Microsoft fires volley at Google in ad battle
“Microsoft is in talks to buy a minority stake in the popular social-networking Web site Facebook Inc., a sign of a new urgency by the software giant to jump-start its online business at a time when Google is widening its lead in the fast-growing Internet-advertising business.”
“Depending on whom you ask, click fraud is either an unsolvable quagmire threatening the online ad industry or, as Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said last year, ‘immaterial.’”
Will Yahoo deliver something new with its ad quality filtering?
“To finish, Yahoo will be pushing for keyword insertion in copy — I knew this was coming before I read the e-mail, though. The last 10 times I contacted my rep about poor performance for a particular category, he suggested I use this tool. In those instances, I actually did follow his recommendations, and the results were, hmmm… let’s call them indecisive.”
Search engine newsletters
Google: Websites that may merit a low landing page quality score
“Types of websites that will be penalized with low landing page quality scores:
Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information, Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads, Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer.”
Nielsen/Netrankings August U.S. search share rankings (PDF)
“Google handles 53.6% of all US searches, Yahoo 19.9%, Microsoft 12.9%, AOL 5.6% and Ask 1.7%.”
Hitwise: Google receives 64 percent of all U.S. searches in Aug. 2007
“Google accounted for 63.98 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending September 1, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.87, 7.98 and 3.41 percent respectively. [...]
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing August 2007 to August 2006, the Travel, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories received double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.”
Incoming links are one of the most important factors for high search engine rankings. If your website doesn’t have enough incoming links then it’s very difficult to get high rankings for a competitive search term.
It’s important that you get the right kind of links. If you have 20 good incoming links then you’ll get better rankings than with 100 bad incoming links.
So what makes a good incoming link? There are several points that can make a link better than other links:
1. The link should use the keyword in the anchor text
If you want to get high rankings for a search term like “buy brown shoes” then the links to your website should use exactly that text. The text that is used to link to your site (the “anchor text”) influences the words for which your website will get high rankings.
Make sure that the texts that are used to link to your website contain words for which you want to get high rankings on search engines.
2. The link should be from a relevant page
Links from related web pages usually work better than links from unrelated pages. Links from unrelated pages won’t hurt your rankings but Google likes links from websites that are related to yours better.
3. The link should go to a relevant page on your site
While it’s okay to get links to your home page it is better to get links to the page that is most relevant to the chosen anchor text. If the link text is “buy brown shoes” then you should make sure that the link goes to a page that deals with brown shoes.
If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it’s more likely that your web page is really relevant to that term and it’s more likely that you’ll get high rankings for that search term.
In addition, you increase the user experience. If a surfer clicks on a “buy brown shoes” link it’s much more likely that he’ll buy on your site if he gets the correct page.
4. It’s good if the link is from an authority site
Links from pages with high authority will help to increase the TrustRank of your website. Links from websites with high PageRank have a positive effect on the rankings of your own site.
Unfortunately, the Google PageRank that is displayed in the green bar in Google’s toolbar is not the PageRank that Google uses for its ranking algorithm. The PageRank displayed in the toolbar is outdated, often wrong and more a gimmick than a real help (details can be found here and here). You’ll often find websites with low PageRank that rank higher than pages with high PageRank in the search results.
Don’t trust the green pixels and use common sense. If a website is well known and if the site has good search engine rankings then it’s likely that it is also an authority website.
5. The link must not have a nofollow attribute
The nofollow attribute tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Links with that attribute don’t help your search engine rankings.
Unfortunately, you have to check the HTML code of your link partners to find out if they use a nofollow attribute to link to your site.
“The search giant is unfazed by competition from ‘natural language’ upstarts, but users—and advertisers—may benefit once they get the hang of the new tool.”
Google denies ownership of users’ words
“Google has denied suggestions that the terms and conditions for its Google Docs & Spreadsheets service mean that it owns any user’s content published in the application.[..]
One clause states, ‘By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.’”