Google Now Lets One Domain Dominate Search Results

Google would only show up to two results from the same domain on a single search result page. Now, Google has confirmed what many are seeing, where a single brand dominates a single page of Google’s search results.

This is not a bug, this is not an anomaly, it is an intentional change to Google’s ranking algorithm. Google said:

Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain.

What I find interesting is the last statement by Google:

We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.

Remember, Google’s Peter Norvig who said, “for the second one [search result], you don’t want something that’s almost the same as the first. You prefer some diversity, so there’s where minority views start coming in.” You prefer diversity. Google is clearly saying that a result from the same site can still be diverse and different enough, even if there are ten results, all from the same site.

On the reputation management front, this is a clear winner for those with reputation management issues.


Source : searchengineland.com

Monitoring Backlinks

When you set up a web presence, one of the things you want to do is start getting backlinks. They help your search engine ranking, and the more places that link to you, the more people can find you. However, not all backlinks are good ones. There are plenty of places where people can trade backlinks or buy backlinks, and a lot of those places just offer spam. Link farms are examples of places you don’t want to find your site listed.

Link farms, and similar sites don’t really provide backlinks that are valuable, but inexperienced website owners may think that just having a lot of backlinks will be enough. When they dodo not start  seeing a lot of improvements on their site stats and traffic, they get upset – but they don’t understand that they’re hurting themselves by creating a lot of backlinks that aren’t beneficial to their websites or targeted to their niches. That’s why the ability to monitor your backlinks is so very important.

Anyone who decides to monitor backlinks should know that there are plenty of options for doing that. Some of them are free, and some of them cost money.  Yahoo Site Explorer is free and it works as well as or better than others I have seen This tool allows you to see how many sites are linking to you, who is linking to you and what they are linking to.  One thing that Yahoo Site Explorer does not do is take data points and track the link velocity. Remember that everything is relative as the Search Engines are comparing and ranking for relevance on a keyword-for-keyword basis.  Generally speaking the higher the quantity of naturally occurring targeted backlinks you have along with the higher the quality of your backlinks, the higher you will rank for targeted terms.  We suggest Yahoo Site Explorer because it seems to count many links that Google either doesn’t wish to count or divulge. We also recommend Link Velocity Tool as you can track competitors and take data points. This allows you to go back and see what your backlink count was at a specific point and time in the past.

Monitoring your backlinks is important. If you don’t monitor them, how will you know who’s linking to you and what content they like on your site? When you monitor backlinks, you don’t do it just because it’s the thing to do or you’ve been told by other people that you should. You do it because you want to use that information to make yourself more successful. There are plenty of ways to gain success on the Internet, but ignoring backlinks because you don’t see their value isn’t one of them. It’s much better to learn all you can and get all the data you can get about your website, so you can make good choices for its future.

It’s also important to understand the quality and quantity of your backlinks are a deciding factor when search engines determine where to place your page in search results. If many people who have ‘web cred’ are linking to you, it tells search engines that your site is valuable, and it will be ranked higher.

Not everyone monitors their backlinks with the competitors in mind, but you can certainly do that if you want to. Try our Link Velocity Tool.  You can monitor the relative speed of backlink growth between you and those competitive websites that you are interested in.  It’s a way of monitoring all of your important players while keeping a close eye on your long term online objectives.


Source : website-marketing-pros.com

Three Search Types For SEO

Common wisdom, supported by various research projects, has identified three primary types of searches: navigational, informational, and transactional. All of the major web search engines try to detect which type of search a user is performing by analyzing the query and attempting to determine intent, to better accommodate common searcher behaviors in their search results pages.

For example, in Google, if keyword data indicates that a specific keyword phrase is a navigational query, search engines will put a link to an official company website home page in the first position, often with supplemental Sitelinks.

A navigational query is a keyword search in which the searcher wishes to go to a specific website, or a web page on a specific site. In other words, with a navigational query, searchers are using a web search engine to navigate (go to) a website. Navigational queries are far more common than previously reported. In fact, at the 2009 Stockholm Search Marketing Expo, Peter Maxmin, Director for Online and Bing Search EMEA, reported that approximately 33% of Bing queries are navigational. And some of my sources at Yahoo told me recently that over 30% of Yahoo queries are navigational as well.

What does that mean to us, as search engine optimization (SEO) professionals? Is it enough for us to accommodate navigational, informational, and transactional queries? During my ongoing research on searcher behaviors, I discovered more types of searches that, I believe, we SEOs should know. Here are some of them.

Ad hoc search

An ad hoc search is one that SEOs are probably the most familiar with, even though we might not know the label for it. With an ad hoc search, the searcher’s goal is to find as many relevant documents as possible about a topic, as the need arises. An ad hoc search is informational in nature, since searcher is on a “fishing expedition” for information about a subject. The searcher might or might not have previous knowledge about the topic but wants to read or learn more about it.

For example, suppose a searcher wishes to purchase a new digital camera but does not know what brand or type to purchase. The searcher might want to read reviews about different digital cameras before making a purchase. Some keyword phrases he/she might type into the search box can include:

    * digital cameras
    * types of digital cameras
    * digital camera reviews
    * best digital cameras

The searcher probably does not want to go to a specific website at this time. The searcher is relying on the search engine to deliver many relevant documents (with corresponding links/URLs), and he will browse those documents to learn more about this topic.

Known-item search

A known-item search is similar to an ad hoc search but the target of the search is a particular document, or a small set of documents, that the searcher knows to exist and wants to find again (definition from Ellen M. Voorhees, National Institute of Standards and Technology, available in the paper Overview of TREC 2003). In other words, with a known-item search, the searcher knows a particular web page exists but does not always know or remember where it is.

Or, interestingly enough, the searcher might know where the web page is but finds it easier to type all or part of the URL into the search box rather than the address bar. Why? Because many people find it is easier to type in all or part of a URL into Google (for example) rather than the full URL. In fact, in 2006, 17% of Google mobile queries were URLs, indicating that searchers knew which websites they wished to visit (see A Large Scale Study of Wireless Search Behavior: Google Mobile Search for more info).

Here are some keyword phrases that indicate that a person is exhibiting site finding behavior:

    * google adwords login
    * Beyonce website home page
    * official Star Trek site

In other words, labeling a home page (in the title tag, heading and even the meta-tag description) is very important for site finding queries.

Named page search

With a named page search, the web searcher wishes to go to a specific page within a website, a page that the searcher recalls seeing or visiting at a previous time. As an SEO professional, I often test the effectiveness of site optimization by doing named page searches.

For example, many SEOs use Google AdWords’ keyword research tool, but they don’t always bookmark it or remember it when using a different person’s computer. So they might type the following keyword phrase into the search box:

    google adwords keyword research tool

Clearly, this searcher wants to go directly to specific web page on Google’s website. But I also like to do some advanced queries to see how well or poorly clients and competitors are optimizing their own sites. The queries I type use the following formats:

    * [keyword phrase] [company/organization name or abbreviation]
    * [keyword phrase] [part of URL with and without the .com or TLD]
    * [keyword phrase] site:www.example.com

So if I am looking to see how well the National Cancer Institute has optimized its site, using the above example, I might try the following queries:

    * breast cancer treatments nci
    * breast cancer tests cancer.gov
    * “breast cancer screening” site:www.cancer.gov (with and without the quotes)

If inappropriate pages appear in search results, then I know that pages need to be optimized more effectively.

As I continue to research, label, test and verify web searcher behaviors, I continually encounter these types of searches. As you can see, some of these searcher behaviors have overlapping definitions, which can be confusing. Nevertheless, I maintain a list of different types of searcher goals so I can accommodate them in all of my client websites. Which searcher behaviors do you commonly encounter, and how well does your site accommodate those behaviors?

Source

Google Advertising Professionals Program Is Going To Be Replaced By Google AdWords Certification

Google’s longstanding Google Advertising Professionals program is going away, to be replaced with a new Google Adwords Certification program, Google has announced. The change means those certified through GAP will have six months to recertify under the new program. The change may also allow more companies to gain certification, as the overall required spend level has been lowered. More below.

Google Advertising Professionals launched in 2004 and is being phased out in place of the Google AdWords Certification program. Part of this change is to offer more training materials, more challenging certification exams, offer more advanced exams to test search, display, reporting and analysis and a shiny redesigned Certified Partner badge.

This change means that those who want to be individually certified now need to pass two exams. Companies wanting to be certified need to have one individually certified employee and have a spend of $10,000 per quarter.

Google is also relaunching the AdWords Professionals Search, which quietly went live in December 2009. The new name for the search is the Google Partner Search.

Google has also changed the pricing of their AdWords API usage structure. There is now a new preferred pricing section that takes you through to see if you qualify. This means some developers will get free API units based on managed client spend. You are eligible to apply for preferred pricing if your company is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and AdWords API-based tools remain in compliance with the AdWords API terms and conditions, including the required minimum functionality. More details on this at the AdWords API Blog and AdAge has some other details on this as well.

Postscript: I asked Google what happens to those GAP certified advertisers, do they lose their certification? Google sent me the following reply:

Yup, they’re still certified. That said, partners who are GAP certified will have to meet the new criteria, along with new terms and conditions, within a six-month period.
To be certified, each company must have one employee who has passed the Google Advertising Fundamentals exam, along with one Advanced exam (there are now four exams which cover a range of topics — Google Advertising Fundamentals, Advanced Search Advertising, Advanced Display Advertising, and Advanced Reporting and Analysis — instead of one broad exam). Additionally, the company must reach a 90-day minimum spend criteria of $10,000 USD or currency equivalent — which was previously $100k — and agree to new terms and conditions.

The GAP exam always had to be renewed every two years. The broad AdWords Certification exam (Google Advertising Fundamentals) is still valid for two years. However, the the advanced exams (Advanced Search Advertising, Advanced Display Advertising, Advanced Reporting and Analysis) that must be renewed annually, so it won’t be constant re-certification.

Google sent over more details about the terms for individual certification:

• The spend requirement has been removed (formerly $1,000 USD over 90 days).
• Individuals must achieve a passing score on two exams — Google Advertising Fundamentals, along with one advanced-level exam — as opposed to one exam.
• Formerly, these people were designated as a Google Qualified Individual. Now, they are Individually Qualified in Google AdWords.
• Individual badges will be phased out and replaced with certificates and an individual profile page hosted by Google – see example 
 

Source : Search Engine Land 

Google To Acquire GrandCentral

Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral, we’ve learned, and we have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price. Just last week I flagged this company as the most exciting startup we’re currently tracking.

The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” As we change jobs, homes and cell phones, there are a lot of phone numbers to keep track of, and keeping everyone up to date with your most recent phone numbers is a real cost. If you use GrandCentral you can give out a single phone number. What happens when that person calls that number depends on his/her relationship to you, and what you are doing at the time.

The company, which has raised less than $6 million in capital from Minor Ventures (the exact amount has never been disclosed), beta launched just last September. Earlier this year mainstream press and blogger attention heated up.

The company may have received too much press attention before the product was ready, and we reported on some backlash from beta users abandoning the service in March. Still, the company pushed ahead, launching a mobile product and other features.

GrandCentral was recently pitching a second round of financing to Silicon Valley venture capitalists, but broke off discussions abruptly as the Google talks heated up.

I’m speculating on where Google will use GrandCentral, but the synergies with Gmail and GTalk are fairly obvious and could be the next step in Google’s competition with Skype and other instant messaging platforms.

This is, in my opinion, a great move by Google. Grand Central is an awesome productivity and simplifies the lives of users with multiple phones by giving them a single phone number and letting them handle calls via rules. It’s a natural fit with GTalk and Gmail.

Google won’t comment on this story. I have an email in to GrandCentral to see if they’ll confirm.

Source

 
Google To Acquire GrandCentral

10 Firefox Add-Ons To Make Your Gmail Experience Better

Gmail is a solid product from Google for emailing and Firefox add-ons make it more useful, so if you are running Firefox then you are lucky one to use Gmail features in a new way for better experience. Many new features you would be looking in Gmail to have, so now install these Firefox add-ons and find how many new features you got.

These add-ons are selected for Firefox 3.5, so if you do not have installed this version of Firefox it is better to install it to enjoy these add-ons.

1) Xoopit for Gmail

Xoopit is very recommended add-on for Gmail, if you use Gmail many times or for every time when you send emails. Recently Yahoo has acquired Xoopit.
 

Features:

use Google search while composing email.
Get information about people in conversation
Include Facebook status. 

2) Gmail Notifier

If you always check your emails after one minute then this add-ons is for you. You would be thinking Gtalk also inform use by this way but Gtalk supports only one account at a time and this add-ons support multiple accounts.

3) Better Gmail

Better Gmail makes your Gmail experience better and adds some useful extra features like hierarchical labels, unread message icon on your browser tab and many new features. It uses Greasemonkey scripts.

4) Gmail S/MIME

This add-on enables you to send and receive signed and encrypted message in Gmail.

5) Integrated Gmail

This add-on enables you to integrate other Google’s services.
 

Features:

Unread count in titles.
Drag and drop control elements in sidebar
Collapsible header in sidebar for Gmail and Google calender.
Support for silting multiple inboxes .
Https support for Google selected Google sites

6) Gmail Manager

Gmail manager is another good add-on for manging Gmail to get better experience.
 

Features:

Notifier for multiple accounts
You can get new email notifications while viewing account details.

7) Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures

This add-ons automatically inserts HTML signatures in your message based on your selected email address. It is depend upon you which email address you have chosen to compose email, as you know this an add-on based on browser so you can set different email signatures for different emails address.

8) GTDInbox

As creators of this add-on claim ” It transforms Gmail into a powerhouse of productivity.” It gives you a faster, better and task oriented inbox.

9) Gmail Notes

It is an experimental add-on, experimental add-ons are one with testing purpose so you have try them on your own risqué. So if you are a risqué takes you may try it, as its name suggests after installing this add-on a small menu will be created in your gmail page, which allows you to attach a private note in your conversation.

10) Mailto

This add-on is also a experimental add-on.
You may check this add-on by yourself.

 

Source : techshali.com

Orkut 'Promote': New Tool In Orkut.com

Orkut is a popular social site in Brazil and india. 49.83% users in Brazil and 17.51% users in India are using Orkut. It's launched in Jan 22, 2004. In 2004 Orkut has more users from United States, later US users are attracted to facebook and myspace.

We all would always wish to send something to all of our friends like messages, greetings, invitations, photos, videos, information etc. To make all this possible with a single click Orkut has released new option "Promote". It's a free tool. You will find this option below the events button ( Have a look on the following image). Currently this feature not live for all users, Probably it would be live after some time.

One of the best part of this tool is tracking. You can see clearly that how many people has viewed your message, clicked it and deleted it. It's a great feature for Promotional purposes. If you want to sale something for low price, this is the best feature to offer your friends to utilize the chance.

Just have a look on the following charts to have an idea that how orkut got popular in Brazil and India which was popular earlier in United States. (source: Wikipedia)

Source : seodailyupdates.blogspot.com

Twitter Hacked by DoS-Denial of Service Attack

According to the Associated Press, Twitter reported in its blog that the company is currently busy staving off a denial-of-service attack that was launched Thursday by an unknown group of hackers.

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a method where hackers commandeer computers and flood the targeted Web site with communication requests, forcing it shut down and reset. While a DoS attack is underway, the Web site either becomes unavailable to legitimate users or responds so slowly that the Web site times out and becomes unusable.

CNet reports that Twitter began suffering problems around 6 A.M PDT.

“We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly,” the company posted at 6:43 A.M PDT on their blog.

Around 7:49 A.M, Twitter updated users on the microblog’s status, saying that they were “defending against a denial-of-service attack and will update status again shortly.”

AlertSite, a firm that monitors Web site performance, had only 40 percent availability at 8:00 A.M, but was still widely inaccessible to most users.

According to the Los Angeles Times, at 9:47 A.M PDT, Twitters updated their status with a notice that read, “As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.”

Currently, the top trending topics on Twitter include “DoS” and “Denial-of-Service”.

Twitter is a famous social networking services available on the Internet and have millions of registered users, including Hollywood celebrities, famous business mans, politicians etc.

Another popular social networking site, Facebook, was also the victim of a similar attack this morning.

Earlier this week, the popular blog network Gawker Media was targeted by a DoS attack that was able to knock it off the Internet for a brief period of time..

According to PC Pro, the motive behind the attacks on Twitter, Facebook and Gawker are unknown.

“The question on my mind is - why would someone want to attack Twitter?” asks Graham Cluley, the senior technology consultant at Sophos, a company that specializes in network security, to PC Pro.

“I can’t imagine it’s a commercial competitor of theirs, but it could be someone with a financial motivation (blackmail?) or a teenager in a back bedroom with access to an awfully large botnet.”



Source :- collegenews.com, seoportal.blogspot.com

Google Analytics Help : Five Simple But Powerful Ways To Use

First of all - what is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free analysis tool which gives you information on where your website visitors are coming from, which pages they visit, how long they stay, and a lot more. There are plenty of paid stat counters available which present data in different ways, but Google Analytics is one of the best, and it's free.

One can over-analyze or under-analyze any website. Some people spend too much time checking stats, analyzing, and planning, and don't spend enough time writing good content and getting new readers to their blogs.

On the other side of the pendulum, you could go on week after week, blindly publishing content and flailing along with offsite promotion, without seeing what results your campaigns are getting, which type of content is the most popular for your visitors, and which traffic-generation techniques are getting the best results.

The first is like tuning your car's engine every day without ever turning on the ignition, the second is like driving in the dark.

In between, we have a happy balance.

I find that the best times to check stats are when I don't have a lot of time to do a more intense project, or when I am a bit too tired to do anything more "heavy." Sometimes just before I go to bed at night is a good time to check into what has been happening between my visitors and my websites' pages. I can browse and poke around in my Analytics account and learn quite a lot - even with minimal energy.

Here are five simple and powerful ways to use Google Analytics:

1. Find out which of your website's pages are getting the most traffic, and optimize those pages.

If you are running ads on the pages, make sure they are properly placed and updated. If you are linking to affiliate products, make sure your links are up-to-date and that you aren't missing any links, or new products which should be there. If you are using that page for some other purpose, such as to generate subscriptions or whatever the case may be, make sure that the page is laid out as well as possible. This can be helpful if you have a large website which has a long "to do" list and many things to optimize or tweak. By just starting with the most heavily-trafficked pages, you will get the maximum results from your efforts and also know where to start.

2. Find out which referrers are generating the most traffic, and continue any actions you have been taking to generate traffic from those referrers.

For example, if you see that Twitter is generating a large amount of targeted traffic, you can increase your activity on Twitter. If you see that your article submissions are getting new visitors from article directories, you can make a note not to drop those out - or possibly increase them. Conversely, if you see that you have been spending time/money on a traffic-generation method which is not getting very far, you can stop wasting your time on it (presuming you have given it time to take effect).

3. Find out which keywords you are ranking the best for, and see which ones you can "push to the top."

If you had a website on dogs, for example, and found that you were ranking at #30-#40 on Google for many keywords, but ranking #11 for, lets say, "dog chew toys," you might want to work on increasing your rankings on dog chew toys and focus more of your SEO efforts on this term (of course there are other factors you would consider as well, such as the searches and competition for this term). Climbing from position #31 to #20 will generally not get you a huge increase of traffic. But climbing from position #11 to position #3 almost certainly will. Focus first on keywords or key phrases that have the best chance of ranking high in the near future, and then move on to the others.

4. Find out which pages keep your visitors' attention for the longest.

If the average visitor on Page A stays for 5 seconds, while the average visitor to Page B stays for 150 seconds, the likelihood is that your visitors find Page B's content more interesting than Page A's.

5. Look at the graph of your bounce rate.

This tells you how many people left your site without visiting a second page. Depending on the website and the page, this may be a good or bad thing. But if you have a blog or a content site, it is usually a good sign when people stick around to view more of your posts and content before they leave. If your bounce rate increased or decreased after you made a certain change, you can opt to revert that change (if bounce rate increased) or keep it (if bounce rate decreased). For example, if I changed the theme of my Wordpress blog and then noticed a date-co-incident increase in my bounce rate, I might consider changing it back :) This statistic can be used in many ways - it will depend on the nature of your blog.

There are many, many other ways to use Google Analytics. The above are great ways to start, if you aren't familiar with or used to using this tracking system. Google Analytics can give you a far greater understanding of what's happening on your site and can guide you to continue on successful actions and drop the unsuccessful.



Source : seo-news.com

Google Wants To Save Your Life (Or Help End It)

Pushes Google Health and advance directives

Health issues are highly personal. Some folks, for example, are scared of living for years on end without control of their bodies. Others are terrified that a plug will get pulled moments before they make a total recovery. And a certain search giant thinks both of these attitudes represent great reasons to start using Google Health.

A post on the Official Google Blog tells readers, "An advance directive allows you to determine your end-of-life wishes so that your family and doctor can honor them if you get sick and are unable to communicate." It has the ability to save all sorts of people all sorts of pain, and whatever your age or condition, is something you should consider completing.

Google just wants to make sure its software is part of the equation, and as it turns out, Google Health can now process scanned paper documents.

So the post continues, "Google Health is now working with a leading advance directive provider, Caring Connections, that provides a free, downloadable form customized for all 50 states. To complete your form, download it, print it out, complete it, scan it, and upload it to Google Health. Once you've uploaded the signed form, Google Health makes it easy to share it with your caregiver."

Admittedly, this seems morbid and a bit opportunistic. But the issue's an important one, and this may prove an effective tack for Google to take.

Source :webpronews.com

Google Maps Gadget Aims To Help Businesses Be Found

Will provide on-site, user-specific directions

Let's be honest: someone who's incapable of copying and pasting an address into Google Maps may not be worth having as a customer. But most companies like to make things easy on people, and a new Google Maps gadget should ensure that it's easy for would-be clients to find businesses.

A post on the LatLong Blog explains, "This simple gadget allows webmasters to add customized Google Maps directions to their business locations. . . . The gadget allows you to pre-fill the 'To' field with one or multiple addresses. Customers are then able to print their directions with a single click."

This should increase the convenience factor of businesses' sites, even as it allows firms to make sure potential shoppers don't wander away. A nice touch is that companies can keep messy street addresses out of the "To" fields, as well - it's possible to use more recognizable names and aliases.

As you can see, Legoland California's already taken advantage of the Google Maps offering. More serious entities like Emeril Lagasse restaurants and Harvard have put it to use, too.

The gadget's available in 23 languages, so it's probably just a matter of time until businesses all over the world are on much better terms with Google Maps.

Source : webpronews.com