Some feedback (!) from the forums re Google. As J Whalens approach so far has been based on being paid to get people free high rankings esp in Google I think she is talking Bull*hit.
Google & The Bad Guys Newsletter 077 -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Does Google care about how a site gets to the top, as long as when it gets there it is relevant? That's what I want to ask them.

I used to think that they cared how one got there, but I'm not so sure any more. They either do care but can't do anything about it yet, or they really don't care as long as their users (the searchers) are happy.

As a searcher, I'm very happy with the Google results. I still think they're tops in that department. So, I guess that's all that matters.

As to all the Webmasters losing money because Google let's spammy results in, well that's not my concern and not Google's either. Any Webmaster whose business model depends on the free Google results for their livelihood, deserves whatever they get."

Case to keep an eye on:
CNN.com - Handbag maker Vuitton sues Google - Oct. 24, 2003: "The 20-page October 13 ruling by the court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre called into question the legality of the search system at the heart of Google's business model.
It said that when searches are done on registered trademarks, Google should 'find the means to block advertisements by third parties who have no right to these trademarks...

Telephone payments firm Rentabiliweb has sued Google for allegedly selling its trademark as a keyword to rival company Tel 4 Money.

An official at France's Software Protection Agency, which gathers evidence for court hearings on piracy and trademark infringement, said several major companies are preparing cases against Google. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
"

Forum feedback of interest:
Google over 50,000 pages dropped: "The problem with PR sometimes not showing in the Toolbar when there is an ending backslash is a known Toolbar glitch, and happens to many pages on the web"

"My theory is that Google has figured this to be a "directory page", which it is! and therefore has decided real content is to be found on subpages. The page is in Google it just doesn't have any keywords linked to it. You can test this by going to one of the sub pages and if you have Googles Toolbar installed press on "i" and select backwarf links. You will see that http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/vic/baysandpeninsula/ does come up, but without description or anything.
The same is true for another page on your site:
http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/vic/greatoceanroad/
And probably many more.

I am just speculating here, but I think Google does this to make sure the users get directly to where the content is and not end up on a sitemap or similar.

I wouldn't worry about the "/" issue as long as you are consistent and only make your links point to the "/" pages. That way no PR is waisted on the pages without it.

"We used to have over 100,000 pages indexed. Now, we have just over
50,000 and dropping. "

How many pages does your site really contain? Maybe you eliminated a lot of double entries when you cleaned up your site. For example Google thinks that one of our sites has 80.000 pages. The real number is well below that, but because of dynamic pages a lot of them look different to Google. This is hurting us big time in PR. Wd have one page in particular where this is true. This single page is linked to by more than 100.000 different pages on the net, but because the links are dynamic and values are added - Google thinks this is 1000 different pages and PR is spread accordingly. This could probably be a PR8 site if we could make Google understand that this is a single page. "

A couple of PR observations:

Check out the PR for this page
http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/qld/tropicalqld/cairns/directory/cafes/

Compare to any other at similar directory level
http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/qld/tropicalqld/cairns/directory/bars/

Thanks to this page's deep link
http://www.icem2004.im.com.au/general.htm
The cafes I looked at all also appear to have PR3 compared to PR2 for pubs...
Here's to many more quality links!ICEM2004 - International Conference on Emergency Medicine: "The following websites highlight a number of Cairns restaurants:
Cairns directory: www.cairnsweb.com.au/directory/listings/restaurants.htm
Cairns Convention Bureau: www.tropcialaustralia.com.au/
Total Travel: www.totaltravel.com/localguides/cairns/cafes"

Adsense - About become "partner" so see any about site for examples of adsense ads.

PRIMEDIA's About Links With Google for Targeted Advertising: "As part of the deal, Google will become the exclusive provider of contextually targeted and search advertising across About.com, the Web's largest content site, and most of PRIMEDIA's Consumer Media and Magazines Group ('CMMG') websites. The deal extends the reach of Google's base of more than 150,000 advertisers to the targeted audiences served by About.com's 450 topic-specific Guide Sites that cover more than 10,000 topics and the CMMG 127 targeted magazine-related sites.
'Combined, the CMMG properties and About.com are among the largest providers of original content on the Internet today,' said Dean Nelson, Chairman of PRIMEDIA. 'Google's targeted advertising is a perfect match to our portfolio of high-quality content and large special interest audiences. Google's advertisers will benefit from this extended reach across a broad range of enthusiast-centric properties and on About.com's 450 Guide Sites and our users will benefit from relevant advertising.'"

The Guardians take on possible IPO:
MediaGuardian.co.uk | New media | Stock and search: "The only reason it really needs publicly quoted shares is to make acquisitions. That would go completely against the philosophy of largely organic growth that has made the company what it is today. Once it is quoted, it will have to meet Wall Street pressures to improve quarterly earnings instead of doing its own thing at its own pace. When you sell your soul, don't expect to retain your freedom. "

Wired News: Google Raring to Go Public: "Google's search for an investment bank to take the Internet firm public is widely seen as the type of seismic event that could help wake up the dormant market for new issues of technology shares.....A few Net-specific business sectors have emerged from the rubble of the dot-com bust-up of 2000 including websites that hunt for shopping discounts, online dating, online travel agents and the business of selling advertiser-sponsored search listings, believed to be Google's biggest revenue-generator"

More re Auction/ IPO
Slashdot | Google Considering IPO Auction Online: "HackerStickers writes 'An article in the Financial Times states that Google could be considering doing their IPO online via an auction versus the standard methods of raising funds early next year. The article points out that auctioning it could bring in a larger chunk of cash for the company. Would you bid on a piece of Google?'"

Google IPO
Features: "24/October/2003

We all knew it would happen - we all knew why it would happen - perhaps this week's 'news' has thrown us a little on how it would happen - but why is the slight movement on Google's inevitable float plans causing such a crazed level of excitement?"

A timely reminder of the Google commandments:
Top 5 Google To Dos and Donts Debate 2: "5) TIME & EFFORT, Tid-Bits:
Don't look at the PageRank in the toolbar
Don't make assumptions based only on what is happening with your site(s)
Don't sign with or continue to use an ISP that has bad downtime, research them well. A 404 crawl by Googlebot will cost you much more than you will save with a cheap ISP.
Don't stress
Don't expect instant results. "

Espotting Media: "Register now and drive targeted leads to your website
Espotting Media can help you access targeted leads from 72% of the UK's online population. To view some of the benefits of listing your site click here. By ensuring that your listings appear within our top 3-5 search results, you will benefit from highly targeted traffic from our entire network of sites and be exposed to over 850 million searches."

Old news but situation still stinks so it would appear the tinkering goes on...
a Web Site Design Web Development Network: Pixel Resources: Wisconsin-Madison-Milwaukee-Watertown-WI: "Google Confirms Introduction of New Algorithms
June 11,2003 - Courtesy of: Stepforth

Google has finally confirmed what SEO practitioners have been assuming for weeks now. For the past three months, Google has been tinkering with its ranking formulas in order to introduce several new factors in clustering, ranking and SPAM filtering. During this time, websites that had once received Top placements have found themselves bouncing around the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often dropping as far as 50 - 100th place in Google's rankings. While Google has not issued any official statements, an engineer at Google who writes under the name, 'Google-Guy' has confirmed in the SEO Discussion Forum, Web Master World that the changes perceived by SEO professionals were in fact being made, 'on the fly' as Google attempts to work out the kinks in their new systems.

The changes being introduced by Google have made a significant impact on search engine rankings and has caused a great deal of damage to many companies dependant on Google listings. As Google is a private company with no contractual obligations to the websites listed in its directory, there is absolutely no recourse for companies effected by a loss of position. Unfortunately, at this time, Google is the absolute king of search engines being responsible in one way or another for over 70% of all searches conducted on the Internet. According to our pseudonymous source, Google-Guy, the changes should be complete by the end of July. We expect to see a fairly different Google when all is said and done but we also expect that Google will continue to be the dominant search tool for at least the next 12 - 18 months as they have several distribution agreements with other"

The Register: "It's been called a 'Google-NACK': you enter a particular search term and Google tells you that there are thousands of matching results, but fails to return many, or any results. "

The Register: "'I found your article on Google’s limited results kind of strange, so I ran the search myself, and was able to browse all of the returned results. The catch? I was using Opera (specifically, its built-in search box). I have since tried the Google search from Google’s home page using various browsers and got the same results you did.'

'It boggles the mind – the only difference with Opera’s search is that it adds a tag telling Google that the search request came from Opera. Why would that turn off Google’s anti-blog filter? I don’t know, but don’t let Google know or they may screw that up as well!' "


Google gossip
Mercury News | 05/04/2003 | Inside Google: "While they dream, Brin and Page also keep their eyes on the details: They use software to tally, to the second, how much money the firm is raking in.
They said the free, healthy meals only came about after calculating the time saved from driving off-site and reduced health care costs. There's even a Webcam trained on the cafeteria lunch line, so employees can avoid a long wait.
While most of the tech world buzzes about an IPO, Google's founders hold firm to their technological ambitions -- building, in Page's words, ``the ultimate search engine.''
``It would understand exactly what you type and would give you the right things back,'' said Page. ``We're pretty good, but we're nowhere close to being perfect. We won't be for a long time.''"

To understand is so very, very different from phrase matching or link popularity...

Links Are All About Reputation - An Interview with Mike Grehan: "What do you think about selecting sites as link partners based on their Google PageRank?
Mike: I've done a lot of research on this. I know exactly what PR7 means: It means you have one more than six but one less than eight. That's all it means. Stop obsessing about PR; get on with business!"

Website personalization:
Why personalization hasn't worked: October 20, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Personalization hasn't worked because most people don't have a compelling reason to personalize. It hasn't worked because the cost of doing it well usually significantly outweighs the benefits it delivers. It hasn't worked because managers have seen it as some Holy Grail of content management...

Not surprisingly, the Jupiter report finds that personalized websites are four times more expensive to run. It also finds that personalized websites are twice as likely to attract visitors who will never pay for anything. Worse still, it finds that 25 percent of consumers actually avoid personalized websites because they fear that their personal information will be abused."

A search engine (& tech change) to keep an eye on...

///ExactSeek makes use of Alexa ranking.
(October 18 2003) ExactSeek, a newcomer to the search engine scene, has announced that it is now using the Alexa ranking for a site for determining the position of a listing in search results.

Alexa, now owned by Amazon.com, is a search bar that tracks user activity. Based on the information gathered, it ranks sites according to popularity. Users of this browser plug in can therefore at all times see how popular a site is among the users of Alexa.

(To see a site's "popularity" without downloading the toolbar, go to Alexa.com and use their Google-based search engine. Click on the link named "site info" next to the relevant search listing.)

"With the exception of Google, the major search engines have offered little in the way of innovation," says Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen.

"Factoring user popularity into a ranking algorithm is ground-breaking. Link popularity, keyword density and content relevancy are subject to manipulation by savvy webmasters and SEO specialists. User popularity is a far more reliable indicator of where web sites should rank and gives the surfing public some input on the search results they see."

ExactSeek is definitely one of the smallest search engines around. The database contains some 2 million web pages, but the site receives and indexes some 30000 new site submissions daily. Unlike most search engines ExactSeek actually makes use of meta tag data.

ExactSeek.com: Web Search Engine and Directory
http://www.alexa.com/

Useful Google demographics (& website):
Increase website traffic methods for optimizing press releases from SEO-PR:

A "Fireside Chat" with Google's Sergey Brin: "Sullivan: 'What do you do to go beyond links as a way of improving results?'
Brin: 'There are completely new ranking technologies that we are working on. We try about a half-dozen a month and launch on a limited test basis. We fundamentally work with all of the world's knowledge. There are just different ways to approach that. There are many, many things you can do, and we're not going to exhaust them any time soon. Over time, our searches will only get better.'
Sullivan: 'Will you ever consider supporting paid inclusion?'
Brin: 'You want to keep any kind of payment separate from organic search results. I think it's important to distinguish those things.'
Sullivan asked, 'What do you think remains largely unknown about Google?'
Brin answered, 'The tilde operator,' a new search command that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a ~ character directly in front of the keyword in the search box. He also mentioned, 'The calculator,' which enables users to solve mathematic problems by entering numeric expressions into the google.com or the Google Toolbar search boxes. The engineer who created the calculator was supposed to be working on our 'spelling system,' added Brin."

Telegraph | News | Bags go by road for travellers on new Virgin trains: "Sir Richard Branson has come up with a novel way to make more space on his overcrowded Virgin trains: send passengers' luggage separately by road and charge them for the 'service'."