Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search
Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged
separately:
From The SEW Blog…
- Flickr
#1 Photography Site In UK
Hitwise is reporting that Flickr is the #1 photography site in the UK. This
isn’t really a surprise at all – what’s more suprising is that it’s taken a
while to get there, and how it’s got there. Flickr’s UK market share has
increased 39%, Photobucket’s share decreased by 17% and Webshot’s remained
flat. This is apparently due good SEO and searches for soft porn using the
brand name and various terms you can work out for yourself. In some respects
this is worthy of nothing more than a wry smile and shrug of the shoulders.
Unfortunately however, this may… - When
Good Search Bots go Bad
Most people realize the importance of creating a search engine friendly site,
but many don’t take the final step of assuring that search engine spiders or
bots can fully access the site. Even worse, they fail to block bots from
non-public parts of the site, or don’t recognize rogue bots that are crawling
a site to steal content or for other nefarious reasons. In today’s SearchDay
article, The Taming of the Bots, guest writer Tony Wright has coverage of a
recent SES panel where search marketers and representatives from search
engines offered tips on managing bots, whether their intent is… - Topix’s
Cool Year-Long News Archive
Somewhat lost among all the search news earlier this month was Topix and its
launch of an awesome year-long news archive. It’s a great resource and much
more than just a cool “click-o-gram” that you’ll see at the top of news search
pages. News search engines typically only let you go back in time for about a
month. After that, new stuff flows in and the old stuff moves out. That’s
terrible if you want to find news articles about a particular event further
back in time…. - Ask.com
Adds Emoticons Or Smiley To Smart Answers
The Ask.com Blog posted that they have added a new Smart Answer to their
suitcase, it is called an emoticon or smiley. You know they look like, :-) or
;-) or :D, you get my point. So now if you search on some of the more popular
emoticon at Ask.com you will get a Smart Answer…. - Google
Uses AdWords Conversion Data To Fight AdSense Fraud?
ShoeMoney blogged that at the Arbitrage Issues session at SES San Jose, during
Q&A time, Kim Malone of Google said that the AdSense team may use AdWords
conversion data to determine which sites are trying to fraud advertisers and
users (often named Made for AdSense sites – MFAs)…. - Search
Engines Handle No Index Inconsistently
Matt Cutts has a nice illustrated survey of how various major search engines
deal with the meta noindex tag in Handling noindex meta tags. He finds
inconsistency, with this being the summary:… - Keywords
In URL May Help Rankings, Google’s Matt Cutts Says
The hotly debated SEO topic of, does having keywords in your file names help
with your rankings, will probably start all over again. Matt Cutts of Google
wrote at his blog, and I quote; Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the
title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url
also can help search engines judge the quality of a page….
Understanding Digg.com
Valleywag has an excellent Cheatsheet on What is Digg? Basically, if someone
asks you what is Digg, just send them there. It describes the basics, how it
works, how to break it, Digg’s competitors, the recent publicity on Digg, “How
Digg fits the buzzwords,” oh and don’t say “I got digged,” I believe it is “I
was dugg.” Full details on Digg at Valleywag….- Tips On
Getting Listed In Local Search Results
Patricia Hursh wrote a ClickZ column named Four Steps Every Business Can Take
to Improve Local Search Results. The article goes over the what, why and how
on Local Search. In short, how does one get included in the local results you
see search engines providing? She recommends that you (1) update your business
listings at Amacai, infoUSA, and Acxiom, (2) submit your site to local engines
such as Google Local, MSN Local, Yahoo Local, Ask Local, and TrueLocal, (3)
update your Internet Yellow Page listings at YellowPages.com, Verizon
SuperPages, and SwitchBoard.com, and (4) make sure to have your address… - Google
AdSense Sued by Suspended Publisher
Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that a woman has sued Google after she was
suspended from the program for clicking on her own ads. Theresa B. Bradley
filed a lawsuit against Google for $250,000 for fraud and misrepresentation,
even though she admits she clicked her own ads “to verify that the advertisers
were not selling competing products”….
Headlines & News From Elsewhere
- 12 Easy
Quality Indicators to Combine to Prove Trust, Stuntdubl
Yahoo! Holds Off on Phone Ads, The Street- Podcast: Google
CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple’s Board; Download Books From Google; Topix’s Long
News Search Memory & More!, Daily SearchCast
TrueLocal Launches Canadian Local Search Engine, Search Engine Roundtable
Google Book Search Drives Visits to Book Retailers and Attracts Low Income
Seniors, Hitwise
AdSense Beautifier for WordPress, Search Engine Roundtable- How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Video, ClickZ
10 Helpful Holiday Search Tips, iMedia Connection
Google Distribution Deals Don’t Matter Much to Marketers, ClickZ
Google Book Search – To download or not download?, Phil Bradley
Google Allowing Some Books for Offline Printing BUT Don’t Forget About Other
Sources (Free), ResourceShelf
Google Calendar Gadget Shows All Your Calendars, Google Operating System- Scoble
visiting the Plex, Matt Cutts
VentureBeat, Successor To SiliconBeat, Launches, VentureBeat- Domain
Buying Tips from Monte Cahn of Moniker, Chris Pirillo
Bloggers, Vloggers, and Podcasters: do NOT buy this book!, Robert Scoble
Podcast: Buffy The Search Marketing Vampire Slayer, Daily SearchCast
The Power of Search, John Battelle- 21
Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic, SEOmoz
Anonymous Surfing: New Browser Guarantees Browsing Privacy: Browzar – Video
Introduction, Robin Good
Is More Block View Imagery Coming from A9?, ResourceShelf- Hedger
Has a New Gig, Traffick
Findory interview at Search Engine Lowdown, Geeking With Greg
Kayak Sends Two Times More Traffic to Travel Agencies Than Six Months Ago,
Hitwise- The
robots are coming! The robots are coming!, SEOmoz