Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results

The first newsletter comments re changed layout & results...

Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results: "Google has unveiled a new look that involves dropping its famed search tabs, along with debuting a web alerts service and a personalized search results option."

Google Local Search, rolled out earlier this month, does not appear as a search link on the home page - froogle does...

"Previously found via its own tab, the Google Directory has been demoted to the More Searches page.
'We analyzed what people were using, and that had become less popular over time. As the web grows, directory structures get harder to use,' Norvig said. 'It didn't seem to be worth the real estate on the home page.'
Demoting the directory may also be a way for Google to eventually distance itself from from the Open Directory Project, which powers it."

Changes To Ad Format
On Google's search results page, the sidebar boxes that contained sponsored links are now gone. Instead, a vertical line separates sponsored links from paid results. These all come under a "Sponsored Links" heading and remain on the right-hand side of the page, as before. Other sponsored listings that appeared at the top of unpaid results in boxes appear to have been retained.

"We wanted a page that looked cleaner," Norvig said, about losing the boxes. "People are still very much clear on what's an ad and what's not."

Invisible Tabs / One Box Results
To see one box results in action, here are some specifics:

News headlines: search for iraq, and these appear alongside a newspaper icon.
Shopping search: search for canon powershot, and these appear alongside a shopping bag icon. These were added in added in December
Local search: search for san francisco dentist, and these appear alongside a compass icon. These were added earlier this month

Web Alert Service Introduced
Site owners and others have long wanted the ability to be alerted to changes in Google's web search results. In fact, the third-party Google Alert service has grown popular because of this.

A new Google Web Alerts service now allows monitoring of a number of terms on a daily or weekly basis. The first 20 results are monitored and emailed to you. A similar Google News Alerts service was introduced last August.

Neither Google Alert or the new Google Web Alerts service provide enough functionality for those interested in rank checking purposes, however. Tools like WebPosition have long been used to do this and still continue to be popular despite Google's warnings against automated rank checking.

Google has banned some users of these tools from being able to access Google's results, though it has never actually banned pages themselves from being listed that Search Engine Watch knows of, just because someone used a rank checking tool.

Personalized Search Debuts
All the major search engines have said recently that they see personalized search results as a key way to advance relevancy. Now Google is the first among them to provide a real personalized service for users to play with for web page search refinement.Google Personalized Web Search is a beta service that allows users to refine results based on their interests. You can set up a profile of your interests, then use a "slider" bar that appears above web results to see the results reshaped toward what you may like.

For example, use the profile page to tell Google that you like video games, then do a search for cars. Push the slider to "Max," and the results change so that sites generally about cars, such as Cars.com and Jaguar, get pushed below personalized selections such as pages from computer game sites GameSpy.com or GameSpot.com. Small Google "colored balls" appear next to any personalized results.

How does Google know what to deliver as personalized content. The company is categorizing pages across the web, understanding what's relevant to topics such as "video games" or "movies," Norvig said. When someone does a search, Google looks through pages associated with their interest to find matches...What's happening is that Google's system can't tell exactly which (of my) interests to target. It sees pages that are relevant to cars with various different topic areas, but it doesn't know which topic I'm most interested in.

"That's part of the reason it's on Labs," Norvig said, referring to personalized search's status as a Google Labs project. "You're right, that's one of the issues. You can certainly go back and forth and change your profile, but that's a little clunky.

Personalization Technology
Google says it does not record a personal data on its end. Instead, it remembers your general personal preferences and records these in your Google cookie. The use of cookie data by any company often raises privacy concerns...Google also is not using any type of clickthrough measurements or user feedback to associate personal preferences with pages

Google is using a blend of technology acquired during its purchase of Applied Semantics last year and its own native technology to classify pages, which is has long used to deliver AdSense contextual ads.

Not using Kaltix, Outride or Orkut

Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency

Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency: "MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 29, 2004 - Google Inc. today released three new innovative features that demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to improving the search experience for users. The new offerings include a revolutionary search engine that uses user preferences to match search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results via email, and an enhanced interface for Google web sites worldwide.

Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on Google Labs, enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive customized results based on those interests. Changes to the Google interface improve the speed and accessibility of Google's search offerings, further demonstrating the company's focus on providing the best search experience for users.

'Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results based on users' preferences,' said Larry Page, co-founder and president, Products. 'We can deliver search results tailored to your interests or promptly email you new information on any topic. In addition, Google has a cleaner new interface and easy access to the comprehensive Froogle product search.'"

Google's Local Search Goes Beta

Google's Local Search Goes Beta: "Google officially moved local search out of Google labs and into beta last week. Several noteworthy new features were added to the mix.

Google's approach to local search involves using yellow-page and business-directory information from third-party providers, integrating it with information about individual businesses from Google's main Web page index. Though the service is still in beta, Google has promoted it from its relatively obscure location in Google Labs to its own Local Search URL."

Google Local: "
Search termsUS address, city & state, or zip
Save location
Find local businesses and services on the web."

(The) additional information includes content appearing on businesses' Web sites. Mayer says including this information in the past was difficult, partly because content published on the Web isn't as clean as that included in structured services such as yellow pages or directories.

"We're ripping through the Web looking largely at addresses and phone numbers," she said. "We're also cross-correlating that with yellow pages and directory listings

USATODAY.com - Google seeks consensus on personal-info issues

USATODAY.com - Google seeks consensus on personal-info issues: "Richard M. Smith, former chief technology officer at the Privacy Foundation. 'I think Google is the biggest privacy invader on the planet, no doubt about it.' "

Google to find place for Orkut network in search | CNET News.com

Google to find place for Orkut network in search | CNET News.com: "Google will integrate an online social network created by one of its engineers into its search services, perhaps within a year, according to CEO Eric Schimdt.

The quality of automated search is good, but it's still not perfect. Schmidt asked the audience if they always got the answer they wanted in the first result from every search they performed. No one said they did.

'So everyone here is dissatisfied with our service,' he said. 'Until we can answer their question every time the first time, our work is not done.' "

Herald.com: Miami & Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Dolphins & More

Herald.com: Miami & Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Dolphins & More: "Relying on secretly recorded meetings at Mountain View-based Google, federal agents this week arrested a Ventura County man for allegedly threatening to release a software program to spammers that he claimed could cost the Internet search engine company millions of dollars through bogus advertising clicks."

AdSense Tracker Beta

Freebie... is it "permitted"?
AdSense Tracker Beta: "AdSense� Tracker by Dan Grossman of Website Goodies and Targeted Visitors
Visit adsensetracker.com for updates.

This script is free for personal/commercial
use and modification but may not be
resold or redistributed without permission."

News

News: "More than 55 million Europeans use Google as their search engine of choice according to net measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings.

The company found that, With a reach of over 47% of European internet users, Google far outstripped closest rivals MSN Search, which claims 27 million users (23.1% active reach), and Yahoo, which is used by just over 12 million (10.8% active reach).

Google also scoops the 'most number of pages viewed' prize with an average of 52, and the 'most amount of time spent on the site' award, with each person spending more than 15 minutes per month on its pages. Rivals Yahoo and MSN flailed in comparison with seven and four minutes respectively. "

Internet as research engine continues to grow - 19-Mar-04.

Internet as research engine continues to grow - 19-Mar-04.: "Internet as research engine continues to grow.

Dont expect any slowdown soon in the growing use of the internet for travel research, suggests Steve Kaufer, whose travel research site was recently acquired by IAC/InterActive Corp.

Mr Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor Inc., told TravelMole: Travel research has always been at the forefront of internet activities. And that makes perfect sense. The information is there 24 hours a day. There are wonderful pictures and fresh sites.

TripAdvisor was formed in 2000 to provide a comprehensive travel search engine and directory to help consumers plan their trips. TripAdvisor.com is the 7th most popular travel website worldwide, the company says.

TripAdvisor does not sell travel, and has no intention of ever doing so, Mr Kaufer said.

Mr Kaufer said there are many good travel information sites, but none that operate like TripAdvisor. The companys search technology continuously scours the web for articles, reviews and opinions published on various travel topics such as hotel and resort properties. Ratings are then given. "

Wired News: Think Globally, Search Locally

Wired News: Think Globally, Search Locally: "Google is introducing a new system designed to make it easier for people to find things closer to their homes, paving the way for the company to make more money selling ads to small businesses. The new algorithmic formulas will allow Google to display more local information in response to search requests that include a ZIP code or a city's name.

Google says these geographic queries are now more likely to generate phone numbers and specific addresses on its main results page. In many cases, Google also will display an icon of a compass that can be clicked upon to open another page containing a detailed map and directions to the location"

PR Updates once a Quarter? ; )

PR Updates once a Quarter?: "GG is joking around around. But he may he hinting at 2 things 1) PR will indeed update again, and 2) it may only happen once every 3 months. If true, we would see the next update in April."

Is 100x1 =1x100 -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Is 100x1 =1x100 -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Those 1,000 inter-site links to my home page are going to potentially raise the PR to my home page. But if my home page starts out with a low PR (under 4, if my experience counts for anything), most of those 1,000 pages will never be crawled. It's a chicken-and-egg thing, and the only way to break it is to get links from outside the web site. "

How To Beat Google's 'Brandy' Update

How To Beat Google's 'Brandy' Update: "Brin, one of the founders of Google recently said,
Google has made five significant changes to its algorithmic formulas in the last two weeks."

1) Increase in Index Size

2) Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
This is a very significant new technology that Google has always been interested in, and the incorporation of LSI has been on the cards for some time. If you are an insomniac, then Yu et al.'s Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data" paper is quite helpful in explaining the concept, but, in short, LSI is about using close semantic matches to put your page into the correct topical context.

It's all about synonyms. LSI may see Google effectively remove all instances of the search keyword when analysing your page, in favour of a close analysis of other words. For example, consider the search term 'travel insurance'. LSI-based algorithms will look for words and links that pertain to related topics, such as skiing, holidays, medical, backpacking, and airports.

3) Links and Anchor Text

Links have always been the essence of Google, but the engine is steadily altering its focus. The importance of Page Rank (PR), Google's unique ranking system, is being steadily downgraded in favour of the nature, quality, and quantity of inbound and outbound link anchor text.

4) Neighbourhoods

Now, more than ever, has the question of who's linking to your site become critical. Links must be from related topic sites (the higher the PR the better); those links are seen to define your 'neighbourhood'

again consider the example of travel insurance, big insurance companies might buy links on holiday-related sites in order to boost their ranking. These businesses will actively invest in gaining targeted inbound links from a broad mix of sites. Consequently, their neighbourhoods appear tightly focused to Google.

5) Downgrading of Traditional Tag-Based Optimisation

Google has taken big steps to downgrade standard SEO techniques in favour of LSI and linking, which are far less manipulable by the masses.
(NB Yahoo have not...)

Concludes: to optimize your site successfully for Google has become a lot more difficult

Synonyms As LSI appears to be so significant, it is important to start looking carefully at the information architecture of each major section of your site, and to increase the use of related words. It is also important to re-examine the title tags to include this concept; good title tags have synonyms and avoid repetition of the key phrase.

Outbound Links Link to authority sites on your subject. In the travel insurance example, these authority sites could include places like the State department, major skiing directories, etc. Not only will this help with LSI, it also allows Google to define the neighbourhood more easily. Furthermore, you could engage in link swaps with other companies so that you gain the benefit of an on-topic, LSI-friendly link.

Inbound Links and Link to Us Pages Based on what we have just said, sites need to formulate a link development strategy. A budget needs to be set aside to buy links and develop mini-sites. Look to set up links with university sites (.edu or ac.uk), as these seem to be valuable given Google's informational bias.

Each section of a site should have its own link-to-us page. For example, HotScripts, the major computer script directory, has a great link-to-us page. By providing people with creatives and cut-and-paste HTML, you can vastly improve your chances of attracting reciprocal links to your site. You'll need to have a separate page for each section, to maximise on-topic inbound links.

Dodgiest...Mini-Sites It is important to develop separate mini-sites (also known as satellite sites) for each key subject of your Website. This is a useful tactic that improves your chances of appearing in the SERPs for your keywords. Furthermore, as the last three Google updates have shaken things up so much, having more than one site reduces the likelihood that your business will be disrupted by the engine's updates. However, Google is likely to view satellite sites as spam, so you must take some steps to reduce the chances of your being blacklisted on this basis.

First, make it as hard as possible to for Google to detect host affiliation between your main site and its mini-sites. Google may define sites to be owned by the same person if the first 3 octets of the sites' IP addresses are the same (e.g. 123.123.123.xxx). Therefore, if you're going to run mini-sites, put them on different Web hosts.

Secondly, use different domain names for your mini-sites, rather than sub-domains of your main site. In the past, Google has not penalised sub-domains, but the early results from the Brandy update show a considerable reduction in the presence of sub-domains in the SERPs.

Finally, be very careful with the linking strategy you use between mini-sites -- Google will look at the linking structure very critically. Don't plaster each of your sites with links to the others, and don't reciprocate links between the sites.

johnny.ihackstuff.com :: I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff.

Interesting article from SecurityFocus, via TheRegister, on how you or others can use Google to find things that aren't meant to be found. Talks about use of some advanced Google search techniques, and how passwords, budgets, medical records and more can be found (and how they inadvertantly get into Google in the first place).

johnny.ihackstuff.com :: I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff.: "Googledorks!
googleDork (gOO g�l'D�rk) noun 1. Slang. An inept or foolish person as revealed by Google"

Examples: Error Messages (31)
Really retarded error messages that say WAY too much!

Files containing juicy info (35)
No usernames or passwords, but interesting stuff none the less.

Files containing passwords (22)
PASSWORDS, for the LOVE OF GOD!!! Google found PASSWORDS!

'Traditional' airlines gaining online share - 09-Mar-04.

'Traditional' airlines gaining online share - 09-Mar-04.: "EasyJet remains the clear leader in the UK online transport sector according to the latest statistics from Hitwise, but full service schedule airlines like BA have gained ground.

The no-frills airline notched up a 12.9% share of visits to UK transport sites in the week ending 28 February. This has fallen from an average 14.4% share during December 2003.


However, the share was not taken by no-frills rival Ryanair, which remains in second spot with an 8.5% share of visits to UK transport sites. This hasn�t moved significantly from 8.3% in December 2003.

The largest gain by an airline in the top ten was made by Flybe, which came seventh in the table with a 2.8% share. It previously had less than 2% of the share of visits and didn�t make the top ten. Two other airlines increased their share of visits. BA went up from fourth place to third place with a 6.7% (it was 6.3% in Dec 2003) and bmi came tenth (below bmibaby in fifth) with a 2.35% share of visits.

Three rail websites remained in the top ten but all lost share in UK visits to transport sites since December. National Rail dropped from 7.1% in December to 5.4% in the week ending 28 February, thetrainline.com also lost share from 4.2% to 3.3% and the thetrainlinestore.com lost share from 3.4% to 2.7%. "


Martha Lane Fox cashes in - 09-Mar-04.: "Martha Lane Fox, has reportedly sold off two million shares in the company, raising some GBP4.6 million in the process."


Cross-channel travellers 'desert' airlines for the train - 09-Mar-04.: "Eurostar says travellers are deserting no-frills carriers to take the train.

The train operators ebullient attitude came amid news of record passenger numbers in January and February. Eurostar carried over 1.02 million passengers in the first two months of 2004, an increase of over 20% year-on-year. "

BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses

BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses: "commerce and conflict sit poorly on the same Web page. Likewise, control and transparency often exist as opposing forces. How Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, balances these tensions could change the shape of the Internet.

'Google can make choices about what people see and what they don't see, and how it's ordered,' says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. 'As more and more people use Google to access the Internet, that definitely raises some important policy questions.'"

Google has also been selling contextual advertising that associates specific ads with content, regardless of whether a keyword has been purchased. For example, in Google's AdSense program, an article about the Copacabana nightclub might draw ads from Brazilian resorts -- even if none of them had purchased the keyword Copacabana. This means that Google could be exercising editorial policy on third-party sites that are unaware Google is making these choices for them

P13 diffference between PageRank & HITS

Google PageRank Lunacy

Google PageRank Lunacy: "The quest by some to improve their Google PageRank score seems to have reached the point of sheer madness. Even common decency may be abandoned in futile attempts by desperate (or simply less educated) online marketers and others who will seemingly stop at nothing to try and gain links in hopes of seeing more green in their Google toolbar...

Programming a spam bot to relentlessly seek out guest books and comment areas to dump links back to your own pages is a "brute force" method that will produce little search engine gains, in my view.

But even if you don't believe me and my writings about effective link building (PDF), are you really prepared to commit yourself to the virtual desecration of someone's memorial site and bring pain to their loved ones to sell a ring tone? If so, then why not head out to your nearest cemetery with a can of spray paint and plaster your URL's on the tombstones. Your actions in the virtual world of the web are the same
"

The future of search engine technology

Future...

The future of search engine technology: "Google?Ds AdSense can provide the contextual ad technology that would scan an email?Ds content to determine which ads are the most relevant to display.
With this technology in place, a simple provision within any Google Email Terms & Conditions would give the world?Ds largest search engine the necessary permission to serve up relevant ads to all users of its free email service"

Search engine news, on Web searching and search engine optimization

Search engine news, on Web searching and search engine optimization: "Google remains No. 1
(February 24 2004) According to a survey made by Nielsen/NetRatings, 39 percent of active US Internet surfers (59.3 million unique viewers) searched the Net using Google in January.
Right behind come Yahoo (30 percent) and MSN (another 30 percent). Next came AOL (15%) and Ask Jeeves (8%).
However, given that Google is no longer powering Yahoo's searches, this has really been a month of falling ratings for Google."

Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com: "In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million...

Overall, 39 percent of Americans, or 114.5 million people, used a search engine during January, Nielsen said. That accounts for about 76 percent of the active online population. Each person spent about 40 minutes using search engines during the month. "

Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator

For newbie searchers maybe?
Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator: " site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers... This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'"

Google co-founder bugged by IPO speculation | CNET News.com

Google co-founder bugged by IPO speculation | CNET News.com: "Google co-founder Larry Page said on Thursday that he and other company executives have made no statements about an initial public offering and said he was 'dismayed' by the amount of conjecture reported as fact."

What people want from search Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com

Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com: "Google started off the year as king of the hill among search engines, even as No. 2 Yahoo gears up to reclaim the throne.
In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million. "

"When conducting a search, people seemed to value relevance over accuracy

In the survey, 52 percent of respondents said that the thing they valued most in a search engine was the ability to find relevant information

while 34 percent said they were looking to get credible results

An even one-third said they wanted to get results quickly

Lesser considerations were the interface's ease of use and whether the search engine has a 'cool' design."

ResourceShelf: "ay, February 24, 2004" comments

These numbers could be used to illustrate many issues including:
1) The "principle of least effort" that Thomas Mann wrote about pre-web is alive and well. No surprise.
2) People don't know where to turn for more credible info or how to use a web engine, analyze web content, or create a more precise search that might avoid certain types of sites.
3) Finally, as Jenny pointed out in a chat, survery participants assumed that if it's relevant, it must also be credible. Regardless, it's sad.

ABCNEWS.com : Persons of the Week: Larry Page and Sergey Brin

ABCNEWS.com : Persons of the Week: Larry Page and Sergey Brin: "
The two have interesting life philosophies.
'We have a mantra: 'Don't be evil,' which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone,' Page said. 'So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.'
Brin added, 'Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.'"

USATODAY.com - New Yahoo really something to see

USATODAY.com - New Yahoo really something to see: "Google took a huge hit last week when Yahoo dumped it and created its own search engine. Google had 78% of Internet searches, according to comScore Networks. Subtract Yahoo, and it falls to 51%."

Complete analysis of new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ

Complete analysis of new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ: "new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ"

"Well, Google has definitely brought some major changes with their new terms, policies and FAQ. The biggest concern? The following statement that is now listed under 'site may not include: Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank.

For backlinks in Google

Google Search: "www.totaltravel.com"-site:www.totaltravel.com

Searched the web for "www.totaltravel.com"-site:www.totaltravel.com. Results 1 - 10 of about 52,600.

vs toolbar: Searched for pages linking to http://www.totaltravel.com/. Results 1 - 10 of about 240.

InfoWorld: The Google way: February 20, 2004: By Chad Dickerson: E-business Strategies

InfoWorld: The Google way: February 20, 2004: By Chad Dickerson: E-business Strategies: "Quite simply, the Google philosophy can be expressed in five general principles: Work on things that matter, affect everyone in the world, solve problems with algorithms if possible, hire bright people and give them lots of freedom, and don’t be afraid to try new things. As a general practice, Google also requires that its engineers spend 20 percent of their time working on personal technology projects unrelated to their primary projects....

Finally, I think hiring bright people and giving them freedom is a required element of an innovative organization, one that implicitly supports trying new things. The 20 percent personal projects requirement is not unfounded: It�s really an implementation of the organizational �slack� that Tom DeMarco details in his book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency. An IT organization running at full throttle all the time is ultimately self-defeating � take it from Google"

"Adapt or die? " The Next Step With Search Engines

Whats The Next Step With Search Engines -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum:
>:Remember the old adage that has always applied to SEO's? Adapt or die? It's been too long since this applied to Search Engines because there was no competition with deep enough pockets to rival Google and it's wonderful algorithm. Most new kids on the block which had promise were bought out before they could become a threat...The phrase applies once again to the Search Engines.

Interview with Sergey Brin re Google and Newspapers

Google and Newspapers: "interviewed Brin via e-mail about Google's plans for the future and its partnerships with the newspaper industry."

Search wars are about to get personal | CNET News.com

Search wars are about to get personal | CNET News.com: "Google may become more portal-like with 'my' territory of its own. The company recently updated a domain-name registration of the Web address 'MyGoogle.com' with Network Solutions, which was first created in 2000. "

Google Achieves Search Milestone with Immediate Access to More Than 6 Billion Items

17th Feb 2004 Google Achieves Search Milestone with Immediate Access to More Than 6 Billion Items: "Google Inc. today announced it expanded the breadth of its web index to more than 6 billion items"

"Google Image Search has been significantly updated," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of Technology. "We've doubled the index to more than 880 million images, enhanced search quality, and improved the user interface."

Google bans environmental group's protest ads

Google bans environmental group's protest ads: "Google bans environmental group's protest ads"
spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey. "We do reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site,"

Future search

ResourceShelf: "'One thing [Google's Craig] Silverstein does like to talk about is his long-range goal for search technology, which he believes is still in its infancy. 'It's clear that the answer [to search] is not a ranked list of Web sites,' he says. No one expects to approach a librarian, ask a question about the Panama Canal, and get 50 book titles in response, he argues. Silverstein thinks information retrieval experts should aim high, building software that is every bit as good at pointing users toward the specific resources they need as a well-trained reference librarian.'"

Update Brandy Part 3 - Googleguy says...

Update Brandy Part 3: "People post around here about filters, blocking, penalties, etc. etc. A far better explanation is 'things which used to work before don't receive the same amount of credit now.' It's natural for people who are way out there with their linking strategies or their page-building strategies to think of a drop as an over-optimization penalty, but it's more realistic to conclude that Google is weighting criteria differently so that over-optimized sites just aren't doing as well now. "

- Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. Hubs & Authorities Cornell Paper

Cre8asite forums. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "it is important to clarify the differences of authorities and hubs, plus show you how a search engine will use both concepts to rank a page.

Authority: What makes a page an authority? There is strong belief that an authority is determined by the value of their InDegree (an InDegree in our terms is the number of pages linking from page A to page B). The larger the number, the more authoritative that page is in terms of the types of themed pages that are linked to that page. A page within a theme is stronger based on the number of times a query term is found within the page.

This works just fine by itself for ranking pages if we did not have words with double or even triples meanings (windows, java, etc.). To make up for this factor we need something called 'hubs' to help determine the best possible returned results for a keyword phrase.

Hubs: What makes up a hub? A hub can be defined as a site or page that has many links from pages that have the same links. So page A links to page B and page C, page B links to page A and page C, page C links to page A and page B and so on. The more similar and related links, the larger the hub is.

By looking at the authority of a page (InDegree) plus the hub or hubs the page is within (the similarity), the search engine can provide a better results page then just by looking at authority. "

Google monopolizes search engine awards

Sexy Whitehouse.com domain for sale: "Google was named the Internet's 'Outstanding Search Service' in the 4th annual awards competition conducted by editors of Searchenginewatch.com. 'Google remains the top choice for anyone who wishes to start their web search quest. Much more often than not, it continues to help you locate what you are looking for. The service has maintained the consistency of its search interface, a relief when competitors seem to be constantly redesigning,' the award citation said.
In fact, Google placed first in 8 of the 11 categories, also taking honors for Best News Search, Best Image Search, and Best Paid Placement Service. Yahoo Shopping (YHOO: news, chart, profile) was ranked first in the shopping category and Dogpile was honored as the Best Meta Search Engine. Editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman surveyed their readers for advice and then made the selections."

Google: The Reverse eBay - comments on personalisation

Posted in full as online version is only available to subscribers.

Business 2.0 - Web Article - Google: The Reverse eBay: "gle: The Reverse eBay"

Don't think of tech's latest star as just a search engine. Think of it as a keyword marketplace.
By Erick Schonfeld, February 06, 2004

Most of us know Google as a trusty Internet search engine and the most hyped, most anticipated IPO since Netscape. But there is another side of Google that is familiar to marketers and advertisers. Through a part of Google's site called AdWords, advertisers can bid on the search terms we all type into Google's search box 200 million times a day. AdWords, which launched two years ago, is now believed to account for the vast majority of Google's annual revenue of $700 million to $1 billion (the exact figure is not known, since Google has yet to file its IPO registration statement). If this is true, then Google makes most of its money as a keyword marketplace.
In a sense, Google is becoming a reverse eBay (EBAY), where the customers are advertisers and the inventory is made up of consumers' desires as expressed by their search terms. Google auctions off the search terms and connects businesses to consumers who are looking for what those businesses have to offer. Whoever bids the most for a term and receives the most clicks appears in a sponsored advertisement link either at the top or along the side of the search-results page.

This form of online advertising appears to be working. Paid search is on the rise while less effective forms of online advertising are waning. Overall industry revenues from paid search surpassed banner ads in the third quarter of last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And Google counts more than 150,000 advertisers in its paid-search program, up from zero in 2002.

One reason paid search is working is that it is not an annoyance to consumers. It turns out that a lot of people go to Google to either research a purchase or buy a product. "A big percentage of queries we get are commercial in nature," confirms Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. Kamangar came up with the AdWords concept and oversees that part of the business today.

Does he think of Google as a keyword marketplace? "You bet," he says. "It is a marketplace where the advertisers tell us about themselves by telling us how much each lead is worth. They have an incentive to bid how much they really want to pay, because if they underbid, their competitors will get more traffic."

Paid search is the ultimate in targeted advertising because consumers type in exactly what they want. For this reason, a general search term like "tropical vacation" is worth less than a more specific term like "Hawaiian vacation." Advertisers pay only for terms that Web surfers actually click on. They enter the keywords they want to bid on and the maximum amounts they want to pay per click and per day, and then Google determines a price and a search ranking for those keywords based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same terms. Some keywords are 5 cents a click and some are $3 or more. With millions of clicks a day, that starts to add up pretty fast.

A big part of AdWords's success is its simplicity. "We built AdWords so it is as easy to use for advertisers as possible," Kamangar says. The goal, he says, is that "five minutes out, the advertiser can start getting leads." But Google is also improving the ability to target ads. Advertisers can choose to display ads only to Web surfers in particular countries or even smaller geographical regions, and they can broaden their terms to include synonyms, common misspellings, and plurals. Google now also offers a way to track the number of clicks that lead to purchases. Expect more refinements down the pike.

The fact is that Google already knows a lot about its users. So why not build deeper profiles by incorporating information about where they've just come from or what they have searched for in the past? Kamangar professes that Google is not interested in such profiling. For one thing, it would raise a whole host of messy privacy issues. For another, Google's business is based on the trust of consumers, so it would not be wise to risk destroying that trust.

But there is an even better reason not to do such demographic profiling: It represents an old way of thinking from which advertisers need to free themselves. Predicting human behavior based on who someone is or what she has done in the past is not something you should build a business around. "There has been research on this," Kamangar says, "but it is not very promising. The searches people do are so unique and diversified that it is hard to predict what they will want based on their past profile." And when you think about it, why would you even want to? Through their actions and words, searchers are giving advertisers a great gift. "The users have very narrowly defined in their own words what they are looking for," Kamangar says. Google is proving that it is much better to let consumers target themselves.

Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern

Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Google has clarity and focus. Google knows that great brands serve a purpose. They are useful. Google genuinely believes in the motto: the searcher is king. It demonstrates that you can put the customer first and make a profit. Google keeps it simple and wins.

What do you think of the following heading?
Solving tomorrow�s challenges. Today.
Why is it, do you think, that you would never find this sort of heading on the homepage of Google? "

Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier

For newbies? Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier: "Why Take The Google Guide Tutorial? "
Nancy Blachman ... has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google...
However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free.

Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com

Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com: "A lawsuit filed this week has intensified an ongoing dispute over whether Google's policy of selling ads related to search terms is legal or involves trademark infringement. "

About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries

About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries: "Google removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"

GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004

SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004

Here is what the Hilltop Algorithm looks like:
Old Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} New Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:

1.Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.

2.The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.

SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004

SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004: "ogle removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"

Google Tells Booble to Cease and Desist Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization News from Search Engine Journal

Google Tells Booble to Cease and Desist Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization News from Search Engine Journal: "Google Tells Booble to Cease and Desist "

Major Google Update

Major Google Update -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "there seems to have been another major update on google"

labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers

labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers: "Below is a partial list of papers written by people now at Google, showing the range of backgrounds of people in Google Engineering"

Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com

Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com: "A Google representative said that the site is the independent project of one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten, who works on user interface design for Google. Buyukkokten, a computer science doctoral candidate at Stanford University before joining Google, created Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects. Buyukkokten, with the help of a few other engineers, developed Orkut out of his passion for social networking services...

The goal of a social networking service is a far cry from Google's long-stated mission of organizing the world's information. Instead of helping connect people to information on the Web, it would be helping people connect with other people.

It also once again raises the notion that Google aspires to become a portal like Yahoo, something that the company has long denied. Google already helps people shop, read news, thwart pop-up advertisements, get stock information and publish to the Web"

orkut - helpMembership to orkut is by invitation only.

If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join.

eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis

eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis: "BT Openzone Access Points at Railway Stations
BT Openzone will be available at 13 key railway stations by spring of this year - with more to follow. The roll out will mean that passengers will be able to surf the web wirelessly at broadband speed from stations in the capital at Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Victoria, Fenchurch Street, Paddington, Cannon Street, and Charing Cross. (1/23/2004)
In other parts of England, commuters and other passengers will be able to sample the benefit of BT Openzone service at Birmingham New Street, Leeds City, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. North of the border, Edinburgh Waverley will have its own BT Openzone access point.
In addition, BT Openzone access points will be installed at London Bridge and Glasgow Central by summer, taking the total to 15 stations."

Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports

Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports: "charts based on your
Google AdSense Reports"

Search Engine Theme Pyramids

Search Engine Theme Pyramids: "The whole Themes theory is to look at the site as a whole and compartmentalize it. Start with broad content (1 keyword) and work your way down to the specific keywords you want to target. Then link to the topics above and below, but not across, to reinforce the pages with link text and insite link popularity"

Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: This "paper that describes the processes that were going on over at Applied Semantics before Google bought them up. It's long and you probably won't even be able to get it in a single read - pretty heavy stuff in there. If you can muscle your way through and then go back to the stuff you aren't clear on, you'll have an excellent foundation for understanding how all this works.

Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"

This paper doesn't deal specifically with Google, but is an overview of the entire thing (though it does explain some potential uses for it - a search engine included). Once you wrap your mind around the concepts, you can almost look at Google and see it happening.

Also bear in mind that this is only part of it. There's Topic Sensitive PageRank and LocalRank that are also somewhat new to the game (within the last year) and vastly overlooked (I suppose due to the complexities of it all) by most. With the semantics kicking in, the levels of integration of these two are also boosted considerably....

Interesting theory:
So, in your competitive markets where people vie for the same terms and everyone is optimizing pages for the "terms" and not the "concept" of a "martin guitar" owned by "Scott Rahin", the whole semantics thing falls apart.

In the end, if there's a sector like this (think "real estate" and "hotels" and "airfares" and other highly optimized and competitive areas) then the semantics have no hope of working so it either works poorly, or Google has something in there to kick that part of the algo out. ...

Comments re:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Amazon, remember, scooped up Alexa a while back. Alexa isn't so much a "search" property, but rather, an "indexing engine" which is, as this article points out, the primary problem with the Semantic Web - you have no way of indexing all the documents...

How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.

This post about navigational structure helps you understand how you can use site structure to achieve the same types of results. The pyramid scheme (in this case, that's a good thing) allows your "pointers" to be pointing to concepts on the deeper pages and not on the same page as in the first example.

----

I should point out that these techniques now work very well on larger sites.


...the semantics portion of the algo is only going to increase in importance. It does work - if you are presenting the data to them in the right way. There will be a grace period (how long? I dunno) where you'll be able to rank well using the "keyword" model but over the next 12-24 months, expect that model to slowly and progressively become less effective as more and more SEOs embrace the new technology and those patterns and semantic extrapolations become more the norm in web design."

NEW CONCEPTS: TSPR (Topic Sensitive PageRank) and LocalRank

ARTICLES & PAPERS REFERRED TO ABOVE:
:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)

Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"

Scientific American: The Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web
A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities
By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila "

Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web: "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into this Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people"

RDF Semantics: "This is a specification of a precise semantics, and corresponding complete systems of inference rules, for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS)."

Heavy:


Sitemaps? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "The page relationships are derived from linking structure, not URL structure. "
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.


Learn From A Forum's Structural Design -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "a sitemap is murder on your PR. PR works in a way where a page has a certain 'number' assigned to it. 80% of that number is divided up equally amongst all the outgoing links on that page and passed along to the next page. So if you had regular navigation that passed through a couple of pages, your site would start with a high PR out front and get a little lower at the next level and a little lower at the next level and so on. Your 'broader' less focused pages (the ones with the more general and more competitive search terms) will have a higher PR and your more specific pages (the ones with focused terms that aren't as competitive and don't need as much PR to rank well) get less PR.

When you link through the sitemap, though, all of your pages get an equal share of a highly dilluted amount of pagerank.

---

Oh - and Google's only going to crawl a certain number of links on a page. I think their site says 100, but I suspect that it may be higher in some cases. PR of the page with all the links on it seems to have a bearing upon how many of those links on it Google will bother to crawl.

So, if your site has 125 pages, then 25 pages of your site will never get crawled. "

CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004

CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004: "Google developing ad service for e-mail"

Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle.

In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, (Google) spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.

"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said


Future????
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: "You log into your GoogleMail account, and it has emailed you an entire evening's worth of web crawling for the data you were looking for. It's searched for places for your for your next vacation, and has managed to provide you with not only information, but Froogle'd for the best prices too. It's suggested things you'd like to do, and gone out and found the most popular sites about that as well. All you have to do is log into your Google HomePage and accept its suggestions, or negotiate with your own little GoogleBot for other venues.

Could this be the beginning of intelligent software agents? It would seem that if anyone could bring such a thing to us, it would be the Google folks"
"

Resellers online , trademarks & Google

I-Search Digest
Understanding Internet Search Technology
2004-01-15| Issue #582
MarketingWonk: Archives (online marketing and advertising news sorted by date and category)

Google has informed me that the trademark owner has complained about
the improper use of their trademark in our listing:

----------------------------------------------
Campaign: 'New Drivewerks Campaign,' Ad Group: 'Ad Group 17'
----------------------------------------------

KEYWORD(S): LifeLine, LifeLine Safety Kits, LifeLine Safety Travel
Kits, Lifeline First Aide Kits

Action taken: Disapproved
Issue(s): Keyword trademark term
~~~~~~~~~

SUGGESTIONS:
-> Keywords: We have disapproved the trademark term "Lifeline" and/or
variations of this keyword in your Google AdWords campaign.


This indeed opens up a huge can of worms. Suppose that you sell
automotive parts for Fords. If you can't use the name "Ford" in the search
listing, then the applicability of your paid-search listings is nearly
worthless. It would appear that it would be only a matter of time
before Google starts receiving hundreds of letters from trademark owners who
want AdWords listings pulled from the Queue (let's eventually include
Overture in there as well). If this continues, it will indeed have a
profound impact on paid search results. For example, if you typed in
"Cisco Routers" into Google, 100% of the AdWords listed use the
trademarked name "Cisco."

Trouble is brewing, any comments anyone? I'm going to have my SEO firm
(BeyondInk.com) look into alternative ways around this problem...


One question becomes, is your issue with Google or with the trademark holder? In particular, there is a big problem of trademark-holder-reseller relations that may speak to an unhealthy relationship there more than it does to any issue with Google and how they handle issues (or to the law, for that matter). Interestingly, though, such issues have been around for quite awhile in SEM even where one is not paying for keywords. There is competition amongst, for example, whether a weight-loss-company franchisee will get traffic to their site on certain keywords ("Jenny Craig South Florida") or whether the parent company takes a stand and begins making all sorts of demands of its franchisees regarding their marketing methods (including content, page titles, meta tags, etc.). It's a messy business and very often not somethng Google is in a position to solve. To their credit, in asking for a ruling on the American Blind case, Google seems to have taken the initiative in wanting to establish some legal principles where there currently are few precedents. You're quite right, though, a seller of Ford parts needs the leeway to be able to advertise to buyers of these, and surely, it should be neither Ford's nor Google's decision whether they're allowed to do this. Google would probably rather allow it, but they need the sanction of a court ruling or two, presumably, to give them the confidence to resist large trademark holders' complaints. In your case, unfortunately it seems that you might have to actually pursue legal action to be reinstated on those terms. It would not be a terrible idea to contact Google directly first to state your case,

Google Fans Fill Web With Buzz Over IPO (TechNews.com)

Google Fans Fill Web With Buzz Over IPO (TechNews.com): "going public is not Brin's and Page's first choice. Both have indicated in past statements that they're in no hurry to do an IPO. But because of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations governing private companies of a certain size, Google would be forced to disclose its financials this spring even if it didn't go public. Since the company will soon lose a key benefit of staying private, most Google analysts consider it a near-certainty that the company will try to reap the rewards of going public. And the rewards could be enormous. "

Prospect Google IPO similar scenario to netscape...

People worth looking up....HSMAI names top marketing minds in hospitality

HSMAI names top marketing minds in hospitality: "HSMAI's 'Hot List' of 25 Most Extraordinary Sales & Marketing Minds in Hospitality & Travel

- Mickey Arison, CEO, Carnival Cruise Lines
- Jim Berra, Vice President, Loyalty Marketing, Starwood Hotels & Resorts
- Dan Collins, Vice President of Marketing, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
- Amy Curtis-McIntyre, Vice President of Marketing, JetBlue
- Mike Dimond, CHME, Senior Vice President of Marketing, The Broadmoor Resort
- Dorothy Dowling, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, ARAMARK, Sports & Entertainment
- Dan Hanrahan, Senior Vice President, Royal Caribbean
- Vicky Freed, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Carnival Cruise Lines
- Dave Hartvigsen, Senior Vice President of Lodging, Intrawest
- Priscilla Hurley, Director of Marketing Communications, Affinia Hospitality
- Dave Johnson, CEO, Aimbridge Hospitality
- Andrew Jordan, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing & CMO, Wyndham International
- Mike Leven, President & CEO, US Franchise Systems
- David Neeleman, CEO, JetBlue Airways
- Jill Noblett, Vice President of Loyalty and Direct Marketing, Cendant Corporation
- Betsy O'Rourke, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Travel Industry Association of America
- Steve Pinetti, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants
- Spencer Rascoff, Vice President, Hotels and Packages, Hotwire.com
- Michael Reichartz, Vice President, Lodging, Expedia.com
- Barry S. Sternlicht, Executive Chairman, Starwood Hotels & Resorts
- Tom Storey, Executive Vice President, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
- Jens Thraenhart, Director of Internet Strategy, Fair"

Google adds travel search tools

Google adds travel search tools: "Google has also added new travel-related tools, allowing users to check the status of U.S. flights by typing a flight number into the query bar, or check the weather at a particular airport by entering the airport's three-letter code and the word 'airport.' "

Mike Grehan - Yahoo v Google

Features: "Unless you've been living in Saddam Hussein's last known address for the past month or so, then you may not be aware that Google is being ousted from Yahoo! And in its place comes Inktomi. Hence Yahootomi"

Search Engine Wars - Innovate To Survive in 2004

Search Engine Wars - Innovate To Survive in 2004: "Search Engine Wars - Innovate To Survive in 2004"

Google special searches

Just a reminder:
Free Pint - Helping you use the Web for your work: "TIP OF THE MONTH: Some Hidden Google Tools

I know, I know... you're already an expert Google searcher, and you've been using Google since you were in short pants (now, that's an expression that dates me, isn't it?). But I'm still going to toss out a few tools and resources that you might not have found already.

* If you want all of Google's tools and options conveniently displayed on a single screen, try FaganFinder (http://www.faganfinder.com/google.html). I like it because I am reminded of all the choices I have and settings I can tweak, including toggling the Duplicates Filter on or off, using the file format search, and setting the number of results per page. It even has handy links for typing non-English letters.

* Right now, the only search engines that support the 'NEAR' operator (search for this word within X words of that word) are Alta Vista and MSN. But there's a nifty Google hack called Google API Proximity Search (GAPS) that lets you look for two words within one, two or three words of each other. Head over to http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi and try it out.

* Google has a synonym feature that lets you search for not only the word you type in the search box but also for some common synonyms of the word. The syntax is ~word, so, for example, if you type ~food in the search box, you will also retrieve web pages that have the word cooking, nutrition, recipe or restaurant. Sometimes that's a nifty tool, but it has its drawbacks. I tried ~aluminum and it not only retrieved pages with the British equivalent, aluminium, and words with the atomic symbol AL, but also pages that mentioned Weird Al Yankovic, Al Jazeera, Al-Anon, and the official page for the state of Alabama. Use thi"

google duplicates - ie resellers, affiliates etc

ResourceShelf: "See Also: 'Challenges in Web Search Engines'
This twelve-page paper was written by Dr. Monika Henzinger (Research Director, Google), Dr. Rajeev Motwani (Professor at Stanford) and Dr. Craig Silverstein (Director of Technology, Google). From the abstract, '...article presents a high-level discussion of some of the problems with information retrieval that are unique to web search engines. The goal is to raise awareness and stimulate research in these areas.' Content quality, spam, cloaking, duplicate hosts, and vaguely structured data are some of the topics discussed."

More on Google's Upcoming (We Think) IPO
The article quotes Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality saying, "Google is all about providing access to information, not being a venue for ads." The article continues, "Norvig said that although the company offers paid search results, they're always clearly marked and never get in the way of the objective results that remain the company's focus."

And while we're on the Google beat a couple of comments about this quote and other matters.


A comment or two.
1) All of the major web engines are doing a good job of labeling paid content. The problem is that many people have no idea what the differences is vs. non-paid content.

2) One problem that Google runs into is how much of their database is duplicate or near duplicate content, something that the traditional research database tries to avoid. Expect more on this soon (much more study is needed) but a few examples right now

SEO Chat - Google - Google PageRank Primer

Neatly put:
SEO Chat - Google - Google PageRank Primer: "Be sure to always keep in mind that PageRank is not the same thing as your site�s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are entirely separate items. PR is the relative importance of a page on the web, expressed as a number. The SERPs are where your site appears on a search for your keywords.

PageRank is not a series of equal steps; it is logarithmic in its calculation. In the same way that the earthquake Richter scale is exponential in calculation, so too is the mathematics behind Google PageRank. It takes one step to from a PR0 to a PR1. It takes a few more steps to PR2 and PR3. Now, it takes even more steps to PR4, many more steps again to PR5, and so on. Each level is progressively harder to reach."

Yahoo! News - Google Fans Fill Web With Buzz Over IPO

Yahoo! News - Google Fans Fill Web With Buzz Over IPO: "Jeremy C. Wright, a self-described 'Business and Tech type person' who asserts on his blog that the Google IPO 'is evil.'
The hype surrounding the offering, he writes, is 'creating a bubble-type mentality' that can end only one way -- with a bust.
He compares the Google IPO to another famous IPO, the Netscape offering in 1995 that is credited with helping set off the first round of Internet mania.
'Hopefully Google fares better than Netscape did,' he writes.
Most Silicon Valley insiders think it will, but no one can know for sure.
'What they've accomplished in five years is nothing short of remarkable,' said Think Equity's Moe. 'The question is whether they have what it takes to create the next act.'
Not even a Google search can answer that."

Brand Erosion, or How Not to Market Your Hotel on the Web / Critical Online Distribution Issues Revisited a Year Later / Max Starkov / June 2003

Brand Erosion, or How Not to Market Your Hotel on the Web / Critical Online Distribution Issues Revisited a Year Later / Max Starkov / June 2003: "Surveys show that overwhelming majority of customers will not stay at a hotel with a poorly done website that does not reflect well the hotel product and the destination. It is becoming a common belief now that if your hotel website is not up to par there is something wrong with the hotel itself.

Conclusion first but loads of meat here for selling totaltravel to small businesses...

Online distribution is here to stay. The Internet has changed the way travel is being negotiated, managed and purchased. By 2005 over 20% of all hotel bookings will be completed on the Internet. This year alone 13%-14% of all hotel bookings will come from the Web and 53% of them will be direct-to-consumer. How does your hotel company compare to these national averages and where are your competitors? If you do not fare better than the national average, you are already behind your proactive competitors.

It’s not just about selling over the Internet at any cost. You have to know that the Web can be either your best ally or your worst enemy. If your online distribution is skewed toward the online discounters, this can permanently damage your brand and price integrity. The direct-to-consumer model should become the foundation, the centerpiece of any hotel company's online distribution strategy. It provides the hotel with long-term competitive advantages and lessens dependence on intermediaries, discounters and traditional channels about to become obsolete.

There has never been a better time to embrace the Internet and Direct Online Distribution in particular. An experienced eBusiness hospitality consultancy can help you navigate and utilize the Internet to its fullest potential.


On the Search Engines:
Search engines are considered major brand builders on the Web. Hotel listings or paid advertising on Search Engines, Directories and Portals (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN) contribute directly to the brand building of the hotel itself. Due to the nature of these services and their perceived impartiality, the branding interaction is exclusively between the Internet visitor and the hotel. A natural (algorithmic) listing of the hotel website, paid hotel banner ad or pay-per-click sponsored listing directly contributes to the brand building of the hotel, not of the search engines.

Hotel listings and paid banner ads on the Online Intermediaries:
Some hoteliers claim that by positioning their hotels on the online discounters like Hotels.com, Travelocity or Expedia.com they are �branding� their hotels. We believe that this is a very na�ve justification for a very unhealthy Internet distribution strategy. And here is why.
When the Internet user lands on an Expedia.com page, due to the nature of this service as an online intermediary, the branding interaction is exclusively between the Internet visitor and Expedia, and not with the hotel-advertiser on Expedia. In this sense if an Internet user sees a merchant hotel listing or a paid hotel advertising banner on Expedia, the visitor considers this as a positive branding experience benefiting Expedia (“Wow, these guys even have the Waldorf Astoria! Good for them! I made the right choice to visit Expedia!”). Website users tend to view hotel listings and banners in the same manner as pop-up ads and promotional features such as “Featured Hotels” or “Hotel of the Week” and treat them as yet another marketing gimmick employed by the online intermediary to sell them more stuff.

The direct-to-consumer distribution model should become the foundation, the centerpiece of any hotel company’s online distribution strategy. Why? First of all, The Internet is the ultimate “Direct Distribution Medium”. Why direct distribution is so important? It provides the hotel with long-term competitive advantages and lessens dependence on intermediaries, discounters or traditional channels that are about to become obsolete.

Direct-to-consumer online distribution has the following benefits:

Puts the hotel in control of its Internet presence and exposure
Prevents brand and price erosion
Lessens dependence on online discounters and intermediaries
Is the shortest path to establishing interactive relationships with customers
Provides long-term opportunities to benefit from the lifetime customer value
Is the least expensive way to distribute hotel inventory--direct to consumer!
Direct online distribution is not just a theoretical, “ideal scenario” approach. Many surveys show that online customers prefer dealing directly with the travel suppliers, including hotels, when purchasing travel online.

Though some of the major brands have done a good job with their global websites, none of them fares particularly well on the local search engine level. For example, in order to be picked up by the search engines, a local Hilton property has to implement relevant copy and destination content with specific target keywords, description tags and meta tags that are completely different from the global Hilton.com website. It has to achieve link popularity on its own. Hence, the need a local branded hotel to pursue its own website and search engine strategy...

Online Lookers vs. Online Bookers

Another interesting phenomenon is the purchasing habits of online travelers. Jupiter Media Metrix estimates that nearly 60% of the online population in North America (192 million in 2002) uses the Internet to research travel. 50% of those researching travel information online (online lookers) actually make their purchases online (i.e. become online bookers). The other 50% look online, but book offline, due to privacy issues, security concerns, purchasing habits, or need to speak with a live agent to finalize the travel booking, etc.

PhoCusWright also reports that 50% of US Online Travelers looked online, but booked offline in 2001 (52% in 2000).

Simply put, if 100 people book on your website, at least another 100 will be influenced by your website to book your hotel, but will make the booking offline (via phone, walk-ins, etc). This underlines further the critical importance of your hotel Direct Online Distribution Strategy and your hotel website visibility to the bottom line.

Search by Location

Search by Location: "Search by Location FAQ" Google has very recently added structured Yellow Pages data (business names and phone numbers) to its Search by Location beta test. Formerly, search results were based exclusively on Google's algorithm. However, the inclusion of the new structured data, together with some additional enhancements, have tremendously improved the usability of the application.

Cool tool BuzzToolBox Blog

BuzzToolBox Blog: "Goofresh
Google offers a date-based syntax, but you can only access it via the advanced search, which limits your time options, or the daterange: syntax, which uses Julian dates and is a bit difficult to use. Goofresh is a way to search for sites added today, yesterday, within the last seven days, or last 30 days."

How to Cheat Google AdWords Select - Part 2

ADWORDS:
How to Cheat Google AdWords Select - Part 2: "if you�re not using all the tools and tricks that AdWords provides, then you�re definitely leaving money on the table. And, when your competitors see your results, they�ll think you�ve somehow cheated the AdWords system.

This series of articles will systematically show you how to:

Generate the absolute best keyword list for your target market

Use simple techniques to vastly expand your productive keyword list

Create highly clickable copy for your ad

Precisely limit the distribution of your ad to only those prospects who are most interested

Beat the competition with creative bidding strategies

Dramatically reduce costs of your campaigns while increasing clickthroughs "

Google Dance Case Studies - hugely useful

Google Dance Case Studies: "By Danny Sullivan, Editor
December 7, 2003
While various webmaster forums have lots of discussion about the recent Google changes, specifics about particular situations are often lacking. It's much more useful to look at real life examples rather than deal with generic situations. So, as people have been contacting me, I've asked permission to use their stories to illustrate in real life how the changes at Google have made impacts. Here are some stories. You can read them all by scrolling through the article or use the links below to jump directly to sections of interest. Also be sure to see other articles about the recent changes on the Florida Google Dance Resources page."

Report on Report On Google - Topic Sensitive PageRank? | SEO Research Labs

To edit & annotate;
Free Report On Google - Topic Sensitive PageRank? | SEO Research Labs: "How To Prosper With The New Google"

Core of new algo:

"Applied Semantics' CIRCA Technology is based on a language-independent, highly scalable ontology that consists of millions of words, their meanings, and their conceptual relationships to other meanings in the human language. The ontology, aided by sophisticated search technology, is the basis for a conceptual understanding of the multiplicity of word meanings, enabling computers to more effectively manage and retrieve information which results in improved knowledge discovery opportunities for searchers."

What CIRCA allows Applied Semantics (and Google) to do, is to identify concepts related to specific words and phrases. They use this technology right now to serve up relevant advertising in a variety of contexts. Applied Semantics technology may also be involved in Google's
keyword stemming system.

Among other things, CIRCA can calculate how closely related or similar "phrase A" is to "concept B." If you search for "Colorado bicycle trips," CIRCA can relate that conceptually to a region (Colorado, which is in the Rocky Mountains), to concepts like bicycling and travel, etc. This is important, because it means that they can calculate the "distance" between your search query and various concepts in their database.

Understanding The Changes, Ignoring The Noise: For some search queries, the results have been radically changed – in a few cases, the top 100
listed pages have all dropped out. The folks at Google Watch have compiled a listing of affected search terms (see www.scroogle.org), and the amount of change in each, which has proven very valuable in conducting parts of our research.

When we looked at hundreds of unbiased real world search queries and mapped out the amount that each has changed, there is a very clean distribution in terms of how much they have changed. In the real world, radical changes are the exception, not the rule.

Looking at "real estate," according to Scroogle.org's methodology, 77 of the top 100 pages dropped out of the top 100. Looking at the more pecific "colorado real estate," 24 of the top 100 dropped out. You can see this pattern repeated over and over again. The more generic
searches show more changes in the top results. Look at the pages that dropped out of the "real estate" top 100. You will see a whole lot of local
realtors who managed to link their way (using PageRank and link text) into enviable positions, but not too many are really among the 100 most relevant pages for that query.

The first page I see listed among the "missing" is titled "Southern California Real Estate." Interestingly enough, that page shows up at #2 for the more specific search "Southern California Real Estate." In other words, they haven't been penalized, they just don't show up where they
don't belong any more.

Not so different for TT if have followed tips for links & content....
Those sites that have a lot of content and lots of relevant links (both incoming and outbound) have done well. Those that have gotten by with doorway pages and link swaps are no longer quite so successful.


Nothing really new in conclusions, just the usual warnings:

If you have mapped out a lot of content in your site plan, the task of writing it all can be daunting. So much so, in fact, that some folks never start, and try to get by with cheap tricks like machine-generated "doorway pages." Don't fall for these "quick fixes." The risk exceeds the
potential reward, and it's not that hard to develop content.

So you've got a beautiful, useful, content-rich website, perfectly targeting your desired visitor with the search terms he/she is going to use. Every page is a shining example of optimized content, it's all linked together perfectly... you're done, right? Wrong! If you stop after step 3, you're going to be very disappointed. Search engines aren't terribly impressed with a website that nobody else has linked to.

Above all: Don't Stop When You Hit The Top!
A lot of folks make a very critical error, when they start seeing good search engine rankings and the nice increase in traffic that good rankings can bring. They get busy with their new visitors, then they stop. They stop working on content, they stop working on links, and they eventually
stop seeing good rankings.

Then, they start complaining about Google, or Inktomi, or whatever search engine dropped them first. They'll shout to the rafters that the search results have gone to heck in a hand basket, that the search engines are persecuting them, etc. etc. My advice to you is simple – don't stop when you hit the top. Keep forging new relationships, keep building links, keep adding content, and keep your web site up to date. Your competition
isn't going to stop trying to beat you, and that includes the folks who are still ahead of you. The effects of your efforts usually show up in the search engines a couple months later. Some folks give up after a few weeks, because they haven't seen instant results...

If you're going to make a commitment to a search engine strategy for your website, and make the substantial investments it takes (both time and money), then stick with your commitment and execute your strategy. Don't give up too early, and don't stop when you hit the top.

Why I wouldn't buy Google :: Search Engine Optimization at ChriSEO.com :: Search Engine optimization and web site ranking tips, articles and news

Google vs Yahoo - I see a head to head battle emerging....
Why I wouldn't buy Google :: Search Engine Optimization at ChriSEO.com :: Search Engine optimization and web site ranking tips, articles and news: "1. Any JimWorld regulars will recognize my first point, sagely given by jcokos, PageRank is patented by Stanford. A number of other acquisitions by Google also have this drawback. Meaning that, effectively, what Stanford wants it's likely to get. These aren't technologies that can be quickly replaced, so even if there is some sort of agreement, the balance of power is always going to be in Stanfords favour.

2. Google is inherently non-commercial. It comes with an expectation of being free to its users. Any attempt to change that would lead to the mass flocking of its users to elsewhere. The methodology that Google uses to draw revenue is it's text ads system. The internet has seen systems work well time and time again and then decline in to uselessness. Works now, as effective next year? Probably not. With competitors catching up text ads are going to have less and less effect o�n the viewer and therefore be worth less to the advertiser. What, exactly, is going to replace those revenues and shouldn't Google be implementing that now?

3. With Yahoo buying pretty much every decent search engine and Microsoft throwing its dollars at building o�ne, Google is set to face the strongest competition it has had to face in recent years. With the gap between technologies and capabilities closing, with o�ne engine being largely similar to another, you can no longer compete o�n being 'better'. It becomes a marketing game. Does Google have the skills? I doubt it. Even if it does, is it as good at it as Microsoft, definitely not.

4. Google exists and promotes itself o�n secrecy and rumours. Buying in would be a bit like buying a car that works"

IPO news

Bloomberg.com: Top Worldwide: "Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to arrange its initial public offering, a sale that may raise as much as $4 billion,"

Google's House of Cards

Problems inherent in the Adsense system...

Google's House of Cards: "The true reason Google refuses to budge is the program is built on a shaky foundation. To secure the large distribution network AdSense needs, Google must pay publishers good prices. But if advertisers make separate bids for contextual ads, most would bid significantly less than they do for paid listings. Publishers would see revenue fall dramatically. This, in turn, would lead many sites to either remove the AdSense tags from their pages or demand a better revenue share.
AdSense is a house of cards, built on a foundation that forces advertisers to overpay for contextual ads. If Google allowed separate bids, it would risk losing revenue on multiple fronts: from the lower bids, the loss of distribution, and the loss of revenue share. The company bet it could keep prices high and revenue shares low as it built this program. But with smart advertisers turning off their AdSense ads, it's time for Google to give advertisers what they want"

Slashdot | Better Search Results Than Google?

How people search...
Slashdot | Better Search Results Than Google?: "Searching for info about electronic products is the worst on google.
I use the following along with any thing i want to search and it usually does the trick
-shop -shopping -price -buy -order -shipping'.
This no doubts subtracts one or two sites which are good but atleast filters out most of the shopping sites."...

The thing I have noticed to be the greatest single limit on web searching is the operator. I can regularly find things on the net that my co-workers cannot. This is because I understand keyword boolean searching at a deeper level than most people.

I blame this on the level of education of the common population, as opposed to being evidence of my own superiority. 8-)

In a world where most people have never actually met or "dealt with" a librarian (archivist, whatever 8-) it should surprise nobody that these self-same people have no idea what it means to take personal responsibility for organizing their own approach to knowing things.

Having grown up near and actually talked to librarians all my life I actually understand how to group information. Applying that knowledge to a search for some words and against others isn't that far a stretch.

It is a personal pet peve of mine to have to listen to people bemoan Google (etc.) when these self-same people have never even *noticed* the advanced search link, nor even learned the power of the minus ("-") in the standard search bar.

There is no technology that can "fix" bad user inquiries that won't in turn "ruin" good ones.

From my own experience with developing search technologies for an e-content site, these guys are on the right track. Compared to a lot of search technologies out there, Google is dumb. But it is blazing fast, general purpose, and smarter than most of its (former) compettitors. Part of why it is dumb is that it is so general purpose. To make a search engine smarter, you have to add context. Specialized search engines can do this by standardizing their inputs. Google could do this too, but it would require complex parsing of everything that it spiders.

Another thing that Google really lacks is detection of duplicates. Google tries to do this, but does it poorly. I remember recently doing a search on Google for an obscure DB2 error code, and getting the same page out of the IBM manual over and over again, all on different college websites.
This is another area where linguistic/statistical analysis could really help. Most knowledge-base products offer a "More Like This" feature that is an index of linguistic similarities between items. An easy way to detect duplicates with such a system is to have a fine scale and place an uppler limit on similarities, i.e. any two items with a similarity > N are likely to be duplicates.

All of this being said, I would be surprised if Google does not address these issues in the very near future. I do not think they have gone down the path that many large companies go down where they stop trying to innovate and instead just try to protect their turf

MarketingWonk: November 2003 Archives (internet advertising & online marketing industry news)

Re PR:
MarketingWonk: November 2003 Archives (internet advertising & online marketing industry news)
What is a good page rank? Google has my home page listed as a six. The other pages are fives some fours.
>
> Is six an OK rank? a bad rank? Will a one person site ever get a
> rating of nine or ten? Should I try for a higher number or be
> satisfied with my current page rank?

Hmm, just a six. Really, you should give up on every hoping to do well with Google. If you're not a nine or a ten, you'll simply never appear for anything.

NOT!

Honestly, do yourself a favor and uninstall the Google Toolbar. A PR6 value is actually pretty high, but in and of itself, it doesn't predict how well you'll do with Google.

Each page within your web site will have its own PR value. That's only one part of many factors that influences if each and every page will rank well for different terms.

Another key factor is link context. Amazon, last time I looked, was a PR9 site. Search for "books," and it's number one. Search for "cars," and it doesn't appear. Why? No one links to Amazon and in or near the link uses the word "cars." The links are not contextuall relevant for that term.

Try something else. Search for something at Google, anything. The
results that come up should all be listed by PR value, right -- those with the highest PR scores first. Not so. Start visiting sites. You'll be surprise to see things like a PR4 site may come first, then a PR6 site, then PR5, then PR6, then PR4 and so on.

To recap, the PR value you have is not the primary factor to concern yourself with. Instead of trying to raise your PR score, instead, ensure that you are offering great content and the best possible user experience to your users. That will bring in some links to you naturally, which should help both the PR score and your contextual linking. Also, seek out sites related to your topic and audience that are non-competive. Ask for links, and be free to link out in return, if your audience will gain from that.

And Andrew, excellent job with I-Search! I've greatly enjoyed reading the new posts coming in under your helmsmanship, as well as the ample stage-setting comments you've often provided.

cheers,
danny

Google email response to Florida enq List archives at Adventive

List archives at Adventive: "t archives"

reply:

Thank you for your note. Please be assured that Google does not accept payment for inclusion of sites in our index, nor for improving the rank of sites in our results. As you may know, results in our index change regularly based on ongoing, automated processes aimed at improving the quality and content of our search results. Changes you observe may include, but are not limited to, addition of new sites, changes in the ranking of existing sites, sites falling out of the index or getting
dropped and sites' content fluctuating between old and new content.

We realize these changes can be confusing. However, these processes are completely automated and not indicative of wrong-doing or penalization of individual sites. We currently include over three billion pages in our index and it is certainly our intent to represent the content of the Internet fairly and accurately. The ongoing changes you have observed are part of this effort.

While we cannot guarantee that your clients' pages will consistently appear in our index or appear with a particular rank, we do offer guidelines for building a "crawler-friendly" site. You can find these guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html . Following
these recommendations may increase the likelihood that your clients' sites will show up consistently in Google search results.

We appreciate your feedback and will pass it on to our engineers.

Regards,
The Google Team

In the Wake of the Florida Update - High Rankings Advisor

In the Wake of the Florida Update - High Rankings Advisor: "++In the Wake of the 'Florida' Update++"

Concludes: Overall, it will take some time for any definite/solid information to filter down about the true effects of the "Florida" update. Theories
will continue to swirl around the 'Net. So will rankings! But the fact remains that "common-sense" SEO copywriting wins out in the long run.

Google Dance Syndrome Strikes Again, Part s 1,2,3

Google Dance Syndrome Strikes Again, Part 2: "Google Dance Syndrome Strikes Again,"

Q. Does this mean Google no longer uses the PageRank algorithm?

Google never used the PageRank algorithm to rank Web pages. PageRank is a component of the overall algorithm, a system Google uses to measure how important a page is based on links to it. It's always been the case link context was considered, as well as page content.

Unfortunately, some call Google's system of ranking "PageRank." Google itself can make this mistake, as on its Webmaster's information page:

The method by which we find pages and rank them as search results is determined by the PageRank technology developed by our founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The page describing Google's technology more accurately puts PageRank at the "heart" of the overall system, rather than give the system that name.

PageRank was never the factor that beat all others. It's been, and continues to be, the case that a page with lower PageRank might rank higher than a page with a higher PageRank. Search for books. and if you have the PageRank meter switched on in the Google Toolbar, you'll see how The Online Books Page with a PageRank of eight comes above O'Reilly, although O'Reilly has a PageRank of nine. That's a quick example. You can see more by checking yourself.

Google IPO News

Google IPO News: "News of Google's suspected IPO is everywhere as Bloggers, industry experts and journalists seek to give the subject a new spin. Check out this collection of articles on Google's situation and decide for yourself what you think."

So much traffic from page 7 SERP!

So much traffic from page 7 SERP!: "the important outcome is traffic, and not a magic ranking number.
During the never ending stream of Florida posts I looked for reports which discussed the effect on traffic numbers rather than obsessing over rankings. To say they were few and far between is somewhat of an understatement.
I realised long ago that while a drop in rankings on primary terms may be a pointer that all is not well, it does not automatically mean a fall in traffic.
I realise that this may seem patronising to our experienced members, but for the benefit of the newbies.... if you are not getting access to your site statistics, and numbers of unique visitors in particular, then do something about it. Decent stats are your best friend and you are flying blind without them."

Florida & PatentsThe Gazette ... Issue: 208 (12-22-2003)

The Gazette ... Issue: 208 (12-22-2003):

" I spoke directly with Google about these allegations and they stated unequivocally that there is "Absolutely nothing commercial affects the ordering or display of search results. Period. The only crossover between the 'organic' results and the adwords results is that adwords knows what you searched on. Beyond that, the two are completely separate entities. Any manipulation of the core search results other than algorithmic relevance, which is completely computer driven would go against the very fiber of what Google is and stands for as a company."
.
..possible internal struggles within Google related to technology patents, we wondered if we hadn't stumbled upon something big and moved to put together this article. Though I do not agree with many of the theories of the poster, the thread by 'rossendryv' is located here: http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::thread/thread::1071160110/forum::google/.
As I looked further into the facts, and did a bit of deductive reasoning, things started making more sense, and this 'theory' began to look more and more logical"