SearchDay Week in Review
A Hearty Buffet of Look-Up Databases
SearchDay, Aug. 14, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2245831
Need to look up an address, postal code, place name or similar information? Forget search engines — this one-stop source provides free access to lookup databases.
Fraud, Scams and Misinformation on the Web
SearchDay, Aug. 13, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2227161
Although the web is rife with bogus pages and deceptive ‘information,’ it’s surprising that even content from typically reliable, authoritative sources can’t always be trusted.
Gems from the Congressional Research Service
SearchDay, Aug. 12, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2236441
High quality, non-partisan research created for for members of the U.S. Congress is freely available on the web — if you know where to search for it.
Are You Wanted by the Recording Industry?
SearchDay, Aug. 11, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2241591
Concerned that information about your file-sharing user name may have been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of America? Check this database to see if you’re a potential target.
Search Engine Forums Spotlight
Private Dance … Via AdSense?
Jimworld
“From what I’ve been told, there is absolutely no relationship between the AdSense spiders and the main Google index. AdSense is not a backdoor to getting into the main index.”
Bid War Insanity – What To Do?
Webmaster World
“The keywords we are bidding on are not traffic heavy but are very targeted to our services. This war has gotten to a point, where I am bidding $1.00 and the only other bid (our competitor) overbids me with a $1.01 bid! This is totally ridiculous!”
Session ID Question
High Rankings Forum
“Perhaps you were viewing the web site first in a browser that had cookies turned off? Some web developers set up their sites to include Session IDs in the URL when they detect cookies have been disabled….Like you, I would be afraid of any possibility of a spider being served a URL with a Session ID in it…”
Keyword Research – I Need Some Direction
High Rankings Forum
“I’m sitting in WordTracker… and I’m lost. I know that I am looking for ‘my diamond in the rough’ keyword and/or keyword phrase. A handful of them actually – as I want to optimize some pages/sections differently (according to content)… Is there a ‘trick’ to all of this?”
Spaces and Characters In URLs
Jimworld
“I don’t believe there is any problem using a semi-colon. If possible, though, I would use a hyphen. Google parses text separated by hyphens (in a URL) but not text between an underscore.”
Check Number of Pages Indexed by Google
SearchGuild
“site:domain.com -kjhsdfgh where kjhsdfgh is something that you are sure does not appear in any of your pages.”
AdSense Ad Quality
Webmaster World
“Categories might help, but I think keywords (or a filter that would make it possible to exclude certain keywords) would be equally useful. I’ve had pages about Venice, Italy display ads for apartment rentals in Venice, Florida. Being able to specify ‘Italy’ or exclude ‘Florida’ would easily solve that problem.”
Search Engine Forums Spotlight courtesy Search Engine Guide.
Search Headlines
NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication’s search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.
Related reading
Google Walkout: What the ‘five real changes’ demanded by staff will entail for the search giant
Earlier today thousands of Google employees across the world walked out of their offices in protest against sexual harassment and discrimination. We take a closer look at what the ‘five real changes’ demanded by staff will entail for the search giant.
10 fun facts (and a typo) from the original Google paper by Larry and Sergey
Fun fact #1: "Wow, you looked at a lot of pages from my web site. How did you like it?" - people encountering a crawler for the first time. This and other quality snippets pulled from the original paper presenting Google in 1997.
Google’s PageRank algorithm, explained
In their original paper presenting Google, Larry and Sergey define PageRank like this: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)). We dive into what that really means.
Yandex: Beating Google in Europe’s biggest internet market
Yandex has reasserted its dominance over Google in the Russian market. It has a presence in other countries too and is branching out into numerous other tech verticals. A look at search in Russia and what Yandex is doing well to solidify its position.
