Google Releases Search Deskbar
A new Google Labs experiment called the Google Deskbar is a search application that lets PC users perform Google searches at any time from any application. Like the HotBot Deskbar, the Google Deskbar is a free software download that appears as a search box in the Windows taskbar at the bottom right of most Windows-based PCs.
This is an English-language only product and is available for Windows users (98/ME/2000/XP ) running IE 5.5 or higher.
Search Engine Forums Spotlight
Links to this week’s topics from search engine forums across the web.
Are the Bad Guys Winning at Google?
Cre8asite Forums
“The other more important point Jill made is that she thought attempts to catch devious SEO tricks was something Google was diligent about catching. She’s finding this may not be true. From an SEO perspective, why in the heck should ANY SEO bother to follow Google’s own guidelines for SEO’s when Google itself isn’t monitoring what’s going on?”
Buyer’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms
JimWorld
“I actually quite like the way they have done this report. It is a well thought out guide of how to look for a company that will suit you, pointing out the pitfalls and benefits of different methods and types of companies with an good glossary of SEO [search engine optimization” terms.”
Google Directory
Best Practices Forums
“The Google Directory is now showing the first major update in over 6 months.”
Fake Hits
Best Practices Forums
“…some sleazeball was offering software like this to kill your competition on PPC [pay per click” campaigns by generating hits on PPC engine referral codes which can be scraped from sponsored listings. It was bad enough when this was an ‘underground’ product. Now it is out for anyone to use, watch those PPC referrals very closely!”
Advertising In Yahoo
High Rankings Forum
“Would like to know how Yahoo supports PPC.”
Dollar Value Of A Home Page Link?
High Rankings Forum
“There’s nothing wrong per se with buying links, selling links or otherwise trading links. The problems for search engines start if: a) you use other’s intellectual property (e.g. the trademarked term ‘PageRank’) in order to sell your links, and/or b) the purpose of the link is deceive the search engine’s algorithm that your site is more relevant to a term than it truly is – i.e. deceptive advertising in the SERPs [search engine results pages”.”
Broad Match Killing Relevancy
Webmaster World
“Now I know exactly what the problem is with Google – it’s broad match. I can’t believe how many advertisers are using this function, and it’s making most, if not all Adword results irrelevant.”