensive and actionable reporting available within the industry for measuring campaign performance across all major online media.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 11, 2008

SEW Experts: SEM Tools of the Experts

There are a variety of SEM tools available to search marketers. You should be able to find something to fit every need, and every style. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "SEM Tools of the Experts," Frank Watson shares some of the favorite tools of top search marketers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:00 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2008

Wordtracker Enhance Their Free Trial Offer

For the first time Wordtracker are offering a 1-week trial of their entire service and have released an accompanying 7 day video tutorial on how to get the best out of your Wordtracker account.

Entitled 'Profit from Keywords', the videos are designed to help new webmasters get the most out of keyword research. The short 5 minute videos are accessible to complete novices to search engine optimisation but detailed enough to provide a useful resource for in-house experts & agencies to educate their brand owners & clients.

At the recent SES in London, Wordtracker CMO Ken McGaffin raved about the results of "keyword creativity" seminars he has been leading with household brands that were revealing unique market insights into both offline and online customer acquisition and retention strategies. By including other non-SEO staff and stakeholders in the keyword research process, he found that no two seminars produced the same results and these companies were broadening their online vision overnight.

"Wordtracker has always considered educating our clients a prime remit which is why we launched the Wordtracker Academy last year," said McGaffin. "Clients or potential clients need to know the various ways that keyword research can enhance their business online. At the start this can be especially daunting for SMEs, so the videos provide an easy step by step process so that businesses can get up to speed quickly."

Every SEM expert understands the value of educating the market, but it's no secret that as an industry we've never done it very well. Ken hopes that these videos will help small and medium sized businesses nip the cost of mistakes early in the SEM campaign implementation stages. After all, who wants to rank for terms that no one searches for?

Posted by Jonathan Allen at 7:33 AM | Permalink

January 8, 2008

Microsoft adCenter Add-in for Excel - Keyword Research Gold

Microsoft released a monster 64-mb keyword research tool tonight - download it here. The free tool, still in beta, is a culmination of research conducted at their Pac Rim adLab. It's called the Microsoft adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 - and (obviously) you'll need Excel 2007, which Microsoft offers as a 60-day free trial.

Plans for the product were discussed in December at Search Engine Strategies Chicago.

Posted by David Szetela at 11:31 PM | Permalink

December 4, 2007

Hitwise to launch paid and organic search tools

Sometimes, the news at SES Chicago is hidden in plain sight. For example, during a quick tour of the trade show floor, which opened today, I bumped into Matt Tatham, Manager of Media Relations for Hitwise.

Without twisting his arm too hard, I was able to get him to share an advanced copy of a press release that won't go out until tomorrow. In it, Hitwise will announce the addition of several new features to its Search Intelligence product, including Paid and Organic and Fast Moving Search Terms data.

Hitwise Search Intelligence is part of the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service, which is based on how 10 million US Internet users interact with more than one million websites on a daily basis.

The new features enable marketers to pinpoint opportunities to refine keyword portfolios and improve the effectiveness of search marketing campaigns.

For example, Paid and Organic reports allow marketers to analyze which paid terms and organic listings have been most successful in driving traffic to competitive websites or to an entire industry.

Fast Moving Search Term reports identify the terms that have increased in popularity each week across all search engines. This data can identify emerging search behavior trends to better understand what is top of mind with consumers.

For more details on Hitwise Search Intelligence, you can visit www.hitwise.com, or for up to date analysis of online trends, you can visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 6:51 PM | Permalink

August 2, 2007

Commission Junction Offering Search Marketing Services

UPDATE: I had a phone conversion with Brett Shearing, Business Development Manager at Commission Junction, who told me the search marketing services will only be offered to their vendors. UPDATE

Seems affiliate marketing giant Commission Junction wants to start offering search marketing services, according to an email I received today.

It states they have been offering this to an exclusive group of advertisers for the past three years.

Very interesting... it almost seems too good to be true. A service that has the affiliate programs for you to sell and will take charge of the selling process too.... hmmm. The ultimate turnkey operation - pick a product and then tell them how much you want to make and they cut you a check!

Obviously not that simple but somehow it seems weird. The email is below:

I would like to have 2 minutes of your time to introduce Commission Junction's, CJ Search Group. You may not be aware, but CJ has been providing Search Engine Marketing Services to an exclusive group of Advertisers for the last 3 years. We are now expanding this offering to allow all advertisers to take advantage of our Best in Class approach to Search Engine Marketing.

Over the last three years, we have developed a Best in Class Search Engine Marketing Methodology, built one of the industry most sophisticated Bid Management Platforms (in fact our tracking components are used by eBay), and assembled the brightest team of Search Engine Marketers in the industry. We are experts in Paid Search, Paid Inclusion, SEO and Shopping Portals.

We offer the following benefits to our clients:

- Aggressive Paid Search (Pay Per Click) Optimization. We are experts in increasing ROAS, driving volume and optimizing for maximum efficiencies. - Ability to gain no 1 ranking's naturally through SEO for highly competitive terms. - A sophisticated Bid Management platform able to optimize effectively for CTR and bid price and ROAS, not just bid price and ROAS. - A true understand of the interdependence of Affiliate marketing and Search Engine Marketing. We are the industry leaders in working Search and Affiliates to maximize ROAS. - A dedicated customer focused team. We seek to understand your business objectives, provide effective communication and deliver superior results. - Ability to track multiple cookie conversions. This includes search retargeting. - Performance based pricing model. We are rewarded for increasing ROAS, not by increasing spend.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:30 PM | Permalink

March 23, 2007

iCrossing Acquires Sharp Analytics

Earlier this week, the Scottsdale, AZ based search marketing firm, with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Francisco and Brighton, U.K, has added Salt Lake City, Utah to the list in its purchase of the business intelligence provider.

Sharp Analytics' proprietary, Web-based software, called SharpView, provides Fortune 500 marketers and their agencies a tool to integrate results from offline and online campaigns for advanced tracking, measuring and optimizing campaign ROI.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 11:36 AM | Permalink

February 2, 2007

KeywordDiscovery offers free search term suggestion tool

Trellian's KeywordDiscovery.com is offering a free search term suggestion tool. Type in a seed keyword and the free tool generates the top 100 keywords from data complied and collected from more than 180 search engines worldwide.

Why is Trellian offering a free search term suggestion tool? Its web site says, "For many years the Overture Keyword Suggestion was the only free, publicly available keyword research tool. Now, due to its recent outages we are pleased to offer an alternative."

That's fast response.

The Webmaster World forums didn't start discussing the Overture Keyword Tool not responding until a week ago, on Friday, January 26. On Tuesday, January 30, YahooSarah confirmed that the responsiveness of YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture's Keyword Selector Tool- KST) "is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear."

She added, "We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year."

Rustybrick (aka Barry Schwartz) picked up the story on Wednesday, January 31 -- which was the same day that I reported that Wordtracker launches free keyword suggestion tool in the Search Engine Watch Blog.

Yesterday, February 1, I got an email from Trellian President David Warmuz about KeywordDiscovery's free search term suggestion tool. But I was on the road and didn't get the email until late last night.

So, things do move fast in the search industry. In less than a week, everything we knew about free search term suggestion tools has changed. This is just the latest example of why we need to check in every day to make sure we haven't missed something.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:06 AM | Permalink

January 31, 2007

Wordtracker launches free keyword suggestion tool

Wordtracker has launched a free keyword suggestion tool. The tool gives webmasters up to 100 keywords in each session.

Wordtracker provides one of the most popular paid-for keyword services on the web. So, why are they creating a free service?

In a press release announcing the free tool, Mike Mindel, CTO and co-founder of Wordtracker, is quoted saying, “We're confident that once people see the benefits of initial keyword research, they will realise that this is a profitable marketing resource that they simply can't do without."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 11:59 AM | Permalink

January 12, 2007

A Search Engine For Search Marketers

Lee Odden recently released a list of search marketing blogs, which he plans to update every Friday. The article has received well-deserved accolades for its nearly exhaustive collection of links related to search marketing.

The list and its accompanying OPML file has led to the creation by Alister Cameron of a Google Custom Search Engine to search specifically within the listed blogs. Ideally, this could be used by search marketers to create a well-rounded view of search expert opinions on particular subjects. To conduct a search, see Alister's post Introducing The Search Engine Marketing Search Engine or the SEM Search Page. Following is a review of a few searches conducted today, and a link to the SEW Forums thread to discuss the idea.

The first search conducted on 1/12/06 for “301 redirect” yielded the following top 5 results (descriptions omitted):

Permanent 301 Redirect - High Rankings Search Engine Optimization www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5644

David Naylor » DaveN » 301 Redirect on page code301 Redirect. www.davidnaylor.co.uk/archives/2005/12/22/301-redirect-on-page-code/ - Similar pages

URL Redirect www.seocompany.ca/seo/url-redirect.html

301 Redirect Help! www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/11903.htm

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » SEO advice: url… (tsk tsk Matt Cutts for that long title) www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

By Comparison, a regular Google search yielded the following top 5:

301 Redirect - How to create Redirects301 www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Giving search engine spiders direction - 301 redirect www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

How to Do a 301 Redirect www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/301-redirect.html

How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect www.isitebuild.com/301-redirect.htm

301 Redirect - 301 Permanent Redirect by Brian V. Bonini www.gnc-web-creations.com/301-redirect.htm

My Score: SEM Search 1, Google Search 0 Perhaps I am biased, but the 5 top results for that particular search yielded far more answers and thought-provocation that the Google results. However, the Google results may be of more use to “regular searchers” that do not have as much skill in SEO as SEM's may have. Note also that this search only yielded one Paid result when I conducted it. (Hmm wonder how many there will be in a few days after some SEM's read this?)

The next search for “duplicate content” yielded far more Sponsored results – 4 on top and 4 more on the side. Note also if you are concerned with every impression that an ad may receive, the Paid listings are repeated on the subsequent results pages. The top 3:

Duplicate Content Issues www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

» Duplicate Content - Penalize Me, Please (yes the >> is in the Page Title…nice trick) www.pandia.com/sew/169-duplicate-content.html

Duplicate Content - Get it right or perish www.webmasterworld.com/google/3060898.htm

Regular Google results:

Duplicate Content Issues www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties www.elixirsystems.com/seo_tips/avoiding-duplicate-content-penalty.php

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with ... (ahem perhaps Webmaster Central Blog should get shorter Titles too?) googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html

I would give this one a tie. It is probably due to the fact that the term “duplicate content” is so often used by bloggers and in forums that the top three are all SEO-related in the regular results of each of these searches. It seems interesting and also a good sign that Google's Webmaster Central Blog does not show in the top three on the SEM-search feature (they are on the list). Obviously Google is not trying to manipulate any results in favor of their own blog.

I feel very confident that I will be using the SEM search blog almost exclusively to search for SEO and Paid Search topics in the near future. Thanks for this great tool, Alister, Lee and Google – I am pretty certain that you better get ready for lots of traffic from search marketers and students interested in the subject as well. In fact, if I was to advertise, student-populated sites would probably be my first target. After all, this will probably end up getting blogged failry heavily so those in the SEM community should find out very rapidly.

Please share your thoughts on this search function at the thread at SEW Forums, Google Custom Search For Search Marketers and Search Students

Posted by Chris Boggs at 10:13 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2006

Google Finance's Untrusted Links & Spotting Nofollow

For several months, I've been using the Search Status plug-in for Firefox to highlight links that are flagged with the nofollow attribute, a way for site owners to say they don't vouch for or necessarily trust a link. You see the web in a entirely new light after discovering how often and where people are saying "I don't trust this." And today, I finally noticed it happening over on Google Finance.

The image above show how Google Finance looks when links with nofollow are highlighted in red, for the page on Google stock price. All the news stories -- which come from Google News -- are flagged as effectively untrustworthy. But if they are untrustworthy, why are they in Google News to begin with?

Down below (see the whole page here), Google Blog Search results are also flagged that way also. Google Blog Search is effectively open to anyone, so I can understand the use of nofollow there more. But it still feels kind of odd, for this entire swath of the page to be considered untrustworthy in some way -- even if that way is invisible to virtually all visitors to Google Finance.

FYI, this isn't a new change. I did a search and found others talking about it earlier this year when Google Finance launched.

Go get Search Status and select the "Highlight Nofollow Links" option. Believe me, it's an eye-opening experience.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:51 PM | Permalink

November 15, 2006

PCNames Domain Search

The PCNames domain search engine does exactly what might be expected of it - it searches for domain names and returns results with details on their availability. It does this virtually instantaneously as well - when you being typing the engine offers details on .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us. Ideally I would prefer to see a wider variety and from a British/European perspective the addition of .uk and .eu would be enormously helpful, but even without that, it's very useful.

Once a search has been run it is then possible to get WHOIS information to research the site, or if a site is available for registration the search engine provides a list of companies that can be used to register it. This is how the site makes money - not by direct reselling but from donations and commission from affiliates.

The benefits of the search engine are clear for those people who wish to register domain names. As a searcher the resource is also useful to quickly check not only to see if a domain is available or not, but to check on the ownership of the site - useful for authority checking, and as a quick way to locate a domain if you can't remember if a recently visited site was a .com or a .org for example.

The most impressive thing about this search engine is its speed; it really is lightening fast and will save you time immediately. There are also a variety of other tools available on the site as well, which are equally useful for web authors and searchers alike.

The Domain Suggestion function allows users to type in words, phrases or domains to get suggestions. I was impressed with some of the ideas that it came up with - based on the input of 'search engine watch' I got a number of interesting possible domain names to register, such as 'googlewatch.us' for example. In some instances I could also get more indepth suggestions, and pagerankwatch.net could be broken down to include .org, .info, .biz and .us.

The Word Search function allowed me to quickly see which domains were available, deleted or expired. I was astonished at the number of available domains that mentioned 'google' that hadn't been registered. Googlesite.org anyone?

Of less interest as a searcher, but still fascinating was the opportunity to see which 3 character and 4 letter domains were available; a surprisingly large number in fact.

The Dictionary tool showed available domains using names that could be found within a standard dictionary and Search and Replace allows searchers to replace one word with another to check availability of domain names.

All in all this is an excellent collection of niche resources focusing on domain names. While it is clearly aimed at individuals that wish to register domain names there are lots of ways in which an enterprising searcher could use the resources, both when training others and searching for themselves. This is certainly a site that I'll be adding to my own collection of well used resources.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 11:29 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

New adCenter Blog & adCenter Lab Features

There is a new location for the adCenter blog, it is now at http://adcenterblog.spaces.live.com/ (yea, the whole live.com thing). Also, adCenter labs released updates for some of the tools.

Search Funnel 1.5: This demo will be updated with over 4 million keywords added to the database.
Keyword Forecast: This new demo will display a search term's impression count forecast and demographic predictions in any format: flash, picture or text.

I have screen captures of the Keyword Forecast at the Search Engine Roundtable - pretty neat stuff.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:04 AM | Permalink

Live Search Box Allows You To Add Live Search To Your Site

Microsoft's Live Search Blog informed us of a new feature where you can add the Windows Live Search box to your site. I have implemented the "Basic Search Box" on the Search Engine Roundtable, which means the box will display results on the Windows Live Search page. Below I will implement the "Advanced Search Box," which means the box displays results on this site. More details at http://search.live.com/siteowner.

var WLSearchBoxConfiguration= { "global":{ "serverDNS":"search.live.com" }, "appearance":{ "autoHideTopControl":false, "width":600, "height":400 }, "scopes":[ { "type":"web", "caption":"SEW & SER Test", "searchParam":"site:searchenginewatch.com OR site:seroundtable.com" } , { "type":"web", "caption":"Web", "searchParam":"" } ] }

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2006

Google AdWords Releases Website Optimizer for Advertisers

Google AdWords has released a new tool for advertisers to enable them to easily test conversions on varying landing pages, headlines and ad copies. The tool then shows advertisers the testing results, including graphs, allowing them to chose the best converting ad options for their campaigns.

Interested advertisers can sign up for the beta here, although only a small number of advertisers will be accepted. You can also learn more on the Inside AdWords blog.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 1:37 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

New Tool Measures Your Blog Juice

Text Link Ads has released a new fun tool named Blog Juice Calculator. You basically enter in your site/blog URL, and it tells you have juicy your site is. Search Engine Watch is a whooping 8.8, the SEW Blog is an 8.6, my search blog is a 8.3. Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads told me, "Blog Juice calculates its score from Bloglines RSS subscriber data, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and Technorati inlinks. It is not a perfectly accurate data tool but is fun to compare your blog to others in your vertical."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:53 AM | Permalink

Resources For Finding Statistics For Any Web Site

Rand over at SEOMoz wrote an excellent post detailing all the different resources publicly available to gather statistical data on pretty much any web site out there. He breaks down the tools into several parts including "Technical Data," "Ownership/Hosting Data," "Statistics/Popularity Data," "Search Engine Indexing Data," "Link Data," "Social Tagging Data," "Third-Party Trust Metrics," "Important Directory & Site Listings," and "Press & Media Mentions." This comprehensive list of resources is bookmark-worthy and I seriously hope Rand keeps this particular post up-to-date.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:26 AM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Another Tool Uses AOL Data For Search Term Research

SEO Blackhat released a tool that uses AOL data, Hitwise figures and Overture's suggestion tool to figure out the search volume and click-through rate you can expect from a search phrase at the various search engines. Last week we reported on a more basic tool that did something similar but this new tool gives you an "estimate with some certainty how many clicks to expect for ranking anywhere in any search engine for any term." Basically, you go to this tool and enter in the number of searches you expect to be performed for a keyword phrase. Then after you hit update, the page shows you what your expected click through rate would be for that search term at the various engines by position.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:07 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2006

New Keyword Suggestion Tool Uses AOL Data

SEO Scoop spotted a new keyword suggestion tool that estimates the volume of traffic you can expect for a given query based on the AOL data slip up. Basically, the tool has data from March to May of this year, it then takes the market share figures of Google, Yahoo and MSN and multiples that by the AOL search volumes for those queries. Of course, you have the issue of people searching differently at different engines. AOL users are typically less tech savvy, when compared to Google users. So I wonder how accurate the estimates are?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:01 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

Yahoo Releases Updates To Site Explorer

During the Bot Obedience Course session at SES San Jose just a few minutes ago, Rajat at Yahoo announced a new upgrade to the Site Explorer tool they initially launched last year. The additions at Site Explorer include:

- More information about sites you own., including -- Last Crawled Date and Language for your Site URLs -- Subdomains of your site - Feed submissions are much smoother. You can submit RSS, Atom and URL lists, and manage all of them from one place. For authenticated sites, you can also track when they were submitted and processed. - UpdateNotification Web Service to notify us of feed or site updates, part of the suite of Site Explorer APIs you already know and love. Since these return the same data as the tool, we recommend using them for automated applications.

The tool really reminds me of Google Sitemaps, now Google Webmaster Central.

I hope to take a deeper look after the SES conference.

Update: More details just posted at the Yahoo Search Blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 5:39 PM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

Site Geolocation Tool Sorts Backlinks By Top Level Domain

SEO Scoop reports on a new tool named Domain Localization. This tool uses the Yahoo link command to bring back a sorted list of your backlinks by linking TLD (top level domain). There are several factors that tell a search engine if you are a country specific web site; your TLD, meta geo tags, language on site, contact us page, the links pointing to your pages and a few other factors. This tool enables you to easily see the percentage of links pointing to you by TLD.

While Search Engine Watch is now hosted in the United Kingdom, the majority of its links are from .com TLDs (72%), 9% from .orgs, 6.6% from .nets, 5.8% from .edu and then 1.5% from .uks. My blog, the Search Engine Roundtable is hosted in the United States, and has 81% of their links from .coms, 5.65% from .orgs, 4.6% from .nets, and only 1.4% from .UK.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:00 AM | Permalink

July 12, 2006

Interactive Review of SEOMoz's Page Strength Tool

Rand posted information about a new tool he launched named the Page Strength Tool. It is pretty cool, and why can't it replace PageRank? :) Anyway, here is my interactive review of the tool, you can find more details about what the tool exactly measures here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:26 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

Interactive Review Of SEOBook's SEO Firefox Extension

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book released a Firefox extension for SEOs. The Firefox extension can be viewed here, it allows you to see on the Google and Yahoo search result pages the PageRank, the age, the links, the .edu links the .gov links, the del.icio.us numbers and Technorati rank, the Alexa rank a cached link and much more, right on the page.

I decided it would be fun to do an other video cast. You can view the video cast by reading more.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:00 AM | Permalink

SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool

Rand posted an update to a tool named keyword difficulty tool. The tool's name is pretty descriptive enough, it tells you how competitive a keyword is to rank for. There is great detail on how it works here and here.

I did a test on the term "seo blog" for no good reason. After waiting the specified amount of time, I was given a ton of details, which you can read in this pdf document (1.5MB) .

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:11 AM | Permalink

June 27, 2006

Microsoft Demographics Prediction Tool Interactive Review

We posted about Microsoft Center Labs once again, but this time I wanted to show you, my eight-minute review of the demographics prediction tool at the lab. I created a movie of my running through the tool and uploaded it to YouTube. Now, before you watch the video, keep in mind that the percentages I discussed in the video may be determined as a "confidence" ratio and not a simple flat percentage -- you will see what I mean.

In any case, there is no way that google.com has predominantly a female audience, with a confidence ratio of 1.00 and they definitely do not have an audience of 100% female. I feel that this tool cannot be used by a search marketer without first having more information on how this data is generated and how accurate it is. This is dangerous, in my opinion. That being said, check out interactive review.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:52 PM | Permalink

June 1, 2006

MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools

MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.

7 more demos are listed as "coming soon", providing a teaser of what is to come, although no timeline is given for when they will be available.

Some tools will definitely be useful to advertisers, such as the Search Volume Seasonality Forecast, Search Funnel and Keyword Mutation Detection. Those in Local Search will want to check out the demo on Local Ads, which ironically uses Starbucks for their opening demo (along with an outdated notation about their Christmas Blend), although you can specify your own keywords.

Some interesting tools, and I am sure those in paid search will be watching closely to see if any of these are integrated more closely into Microsoft adCenter, and how Google and Yahoo will respond.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 6:58 AM | Permalink

May 29, 2006

Free New AdWords Alerts Service

A free alert service kicks off with two alerts related to Google AdWords and AdSense. You can get daily email alerts with the costs of the expensive AdWords both by bid and by cost per day (not necessarily the most expensive, since Google doesn't report that. Instead, you get terms checked and found to be fairly pricey). There's also an alert by keyword service that emails you when new advertisers appear for a keyword you supply. Assuming you don't mind a flurry of email when tracking popular categories, this can be handy.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 1:11 PM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

Duplicate Content Detection Tool

I reported this morning about a new tool that checks your site to see how much duplicate content like content you have throughout your site. As many of you know, duplicate content is a major issue for many SEOs today. This tool will hopefully give you the ability to catch any duplicate content issues before they become a serious issue. The tool is named Site Wide Duplicate Content Analyzer.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Search Spam Detection Tool: How White Hat Is Your Web Site?

Nathan Weinberg spots a tool named Search engine spam detector. The tool looks at a particular URL and classifies what elements on the page may raise a spam flag at a search engine. So let us test it out on the SEW Blog, shall we? :)

According to the tool, this site is completely spam free. The tool hasn't found any invisible text, the tool has not detected any unnatural text, the tool hasn't found any significant keyword stuffing tendency in HTML code, and the tool hasn't found any doorway farm.

So the SEW blog is more white hat when compared to SEroundtable.com, I got invisible text.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:49 AM | Permalink

May 22, 2006

Tool Estimates How Much Selling Your Links Is Worth

The folks at Text Link Ads announced via the Link Building Blog a tool that calculated the value of links on your page. This nifty and stylish AJAX powered tool asks you to type in the URL of the site, the site's theme, the number of links you want to sell on the page, if the links will be site wide or single page link only and then to specify the location of the links on the page. According to the tool, a single link on this site, if placed on the left hand navigation bottom bar, is worth $5,200 per month! The Web based tool is available at http://www.text-link-ads.com/link_calculator.php.

If you place seroundtable.com into the tool, for some reason, cartoon Barry pops up. Also, if you try msn.com, you get a funny picture, as you do with seomoz.org and even try google.com. I suspect there are more examples of these funny responses. Classic. :) Anyway, the tool is very cool, IMO.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:54 PM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Google Ban Checker Tool

This morning, I reported on a tool that allows you to check if you are banned in Google. The tool is a desktop application that searches Google using a site: command and also checks sites that link to you, to see if they are banned as well. You can check out the tool by clicking here. Keep in mind, Google also can notify you of some site penalties with Google Sitemaps.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:38 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2006

Google Sitemaps Adds Spam Checking, New Webmaster Help Center & Other Features

I just came out of the Meet the Crawlers session, where Google announced new features and a new layout for Google Sitemaps. The Sitemaps blog just posted the details as well. One huge feature is that Google tells you if your site is in the index or not and if it is not, they won't tell you why.

Here is a break down of the new features:

+ New verification method + Indexing snapshot + Notification of violations of the webmaster guidelines + Reinclusion request form + Spam report + New webmaster help center + More about our new look + Adding a Sitemap + Navigating the tabs

Full feature list at sitemaps blog.

Postscript: Matt Cutts just pinged me to let me know he has posted an entry named Notifying webmasters of penalties. That entry explains that the Google Web Search Team and Google Sitemap Team working together to notify "some (but not all)" webmasters of Google site penalties.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:59 PM | Permalink

April 11, 2006

Webmaster Eyes Paints Google PR On Your Home Page

I reported this morning on a tool at Webmaster Eyes that overlays Google's PageRank bars on top of your pages. The tool works somewhat like how Google Analytics, ClickTracks and other Web analytics pages overlays click through data on your most popular links.

For example, plug in searchenginewatch.com and take a look at the overlay chart. I tend to like to plug in a URL of a sitemap page, so you can get an overview of your complete site PR distribution page by page. I attached an image of my sidebar navigation with the PR plots overlaid for your quick review. Try it yourself at http://www.webmastereyes.com/, notice there may be issues with PR bar placement for some sites.

Again, as I noted in my previous post, Google PageRank is not the final say in ranking well in Google. Google claims it is used for determining crawl frequency and other ranking aspects. But many SEO professionals have uninstalled the Google Toolbar, to make a statement about PageRank's worth.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:07 AM | Permalink

Whois.sc Changes Name To DomainTools.com

Popular domain name registration name look up, Whois.sc, has changed their name to DomainTools.com, Gary Price reports. The name change was because the company wanted to broaden their focus, the name allows them to be a "little more tool focused and a lot more domain focused." The new name comes with a new design and nicer interface.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Keyword Research Tools And Keyword Data Figures

Aaron Wall has a nice write up on many of the keyword research tools available today. He runs down some of the pros and cons with each, as well as gives you a list of items you should be aware with for any of these tools. Aaron explains that you always need to be concerned with "the biases of the providers" because they might have a ventured interest in you purchasing a specific keyword or two. He also explains that all the figures are "estimates" and to "consider how spread out the search terms likely are in your industry." Aaron also posted at ThreadWatch that WordTracker is selling top 500,000 keywords it has collected over the years.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:28 AM | Permalink

April 4, 2006

Google Related Links Now Out; Challenges Yahoo's Year-Old Y!Q Links

Google Blogoscoped spots a new Google Labs release, Google Related Links. We wrote about these appearing last month, but there was no way for people to get them then for their own sites. Now you can.

The service puts a little box on your page where Google analyzes the content to show related searches, news and web pages to your visitors. And for helping promote Google in this way, you get .... a little box to put on your page.

Well, it's not like Yahoo's paying you either to put Y!Q links on your pages. Y!Q -- I prefer to write it YQ -- puts a link on your page allowing people to search for related content. You know, sort of like Google's just done, only Yahoo did it a year ago.

In a face-off between the two, I guess I like that Google gives you the option of up to three types of related material: searches, web pages and news rather than just web search. But be aware that YQ has a ton of developer options you can dig into.

Also be aware that despite being out for a year, you're hardly stumbling over YQ links across the web. Maybe Google will have that ever so more cool factor that picks up adoption. I'd personally be more inclined if it helped me direct users to find related content on my own site. YQ does have a feature allowing this. However, it involved going into the API which leaves little old non-programmer me thinking it far too much work to play with.

Meanwhile, Google certainly is easier to install. YQ wants me to put stuff in the header area of my pages, which sucks since I might not want to have YQ on every page. You also have to associate YQ with sections of text, rather than just slap it up on a page and let it figure things out automatically. Too much work for me.

Google Related Links FAQ here; YQ FAQ here. An example of Google Related Links is also shown below:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:44 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2006

Google Enhances Keyword Tool; Adds Global Trend Graphs

Google AdWords announced that they have added "global trends" to the Keyword Tool. Global trends shows the search volume of a particular keyword phrase, charted over a 12 month historical period. To access this data, you can go here and then enter your keyword phrases. Then click the "Get More Keywords", after the page loads, on the right side, select from the "Show columns" drop down menu, the "Global search volume trends" option. You will then see this data charted for you.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:58 AM | Permalink

March 14, 2006

Ultimate Googling with Advanced Dork Firefox Extension

Search Engine Journal covers at new Firefox extension named Advanced Dork that enables advanced Google searches with a right click on your mouse. If you are a Firefox user, you can download the extension to utilize its features. You simply highlight a word or two on the page you are browsing, then right click and presto, you have advanced search commands from Google that include; intitle: inurl: intext: site: ext: and filetype. For more information on these features, visit Advanced Google Search Operators help page. I personally use Apple's Safari, so I use a little tool named Saft.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:43 AM | Permalink

March 13, 2006

SEO Tools Bonanza from SEOValley & SEO Book

Search Engine Journal reports on SEO/SEM related tools from SEOValley and SEO Book. SEOValley has 22 different SEM related tools, including and SEO book has 23 tools, most with the source code available for reuse. Loren Baker's favorite tool of the 45 listed at those two sites is SEO Book's Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:42 AM | Permalink

March 1, 2006

Google Sitemaps Adds Top Keyword Positions, Top Mobile Queries and CSV Downloads

Google Sitemaps has announced the ability to see your average position for search queries, top search queries from mobile devices and the ability to now download "details, stats, and errors" to a CSV file that you can then do what you like with it. More details at Google Sitemaps Blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 6:35 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2006

Buttons, Buttons, Get & Make Your Google Toolbar Buttons

Google Releases Upgraded Toolbar from us earlier covered how the new Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer allows for custom search buttons, which can benefit both site owners and searchers. I wanted to highlight a few new resources since then. If you're a Search Engine Watch member, also see this longer post that goes into more in depth on how to make your own buttons for visitors without needing to be a tech guru.

Jim Boykin spots some cool Google Toolbar buttons that Aaron Wall has posted. There are a variety to give you link popularity stats, with some complex stuff to remove forum links that might be discounted. I especially like the domain age, competitive analysis, blog analysis and some handy tools.
The Google Toolbar Button Gallery has a growing number of buttons in various categories, ready for use. The tools category has some especially shiny stuff, like being able to visit a site anonymously.
Want our button? Click here to get it. Our button lets you search everything on the Search Engine Watch Blog and get the last 15 items posted, refreshed every 15 minutes.
Niall Kennedy's Google Toolbar search button template is an easy way for those using Movable Type blogs to get their own buttons with blog feed updates embedded in them.
Getting Started with the Google Toolbar API is an overview of how you can click and make your own buttons for any site, useful for searchers and webmasters alike. Webmasters will want to dive into the full documentation for further instructions.

Postscript: Aaron's added a number of buttons for various search blogs, including our own. Be sure to check out the logo next to the search button for Google's Matt Cutts's blog.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:05 AM | Permalink

December 13, 2005

Alexa Offers Fee-Based Vertical Search Services

I guess I get to be the underwhelmed one about Alexa announcing a new Alexa Web Search Platform that's available to anyone willing to pay a fee.

Pay a fee for what? You can create your own search engine by tapping into the 4 billion web pages Alexa has indexed over time. You can search against the entire index or just a selected set, in case you want to make your own vertical search engine.

It's hardly new territory. Back in 2000, we had a number of services offering to let you create your own vertical search engines, as covered more in my The Vortals Are Coming! The Vortals Are Coming! article from that period. These died off because during the dotcom melt down, no one was really willing to spend money to create verticals, especially when the search ad market had yet to mature.

Since then, search ads and verticals are both hot. But spending money to lease search services? That's a remnant from the days before search ads, when search engines wanted to be paid for storage and processor time. Search ads made the leasing services model go away.

The current fight for AOL between MSN and Google underscores this. AOL isn't being asked to stump up money for web search to those companies. It has an audience that MSN and Google want to reach. They stumble over themselves to see who can offer the best deal.

Ah, but what if you're not as big as AOL? I suppose paying Alexa to get off the ground may help some people develop and prove their market, at which point Google and Yahoo -- among others -- will fight to offer these proven verticals similar services for free.

It also has to be said that the Alexa pitch would be a heck of a lot stronger if Alexa itself actually used its own web index. But it doesn't. Want to search the web with Alexa? Alexa depends on Google to give it a reach well beyond the 4 billion pages that Alexa has gathered.

How about more rain on the parade? Well, what could you use instead of Alexa? Let's see:

Rollyo: Just out, allows you to create a vertical search engine by giving it a list of sites. Under the hood, Rollyo is tapping into Yahoo and refining it.
Gigablast: Get your own custom vertical search engine right now, for free, by using Custom Topic Search. It's been out for nearly a year. Want some type of hosted service or something special. If it's not listed here, I've no doubt Gigablast will step up to deliver.
Vortaloptics: This specialty firm began offering services back in 2003, offering to create vertical search engines for anyone. I wrote about them at the time as perhaps signaling a return to easy-to-make vertical search engines that looked likely before the dotcom downturn. They've been quiet, so perhaps no one's taking them up on things. But then again, perhaps the Alexa move might revitalize things.
Google AdSense For Search: Want to search the entire web, just as Alexa offers? Out since last year, Google's more than happy to give you access to its entire database, for free, along with ads ready to go right alongside it. Nope, vertical search isn't as easy. You could try site-flavored Google search, or the Google API might help. If not, fair to say Alexa's move will spur Google along to offering more and probably for free, if you want to carry ads.
Yahoo Search Marketing Partner Solutions: Yahoo doesn't have a self-serve custom web search program similar to Google, but that's only a matter of time. Until then, if you're big enough, they'll do custom solutions. Not big enough? There's the Yahoo Search API you can tap into.

I'm certain I'm missing some players on the list above. Gary will likely know them and will postscript if I'm missing some.

Back to Alexa, John Battelle has a rundown in his Alexa (Make that Amazon) Looks to Change the Game post and is pretty positive, though he notes he's not had a chance to really talk with developers.

Like John, I've not really talked with a ton of developers, and perhaps that might shape my view to be more positive. At the moment, I definitely don't see it as a hugely groundbreaking move that will reshape web search forever, any more than Amazon's A9 Open Search has yet to do. If you want that groundbreaking move, you have to go back to when the Google API was first offered years ago. This is just an extension of that.

To be positive, it's a welcome extension. Certainly more and more people have felt the various APIs are too limited. A paid model definitely helps those trapped between wanting more from a search service but not at the traffic or interest level where the search engine will decide it makes sense to lift limits or partner more closely. Alexa jumping in should help spur the majors along, and that will be welcomed.

For more, John points over to Amazon Revs Its Search Engine at the Wall Street Journal which stresses the Amazon view that this will cater to the vertical search market.

Alexa Search API Released from Google Blogoscoped looks a bit more at the move from a developers angle, finding some positives but not exactly jumping up and down about the move. Announcing the Alexa Web Search Platform Beta from the Alexa blog has more details from Alexa. You'll also find plenty of other commentary via Memeorandum.

Want to discuss, comment, tell me I'm clueless? Visit our forum thread, Alexa Web Search Platform.

Postscript from Gary: In addition to the services that Danny lists like Rollyo and Gigablast, here are a few other services you might want to know about:

+ From the Internet Archive. About a month ago, Brewster and crew introduced a new sevice called Archive-It, that "that allows users to create, manage and search their own web archives through a web interface." It's primarily aimed at institutions and libraries. How's that for ease of use? From the Archive-It FAQ: Subscribers to the service can create distinct web archives, containing only the content they are interested in harvesting, at whatever frequency suite their needs. All collections are text searchable. The annual subscription cost is $10,000 per year and allows and The annual subscription cost is $10,000 per year. This allows an institution to collect, manage and search up to 10 million web documents. The pilot users to this point has been memory institutions, state archives, and libraries. More in the FAQ.

+ Do it Yourself from the Internet Archive: Heritrix This free crawler developed at The Internet Archive is an, open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project." Good FAQ that includes a list of some of the organizations using Heretix. It also says that Heritix is available to "crawl/archive a set of websites," in other words a focused set of sites.

+ Nutch A well-known open source web-search software and includes a crawler, a link-graph database, parsers for HTML and other document formats, etc. One final comment, the Alexa Web Search platform offers an interesting and potentially useful demo. It allows you to search of images taken from digital cameras and exploit the metadata they often provide. Alexa is calling it "Camera Image Search." Why do I find it interesting? Because it offers fielded searching of submitted data. Instead of entering random terms and hoping for the best, this structured searching allows you to access precise results from the outset (of course, assuming the indexing is good). Camera Image Search could use better documentation (example searches would be a start), but I believe the idea is on target. I've called it "structured tagging" in the past and it could make tagging much more powerful as an info retrieval tool, especially if tagging of both text and imagery (much different situations) becomes more popular (big assumption). Of course, we have a few important and MAJOR caveats.

1) In terms of this Camera Image Search demo the structure and data comes directly from the camera, so it's easier to get accurate info but I think it hints at "fielded" interface can do in terms of general tagging.

2) In other situations it's different. Why?

3) Getting people to tag is a challenge in the first place, getting them to do more and add info to a specific field is another. However, tools could be developed to walk people to the process and offer suggestions.

4) Assuming that step 3 takes place, it's another issue to get the typical user to take advantage of the structure and use it to search. That said, a date field on any tagging service that was used correctly would make the search term "2005" or "Chicago" much more useful than just having them as free-text. For example, 2005 might be entered into the date the document was written field, Chicago might be included in where the document was authored or what the document is about field(s). Finally, this might be a help but it does not, in most situations, solve the many problems with authority control, synonyms, etc. While I think that in many cases allowing a text document "speak for itself" and let something like dynamic clustering assist in the organization, adding structure at the outset can make for even more clustering "power." Example? Look at the many ways you can search and cluster the structured data of PubMed using ClusterMed.

Postscript 2 from Gary: In his comments Danny notes how easy (it's true) Gigablast makes it to create a domain specific search. In addition to following the traditional steps, it was recently made even easier by simply adding the urls of the desired sites that you want searched to the Gigablast Advanced Search Page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:52 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2005

Matt Cutts Pokes At SEO Software

Google's Matt Cutts, clearly irritated at the many worthless SEO software pitches he sees (and many of these are worthless), does some deconstructing.

SEO Mistakes: software mistakes looks at how bad software can magnify the SEO mistakes you might make, send up a red flag to search engines and most important, might just be useless. One warning sign he finds is when software is pitched to others as something they can sell to make money, rather than to use for their own sites. Sketchy testimonials has Matt jumping in further at reasons to doubt testimonials you see.

But Matt, just don't search for things like seo software or blog and ping on Google, 'cause some of the ads lead to products that seem to be the things you dislike, testimonials and all.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:20 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2005

Add To Google & Save To Yahoo My Web Buttons Out

Nick at Threadwatch discovers a new Add To Google button, while I'm also overdue to discuss the new Save To My Web button that Yahoo kindly rolled out last month. Let's jump in!

The new Add To Google button is easy to implement. Fill out the form at Google, then you get the appropriate HTML. Insert the button on your home page, then when people click, they are directed to add your feed to either their personalized edition of the Google homepage or Google Reader. Adding it to Google Sidebar, sadly, isn't a third option. That should be supported as well. Hopefully, we'll see it come.

As for the new Yahoo button, Yahoo announced it at the end of last month. In fact, I'd been asking them for one publicly, so they came back in that post and specifically called me out to say "Here it is!" But I was on vacation at the time, hence me playing catch-up!

It's very welcomed. My Web is the future of where search is heading at Yahoo, as A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0 covers in more depth. Getting your pages added and part of the trust networks that My Webbians are building over there is important. This button makes it easy to encourage that type of saving.

To get the button, there's no form to fill out. You just grab JavaScript code from here. That puts a little button on your site. When people push it, your page title will be grabbed, along with the URL and some suggested tags for saving the page under.

Nick at Threadwatch has gone a step further. He's used the code to make a link-text only version of the save to my web feature. He discusses it more here, and the code is here.

Why not just use the button? By using Nick's code, you can custom the text of the link, in case you want to give people more instructions. For example, look over in our left-hand navigation area. I've used both the button plus Nick's code underneath, altering it to stress that this is "Yahoo" My Web, something the button doesn't say.

Down the line, I want to move that type of code over to the bottom of posts, to help encourage people to save them. Having that as a textual link makes it a bit easier. And if you're going to do it for My Web, why not for bookmarking service Del.icio.us? That's easily done through this code spotted via Threadwatch.

Are all these buttons worthwhile? I still can't tell if they are driving that many sign-ups, but I've fallen into the "learn to love them" category. While having one unified sign-up system might be better, if having an Add To Google or Add To Yahoo button means I'm going to get some additional visitors who recognize what that means, I'm going for it.

Want to love buttons yourself? See Getting Add To & Subscribe Buttons For Feeds, which I've posted for Search Engine Watch members. It takes you to the forms for popular services, so that you can merrily make your own badges.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:34 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Seeing Flash The Search Engine Way

Phil Bradley points to this site designed to help you understand how search engines view your Flash content.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Google Releases New Keyword Research Tool To Advertisers

New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts over in our SEW Forums has SEW forum editor Elisabeth Osmelowski spotting the new Google AdWords Keyword Tool and inviting discussion. Aaron Wall over at SEO Book in New Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool provides a nice rundown on what it offers, including sorting by popularity, performance history, cost and predicted ad position. He also points at a new page of tips from Google about the new tool.

I took a quick spin myself. Enter a term, and you get back a list ranked by "relevance," though Google doesn't really explain what relevance is despite a help page supposedly answering this. I mean, if I enter [cars] into the search box, why exactly is "rental cars" more relevant than "donate cars?"

Using a drop down box, the "Keyword Popularity" option is much more helpful. Now I can see a new Search Volume column. Unlike with Yahoo's tool, there aren't counts given. Instead, PageRank-like bars show popularity, the more green, the better. Click on the Search Volume hyperlink above the column, and now things sort by popularity. Slick! It's something you couldn't do with the old tool.

Check out the Site-Related Keywords tab on the new tool. Enter the URL of a page, and Google will show you all the key terms it thinks the page is relevant for. That's nice for contextual targeting, the intent of the tool. But it's also a useful way to see what terms Google thinks an important page is relevant for. Or enter your own page, and see if Google's finding you relevant for the terms you think you should be targeting.

Want to discuss or comment? Contribute in our New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts thread.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:02 AM | Permalink

The MSN PageRank 2 Controversy & Search Engines Needing To Offer Domain Management Tools

As part of the current Google update underway, it's been noticed that MSN now has a PageRank score of 2. What's the deal, Google -- decide to pull a little love away from MSN? Not so, says Google's Matt Cutts -- they're actually a PR8. Then why do you see a PR2 score when you go to MSN? Let's break it down, as well as revisit the oft-desired need for search engines to allow site owners to tell them directly which domains should be treated as the same.

Visit MSN at http://www.msn.com with the Google Toolbar installed, and you'll see a PR2 score reported.
MSN.com down to pagerank 2! at WebmasterWorld has some of the discussion this sparked, where the anonymous GoogleGuy from Google puts the blame on redirection that MSN is doing. Look at http://msn.com, and you'll see a PR8 score is reported, we're told.
OK, but if you try that, you get redirected to http://www.msn.com, where it's still PR2.
Answer? You need to get the Google PageRank score for msn.com in another way than trying to reach that page, since the redirection will send you to what's technically a different page, the home page of www.msn.com
How? Google's Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).
Run a test for msn.com using the checker, and you'll get a list of the PageRank scores reported by various Google datacenters, including the server that feeds the toolbar display. All of them are PR8.
Again, you can't see these scores showing up in your browser when trying to go to msn.com, because you get redirected to www.msn.com, which has a different PR score.

All this brings us back to the issue of redirection. MSN is doing a 302 temporary redirect from msn.com to www.msn.com, which can confuse search engines into knowing if they should be treated at the same site. A 301 permanent redirect would be preferred.

But more preferred than that, life would be a lot easier if site owners could simply register all the various domains that may resolve to their "main" domain with Google and other search engines, rather than them having to guess.

People have been wanting this for ages. C'mon Google and Yahoo! You've both made moves to let us submit sitemaps and URLs to be crawled. Let's get with it so we can register domains with you and how they should be treated through some type of program. It so long overdue. That's especially so given that after the last indexing summit, as I've written, the search engines were unable to unify on any common treatment of dealing with redirects.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:21 AM | Permalink

October 14, 2005

Fake PageRank Detection Tool

Using redirection and cloaking, a site can lay claim to the PageRank score of another site, with Dark SEO Team giving you a classic example here. Is it really a PR10 site, or is it Memorex? Actually, it's Google. Compare the backlinks, and you'll see link:www.pr10.darkseoteam.com = link:google.com! That's a way to detect fake PageRank. Or you can do it more easily with this handy tool from SEOlogs. Enter the domain you suspect of being a faker, push submit, and if the domain you were checking on remains the same, all systems go. If not, they're faking you out.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:24 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2005

Skip The $79 Ranking Software

Change the name, and the warning that CJK Cybermedia gives about $79 software package could be just as applicable. In general, submission or rank improvement software of any type has never been that useful, in my experience.

This review explains how the software generates queries on search engines that contain the terms you want to be found for plus your URL. So if you wanted to rank well for "cars" and your domain was "bestcars.com," it would send Google and other search engines a query for [cars bestcars.com] or something like that.

No, that's not going to make you any more "popular" to search engines in my book. I spotted the review via SEOmoz as did Google's Matt Cutts, who does some further debunking in his $79 SEO software? post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:58 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Yahoo Site Explorer Live: New Way To See All Your Pages, Links

Promised over a month ago, Yahoo Site Explorer is now reality. Yahoo gives the heads-up to everyone here on its Yahoo Search Blog, and how it will show you all pages within a domain, within a particular directory of a domain, all inbound links to a domain and the ability to bulk submit (which was already live earlier and explained more in our earlier post). You can also access through a new Site Explorer API or export data for further analysis. More details also on the help page.

If you're a Search Engine Watch member, I do a through exploration of Site Explorer in this article in the members area. Check it out! Or hey, help support the site and the blog by becoming an SEW member! Below, a summary of my wish list items and observations from that members' article:

You can see all pages from all domains, one domain, or a directory/section within a domain
You can NOT pattern match to find all URLs from a domain, unfortunately
You can see all links to a specific page or a domain
You can NOT exclude your own links, very unfortunately
You can export data, but only the first 50 items, unfortunately
Search commands such as link: aren't supported, and I hope that might come
You can get a feed of your top pages, but I want a feed of backlinks to inform me of new ones that are found. Site owners deserve just as much fun as blog owners in knowing about new links to them.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo Site Explorer Now Live!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 PM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

Better Yahoo Tools Coming To Measure Search Buzz - And Watch Google, Too!

Yahoo! Testing New Branding Metrics for Search at ClickZ covers how Yahoo is helping more advertisers tap into tools to measure brand reach and buzz through search, a sign that tracking search buzz is finally getting some needed, renewed attention.

Many are familiar with Yahoo Buzz, the consumer-facing service that shows what's hot in search. Not so well known is another version that advertisers and others can tap into. Yahoo has had that product for years. It's not new, as the story suggests. Instead, it sounds like it's being given a revamp in preparation for wider positioning. A new "Search Share Of Voice" tool is also planned.

It's long overdue for greater outreach like this. As we've had more and more "word-of-mouth" tools designed to measure blog buzz, it's seemed forgotten that search engines have access to much more broad web buzz based on what wide, everyday audiences are looking for and writing about.

FYI, Google's got a similar tools it developed to help CurrentTV do Google Zeitgeist segments. I asked Google a couple of weeks ago whether these tools might be rolled out for others to use, when talking about them. It's something Google has in mind, but there were no immediate plans to do so. So we watch and see!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:25 AM | Permalink

September 22, 2005

Meta Searching for Relevancy, Using Your Own Rules

Myriad Search is a new tool from Aaron Wall's Free Open Source SEO Tools site that allows you to play around with search results from Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo. It's a meta search tool that displays information about the relative ranking of sites in each underlying engine, and calculates an "authority score" based on those rankings—a potentially useful service for doing competitive SEO work.

Myriad Search also allows you to give more prominence to your favorite search engine, and dial down the importance of engines you don't like. It's an intriguing idea, and I've got more about the service in today's SearchDay article, Myriad Search: Meta Search Your Way.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:29 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2005

New Reprise Feedcast Tool To Get News Publishers Quickly Into Paid Search

Reprise has a new Feedcast tool out designed to scan articles and other newsworthy content and create paid search campaigns for related topics automatically. In short, imagine you are a news publisher wanted to get ads out quickly, to attract interest in a recent news stories. Feedcast is designed to make that happen quickly.

The link takes you to a page with more info, including a helpful Flash demo. Introducing Feedcast on the Reprise SearchViews blog has more info. A SEM Tool for Content Creators from ClickZ has details on those already using it through a private beta.

Somewhat related, Leverage the News for Search Engine Success is a fresh look at why publishers and others might want to ensure they're tapping into news searches as a means to reach an interested audience.

And spotted via Threadwatch, Forbes.com Aims to Improve Search Rankings looks briefly at how publisher Forbes is tapping into SEO via company 360i -- and in particular, free listings rather than paid ones as the New York Times and Washington Post do.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:41 PM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

WebPosition 4 Released

Long-time rank checking and page analysis tool WebPosition is out now as WebPosition 4. Haven't seen any reviews yet, from the company press release, here's what looks to be new:

Redesigned "dashboard" of reports showing metrics on paid and organic listings, as well as trends.
What looks to be a new "Keyword Visibility Index" showing a site's overall visibility for all of its targeted keywords and search engines.

Link popularity and site search engine saturation reports (number of pages listed in a particular search engine, for a particular site)
Simpler integration of keyword ranking data from the WebTrends web analytics tool, also offered by the makers of WebPosition.
60 new search engines supported for organic listing analysis, taking the tool to support for over 200 search engines worldwide. Paid listings such as those from Google AdWords, Yahoo sponsored search, Miva, Kanoodle, Enhance Interactive and others can be checked with WebPosition Professional.

The standard version is $149 and the professional version is $389. You can compare editions here. Upgrade info is here and pricing here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:39 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

SES San Jose 2005 Coverage Wrap-Up

There was a ton of news out of our Search Engine Strategies show held last month in San Jose. I've been collecting links of various stories, for the rundown below. There's probably stuff I'm missing -- I still have some catch-up reading for what came out during the week of the show itself. If I see more as I work through that, I'll do a second wrap-up.

New SEM Tools From SES San Jose from Pandia covers the many tools presented during our SEO/SEM Toolbox session. There's a great round-up, so check out the list here.
The New World of Search from Kevin Lee at ClickZ gives highlights of what he found from the show, especially looking at changes in metrics used to measure the effectiveness and impact of search.
SearchTHIS: SES Part Deux from Kevin Ryan at iMedia Connection is the second part of his coverage of the show, touching on things such as the keynote talk with Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz, MSN's new paid ads program. There's a first part, I'm sure -- but I couldn't find a link when looking around!
How Motley Crue Saved Search from Harrison Magun at MediaPost touches on "booth babes" at the show's exhibition. I don't run the expo side of thing, and my understanding is that the sales team that does recommends that exhibitors do things in good taste. Nevertheless, some think sex sells. That's too bad -- and in fact, it's downright stupid for an industry that's so heavily represented by women. The SES NYC expo center a joke? thread on our Search Engine Watch Forums looks at this issue in depth, a discussion that came up after booth babes were a feature of one exhibitors show there.
Chris Pirillo was running around with his mike interviewing people for The Chris Pirillo Show. Interview with Ask CEO Steve Berkowitz (On Location), Rebecca Lieb on ClickZ (On Location), Brett Tabke on Webmaster World, Jill Whalen on Search Engine Optimization (On Location) and Search Marketing Experts (On Location) are some of them. Chris caught me at the New York show, if you're curious: Searching for Danny Sullivan (On Location). What cracked me up the most about talking to him was that I didn't even realize it was Chris until after it was over! Honestly -- I'd only seen his cartoon on the site and thought it was someone for his show interviewing me, not him. We had a good laugh when I asked him to please say 'hi' to Chris and he said, "I am Chris!" There's even more in his archives from SES San Jose and SES New York earlier this year. Thanks, Nick, over at Threadwatch, for spotting some of these.
How many publishers are really being suspended from AdSense? over at JenSense looks at the Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud panel where -- through an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Yahoo and Google -- we finally had reps from both services on the panel. Thank you both, Google and Yahoo! As you can see from her review, she felt it made things much more balanced and useful.
(Almost) Live from Search Engine Strategies: Beyond ROI at SearchViews reviews a panel on how to get things out of search beyond ROI, such as linking into offline sponsorships or creating brand association.
Coverage of SES San Jose: Search Engine Q&A On Links, Coverage of SES San Jose: Earning from Search & Contextual Ads, Coverage of SES San Jose: Search Algorithms, The Patent Files and Coverage of SES San Jose: Favorite SEO Tools are all reports from Stephan Spencer, over at his blog.
Quick SES San Jose 2005 Session Coverage Recap has Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable summarizing all the session that he and his team -- yes, he's got a team now -- covered live out of the show. While the regular Daily SearchCast took a break during the show, Gary was doing some live podcast coverage of his own on August 9 and 10, which you'll find listed here.
Live SES San Jose 05 Session Coverage at our SEW Forums has links to the same coverage Barry and gang (thank you all!) did. They posted in both places, the forums and Search Engine Roundtable -- but the forum threads may have further discussion and information about the various sessions.
WebmasterRadio.FM our official and much loved conference podcasting company was busy. I just did a show wrap-up with them. You'll find it here, along with the pre-show...ah...show!
Google Dance, Yahoo Search Night Off & More Parties At SES San Jose 2005 and Ask Jeeves to Rock SES with The Dan Band provide an overview of some of the major parties that happened at the event. I went to them all and had an excellent time. The search wars have spilled over into the entertainment from, and from enjoying fast access to rollercoasters at Marriott's Great America thanks to Yahoo, an outstanding rocking performance by the Dan Band courtesy of Ask Jeeves, and good food and good times rockin' at Google, everyone including myself had a blast.
Google Dance 2005 are pictures put up by Google of its annual Google Dance party.
Google, webmasters dance to music of different drummers is an AP write-up of the event which I'm going to comment on more separately. I've seen this before -- the manipulators being invited to Google. Yeah, some -- and a lot of the people who are also powering the revenues behind search. Any way, more on that down the line.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:08 PM | Permalink

August 18, 2005
Track Your AdSense Earnings in Firefox Status Bar
Here's one for AdSense customer who uses Firefox. Google Blogoscoped points to the Adsense Notifier extension that allows you to track your AdSense earnings in the Firefox status bar.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:08 PM | Permalink

August 10, 2005
New Yahoo Site Explorer To Provide Linkage Data, Bulk Submit
During the Search Engine Q&A on Links session here at SES today, Tim Mayer from Yahoo said his company is launching (not live yet) Yahoo Site Explorer that provides webmasters and other interested parties with linkage data.

From a SES Session Summary: Yahoo Site Explorer is a place to see which pages Yahoo has indexed. After clicking "Explore URL" you'll find the number of pages found in the Yahoo Index and also the number of inlinks. You can sort pages by "depth," submit URLs, and quickly export the results to CSV format. Site Explorer is also supported via an API.

Postscript From Danny: The new tool will also allow bulk submitting of URLs. Expect further details when it goes live.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:32 PM | Permalink

July 27, 2005
New Google Backlink Tool
Quick note about a new tool to show backlinks to a domain as listed in Google. OK, so we all know (or should by now) that Google doesn't show all the backlinks it knows about. Still, interested to see how what links it does show are listed with this tool along with their PageRank score, last cache data and listing in the Google Directory and ODP.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:14 PM | Permalink

July 6, 2005
Q&As, Q&As, Q&As On Search
It's Q&A madness out there. Below links to Q&As with a black hat on SEO, a recovering PR meister on search and public relations, an information research professional on search marketing, Bloglines, PriceGrabber, Digital Point and MSN Search to come.
- Interview of David Naylor at SEO Book covers Dave's life and times on the black hat side but also how for most webmasters, white hat is good enough.
- Q+A with Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.com at SEO Chat has Greg talking about the life and times of generating good public relations and countering bad PR via search.
- Interview with Dr. Garcia (Orion) at SEOmoz talks with Dr. Edel Garcia about the life and times of looking at search marketing from an information retrieval background.
- 5 Questions with Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher at SearchViews talks with Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher on the life and times of elevating blog search, wheterh news customization might make fragmented communities and three other questions.
- Interview of Shawn Hogan of Digital Point Solutions at SEO Book has Digital Point founder Shawn Hogan on the life and times of developing tools for SEO and running a popular forum and link network.
- PriceGrabber - It?s All About the User Experience from Comparison Engines has Ron La Pierre of PriceGrabber on the life and times of running PriceGrabber.
- Ask Questions Directly to the MSN Search Development Team: No answers yet, but if you have questions for MSN Search, they're going to be reviewing and answering within this SEO Chat thread.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:02 PM | Permalink
Hitwise Releases Keyword Intelligence Service
Hitwise, best known for tracking the online behavior of 25 million internet users every day, has introduced a new keyword research tool designed for small and medium sized businesses. The tool, which monitors usage at all of the major search engines, also provides guidance on "successful" search terms—those that actually resulted in a user visiting a web site. Like the popular Wordtracker keyword research tool, Hitwise Keyword Intelligence offers a number of tools that help search marketers with search term research and management.

Keyword Intelligence offers a subset of data and search term analysis features that are available within the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service. I'm planning an in-depth look at the service soon. Meanwhile, for more information see today's press release announcing the new service.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:16 PM | Permalink

June 17, 2005
PageRank Decoder Offers Flash-Based Guestimates On Linking Impact
Want to understand how PageRank will build between pages you link? Only Google actually knows how that works. There's been so much tinkering and tampering with what they do since the original PageRank formula was published years ago that using that equation to understand what happens today is like teaching sciences with a textbook that's hundreds of years old.

Nevertheless, that's all PageRank Decoder has to work with -- the old formula. Spotted via Search Engine Roundtable, this Flash-based application lets you link between actual pages to guestimate (strong on the guess) how things might change. Further comments on the tool from Search Engine Roundtable and

For a nice, healthy and recent debate on how much we can really know about PageRank calculations, I recommend reading our Revisiting whether PR is lost when adding pages to a site thread on the Search Engine Watch Forums. For a reminder that it's anchor text rather than PageRank to worry about, see the How Important Is Page Rank? thread. Other factors come into play, as well, as What Factors Other Than PR Determine Google Rank? covers.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:57 AM | Permalink

June 7, 2005
Make Your Own Tag Clouds With TagCloud.com
I wrote earlier of Yahoo News Tag Soup, which automatically groups Yahoo News stories into tag categories in a "cloud" format. Want to do the same to your own feed or a collection of feeds? Yahoo News Tag Soup creator John Herren sends news of his new TagCloud service. Sign-up for free, enter your feed, and you'll have your own tag cloud. Or give it a list of feeds, and you can make a cloud in particular subject areas.

I made two clouds to see how it works. The first below shows stories just from the Search Engine Watch Blog. The second collects stories from a range of search blogs I read. Not all of them are listed, as I didn't have the time to get everything in there (the ability to take a standard OPML export of feeds would be cool) and some feeds glitched (sorry, Threadwatch, your feed didn't validate for TagCloud). No doubt others will in short order setup a comprehensive search cloud including every blog under the sun (need a list? see this past post). I'll link across, when they do.
SEWBlogCloud SearchCloud
Yeah, I know, the borders spill across our margins. And technically, I've done wrong by putting the link data that should go in the page's header into the body. But it seems to work, and trying to put something into one particular post's header isn't easy. But you get the idea!

From what I gather, the clouds are based on what's in a current feed. So I was disappointed in our SEW Blog cloud. We cover a lot of different subjects, and the cloud doesn't take that history into account. It would be cool to see what would happen if it analyzed the full-text of all of our posts.

In addition, it remains more fun than useful if you really wanted to drill-down to find stories on a particular topic. We actually categorize all our stories at Search Engine Watch for members. You can find a list of categories shown on this page (I'll be putting a page on the blog listing all of these directly in the future, though drill-down access will remain a members-only feature).

It would be cool to see that list turned into a cloud based on number of posts. But the underlying data would remain based on us putting things into a set categorization scheme we have here. That works for us -- mileage may vary elsewhere :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:53 AM | Permalink

June 6, 2005
LinkCounts & LinkStats From PubSub's Only Rough Picture, So Far
There seems to be no end to blog search tools wanting you to have cool looking charts to prove your popularity. To prove the point, here's another one. LinkCounts from PubSub gives you an overview of top sites getting links and giving links. Want to check yourself or another site? Use the LinkStats page. But keep this big caveat in mind that the page itself tells you:

PLEASE NOTE: LinkCounts are based on the content of a site's feed(s). Some feeds only publish summaries (or even just headlines) that do not contain links. We are constantly working to improve the resolution and accuracy of our published statistics. At times we may feel that our changes are significant enough to warrant reprocessing of some or all of our historical "raw" data. These changes will most likely result in the removal and regeneration of our published historical data.

In other words, rather than counting links in actual posts, this is all apparently based only on what goes out in a feed. That's a bad, misleading thing. For example, here's the SEW Blog stats for the past 30 days. According to this, we're pretty stingy with the links, giving out only one -- ONLY ONE -- over the past month.

That's absurd. We link and link and link to all sorts of things. But since we send out 100 word summaries, only links appearing in those summaries are counted. Even then, they have to be parsed out correctly -- and PubSub's not doing that. I know that, because it's very common that a post will start out with a link -- so the link is in the summary. That happened many more times than once in the past 30 days. Heck, the summary of this post will have two links in it.

So, if you want some very rough idea of who links to you in the blogging world, this new tool gives you an idea, but it's far from a complete, accurate picture. In addition, while you see overall sites linking, you aren't show individual backlinks. In other words, you have to hunt around in a site to find the actual link.
Postscript: PubSub got in touch to note that we don't send links in our summaries at all -- so there's nothing there to count! But I haven't heard back about why they mysteriously have found some to count anyway in the odd case. And the underlying point remains. Only links parsed out of a feed are counted, which will skew the stats.
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:25 PM | Permalink

June 2, 2005
A New Compilation Free "Cool Tools"
Over at Search Engine Guide, you'll find a new compilation from Robin Nobles that lists a number of cool tools that just happen to be free.

I'm glad to see that Robin included the "most excellent" SnapTools/WebAttack site on her list. Over the years I've used this directory to find and learn about a number of worthwhile freeware and shareware tools. Her first compilation of cool tools is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:07 AM | Permalink

May 27, 2005
GoLexa, Link Harvester & Recap Of Other New SEM Tools
The past few weeks have been pretty busy in terms of new search marketing tools appearing. I've now posted a recap of these for Search Engine Watch members, ranging from AdWords keyword generation tools to link analysis tools to Firefox add-ons for marketers. I especially wanted to mention these to everyone:
- GoLexa: This is a very cool tool for site owners. It brings back Google results and provides a ton of extra information about the pages listed.
- Yahoo Link Harvester: Uses the Yahoo API to let you find links pointing at a particular domain or individual page. You can get back up to 1,000 listings. You can then easily get WHOIS info, Alexa info, Google full cache or text-only cache copy of the domain that the link is hosted on.
If you're an SEW member (thank you), be sure to see the longer version of this article with more tools and info.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:10 PM | Permalink

April 20, 2005
Google Ransom Notes To Block Automated Queries, Submissions
Aaron Wall reports in Google Taking Action Against Automated SEO Software that new "ransom note" style codes are being used by Google to block the OptiLink link building software -- causing OptiLink to suspend its Google functionality for the time being. Note that ransom notes were also added recently to a number of other Google services that might get hit by automation, such as its Add URL page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:28 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2005
Yahoo Auto-Linker Tool For Adding Links To Content
Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped has created Yahoo Auto-Linker, which taps into the Yahoo API to automatically insert links into any content you might have on your web site.

For example, say I wanted to add some links to this text from an earlier blog post that Chris Sherman wrote:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Using Philipp's tool, I get links added like this:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Why would I do this? I wouldn't! But Aaron Wall correctly suggests that those looking to create fake content that seems real by having a few links scattered in might find this useful.

Of course, others might find legit reasons for making use of adding the links, such as having a fast way to perhaps add links to topics that could use further definition.

That brings me back to why I wouldn't use such a tool for anything other than fun. I'd want to really understand exactly what sources are being used. This tool, from what I can tell, simply uses whatever is the first listing for a particular word on Yahoo to be the link. First isn't necessarily the best.

Interestingly, I'm guessing the Google API is also being employed as well. By default, the links will be generated from Yahoo results. However, you can choose to have Google as an option. Here's that same text using links generated out of Google. I've bolded those where Google comes up with different destinations than Yahoo:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

In either case, you can also have links take a nofollow attribute, as I've done with these examples. Have fun giving it a play. Philip provides a few more details here: Yahoo Auto-Linker. Also note that despite the name, this is completely unrelated to the Google Toolbar AutoLink feature that automatically inserts links into pages that are viewed by those using the latest version of the Google Toolbar.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:14 AM | Permalink

March 29, 2005
Google To Acquire Urchin Web Analytics Firm
Google is to acquired the Urchin web analytics firm, which provides both hosted and log-based tools for understanding how people are interacting with web sites.

The Google press release notes that the company plans to continue offering the tools to site owners and marketers, though it doesn't say whether pricing would change. I imagine that Google might offer some versions completely free, in order to build greater marketshare. The company has done the same with many of its other products, such as with the Picasa photo management tool.

One reason to jump into web analytics is that the search companies understand that as search ad prices rise, people will only be willing to pay more if they can justify this by showing better conversions. Web analytics can help those who aren't tracking conversions or who are tracking conversions at only a basic level to better understand the full picture of what happens on their web sites. For more on this, see my Most Conversions Happen Offline; You Need To Measure These! post.

This is one reason why both Yahoo and Google already offer free conversion tracking tools to their advertisers (Yahoo info here; Google info here, though the link to the page with more info on the tool has disappeared). Providing full web analytics may help companies improve conversion even more. Yahoo already owns web analytics technology that it obtained through its 2003 purchase of Keylime. Now Google joins the club.

How much is the deal for? The Google release doesn't say, but John Battelle reports a tip of the $30 million range. SiliconBeat reports the same.

Want to discuss? Please join our forum thread, Google Buys Urchin.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:47 AM | Permalink

March 14, 2005
Looking At ClickTracks Optimizer
Jennifer Laycock does a rundown on key features of the new mid-range ClickTrack Optimizer product released in January. ClickTracks Optimizer Offers Must Have Reporting for Small Businesses is the title of her article on Search Engine Guide, and as you might guess, she loves the web analytics tool, as do I.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:01 PM | Permalink

March 7, 2005
A Week After Launch, Yahoo Search Developer Network Lists More than 20 Applications
It's been about one week since Yahoo launched the Yahoo! Search Developer Network with several APIs for web developers to use. I was just perusing the YSDN Wiki and found this page with links to more than 20 applications that have been submitted in the past week. Here are just of the apps I plan on checking out:

+ WebClust, Clustering Web Engine

+ Link Popularity Checker using PHP and Yahoo API

+ Firefox Search Sidebar

+ gvcard: Yahoo Local -> vCard

+ Yahoo Keyword Tracker

A complete and expanding list of apps is located here.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:49 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005
Search APIs & The Build Or Buy Management Question
In Search Engine APIs: Right for You? at ClickZ, Kevin Lee looks at the how the Google AdWords API now means all major paid listing programs allow for direct, automated bid management. Should you then build your own tool or outsource to someone like Kevin who might do it for you? He lists a number of things to consider.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:49 AM | Permalink
Search Engine Tools Network Offers Free SEO Utilities
Olivier Andriew, editor of the well-known Abondance site that covers the French search space and search engines in general, in the French language, has launched a new Search Engine Tools Network offering some free optimization utilities ranging from rank checking to page analysis.

I've never been a big fan of page analysis tools, feeling they lead people into seeking a "perfect page" solution that doesn't exist (my older In Pursuit Of The Perfect Page for SEW members explains more). But other tools that caught my eye were:

SE-Bid: Pretty cool at bringing back the paid listing for a term from FindWhat, Google and Overture side-by-side.

SE-Spider: Designed to simulate what a search engine might see and extract from your pages, when it visits them. The caveat here is that everything shown might not be indexed by particular search engine, such as meta keyword data, ALT text and so on.

SE-Flash: Tries to show you what search engines may extract from Flash files, though I don't think this should be taken as a guarantee of exact indexing. Some info on what is suspected to be indexed is here. Also see this further reading:
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:04 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2005
New Search ROI Tracking Tool Launched
Search marketing firm Oneupweb's released a new ROI tool designed for search campaigns. ROI trax starts at $150 per month and rises depending on visitors per month. A bit more coverage from ClickZ: Oneupweb Unveils New ROI Tool for Search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:24 AM | Permalink

October 17, 2004
New Deep Link Ratio Tool
Nice catch spotted via Tara Calishain's blog, a Deep Link Ratio tool that will calculate your "deep link ratio." What's that? It tells you of all the links pointing at a domain what percentage of them point at the home page. Why do you care? You probably don't need to, but it's interesting to see, nonetheless.

Some people want all their links to point at their home page, either feeling that this forces people through the "front door" or that it makes their home page much more important for search engine purposes. Personally, I think you should be happy getting a link from anyone who has quality traffic and who wants to route to the most appropriate page in your site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004
FeedForAll For Feed Creation
When I wrote my Making An RSS Feed article last year, I had a few people puzzled about why it was even necessary. After all, feed generation is built into many authoring tools, right? For blog tools, sure. But ordinary web servers? Not necessarily.

That article explains how to make a feed by hand. But reading one of our forum threads today, I came across Nick W's mention of FeedForAll. If you have to roll your own feed, this makes it easy to do using a software interface. It can also help you modify and manage existing feeds.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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