Google IPO
Features: "24/October/2003
We all knew it would happen - we all knew why it would happen - perhaps this week's 'news' has thrown us a little on how it would happen - but why is the slight movement on Google's inevitable float plans causing such a crazed level of excitement?"
Friday, October 24, 2003
A timely reminder of the Google commandments:
Top 5 Google To Dos and Donts Debate 2: "5) TIME & EFFORT, Tid-Bits:
Don't look at the PageRank in the toolbar
Don't make assumptions based only on what is happening with your site(s)
Don't sign with or continue to use an ISP that has bad downtime, research them well. A 404 crawl by Googlebot will cost you much more than you will save with a cheap ISP.
Don't stress
Don't expect instant results. "
Top 5 Google To Dos and Donts Debate 2: "5) TIME & EFFORT, Tid-Bits:
Don't look at the PageRank in the toolbar
Don't make assumptions based only on what is happening with your site(s)
Don't sign with or continue to use an ISP that has bad downtime, research them well. A 404 crawl by Googlebot will cost you much more than you will save with a cheap ISP.
Don't stress
Don't expect instant results. "
Espotting Media: "Register now and drive targeted leads to your website
Espotting Media can help you access targeted leads from 72% of the UK's online population. To view some of the benefits of listing your site click here. By ensuring that your listings appear within our top 3-5 search results, you will benefit from highly targeted traffic from our entire network of sites and be exposed to over 850 million searches."
Espotting Media can help you access targeted leads from 72% of the UK's online population. To view some of the benefits of listing your site click here. By ensuring that your listings appear within our top 3-5 search results, you will benefit from highly targeted traffic from our entire network of sites and be exposed to over 850 million searches."
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Old news but situation still stinks so it would appear the tinkering goes on...
a Web Site Design Web Development Network: Pixel Resources: Wisconsin-Madison-Milwaukee-Watertown-WI: "Google Confirms Introduction of New Algorithms
June 11,2003 - Courtesy of: Stepforth
Google has finally confirmed what SEO practitioners have been assuming for weeks now. For the past three months, Google has been tinkering with its ranking formulas in order to introduce several new factors in clustering, ranking and SPAM filtering. During this time, websites that had once received Top placements have found themselves bouncing around the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often dropping as far as 50 - 100th place in Google's rankings. While Google has not issued any official statements, an engineer at Google who writes under the name, 'Google-Guy' has confirmed in the SEO Discussion Forum, Web Master World that the changes perceived by SEO professionals were in fact being made, 'on the fly' as Google attempts to work out the kinks in their new systems.
The changes being introduced by Google have made a significant impact on search engine rankings and has caused a great deal of damage to many companies dependant on Google listings. As Google is a private company with no contractual obligations to the websites listed in its directory, there is absolutely no recourse for companies effected by a loss of position. Unfortunately, at this time, Google is the absolute king of search engines being responsible in one way or another for over 70% of all searches conducted on the Internet. According to our pseudonymous source, Google-Guy, the changes should be complete by the end of July. We expect to see a fairly different Google when all is said and done but we also expect that Google will continue to be the dominant search tool for at least the next 12 - 18 months as they have several distribution agreements with other"
a Web Site Design Web Development Network: Pixel Resources: Wisconsin-Madison-Milwaukee-Watertown-WI: "Google Confirms Introduction of New Algorithms
June 11,2003 - Courtesy of: Stepforth
Google has finally confirmed what SEO practitioners have been assuming for weeks now. For the past three months, Google has been tinkering with its ranking formulas in order to introduce several new factors in clustering, ranking and SPAM filtering. During this time, websites that had once received Top placements have found themselves bouncing around the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often dropping as far as 50 - 100th place in Google's rankings. While Google has not issued any official statements, an engineer at Google who writes under the name, 'Google-Guy' has confirmed in the SEO Discussion Forum, Web Master World that the changes perceived by SEO professionals were in fact being made, 'on the fly' as Google attempts to work out the kinks in their new systems.
The changes being introduced by Google have made a significant impact on search engine rankings and has caused a great deal of damage to many companies dependant on Google listings. As Google is a private company with no contractual obligations to the websites listed in its directory, there is absolutely no recourse for companies effected by a loss of position. Unfortunately, at this time, Google is the absolute king of search engines being responsible in one way or another for over 70% of all searches conducted on the Internet. According to our pseudonymous source, Google-Guy, the changes should be complete by the end of July. We expect to see a fairly different Google when all is said and done but we also expect that Google will continue to be the dominant search tool for at least the next 12 - 18 months as they have several distribution agreements with other"
The Register: "It's been called a 'Google-NACK': you enter a particular search term and Google tells you that there are thousands of matching results, but fails to return many, or any results. "
The Register: "'I found your article on Google’s limited results kind of strange, so I ran the search myself, and was able to browse all of the returned results. The catch? I was using Opera (specifically, its built-in search box). I have since tried the Google search from Google’s home page using various browsers and got the same results you did.'
'It boggles the mind – the only difference with Opera’s search is that it adds a tag telling Google that the search request came from Opera. Why would that turn off Google’s anti-blog filter? I don’t know, but don’t let Google know or they may screw that up as well!' "
Google gossip
Mercury News | 05/04/2003 | Inside Google: "While they dream, Brin and Page also keep their eyes on the details: They use software to tally, to the second, how much money the firm is raking in.
They said the free, healthy meals only came about after calculating the time saved from driving off-site and reduced health care costs. There's even a Webcam trained on the cafeteria lunch line, so employees can avoid a long wait.
While most of the tech world buzzes about an IPO, Google's founders hold firm to their technological ambitions -- building, in Page's words, ``the ultimate search engine.''
``It would understand exactly what you type and would give you the right things back,'' said Page. ``We're pretty good, but we're nowhere close to being perfect. We won't be for a long time.''"
To understand is so very, very different from phrase matching or link popularity...
'It boggles the mind – the only difference with Opera’s search is that it adds a tag telling Google that the search request came from Opera. Why would that turn off Google’s anti-blog filter? I don’t know, but don’t let Google know or they may screw that up as well!' "
Google gossip
Mercury News | 05/04/2003 | Inside Google: "While they dream, Brin and Page also keep their eyes on the details: They use software to tally, to the second, how much money the firm is raking in.
They said the free, healthy meals only came about after calculating the time saved from driving off-site and reduced health care costs. There's even a Webcam trained on the cafeteria lunch line, so employees can avoid a long wait.
While most of the tech world buzzes about an IPO, Google's founders hold firm to their technological ambitions -- building, in Page's words, ``the ultimate search engine.''
``It would understand exactly what you type and would give you the right things back,'' said Page. ``We're pretty good, but we're nowhere close to being perfect. We won't be for a long time.''"
To understand is so very, very different from phrase matching or link popularity...
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Links Are All About Reputation - An Interview with Mike Grehan: "What do you think about selecting sites as link partners based on their Google PageRank?
Mike: I've done a lot of research on this. I know exactly what PR7 means: It means you have one more than six but one less than eight. That's all it means. Stop obsessing about PR; get on with business!"
Mike: I've done a lot of research on this. I know exactly what PR7 means: It means you have one more than six but one less than eight. That's all it means. Stop obsessing about PR; get on with business!"
Monday, October 20, 2003
Website personalization:
Why personalization hasn't worked: October 20, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Personalization hasn't worked because most people don't have a compelling reason to personalize. It hasn't worked because the cost of doing it well usually significantly outweighs the benefits it delivers. It hasn't worked because managers have seen it as some Holy Grail of content management...
Not surprisingly, the Jupiter report finds that personalized websites are four times more expensive to run. It also finds that personalized websites are twice as likely to attract visitors who will never pay for anything. Worse still, it finds that 25 percent of consumers actually avoid personalized websites because they fear that their personal information will be abused."
Why personalization hasn't worked: October 20, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Personalization hasn't worked because most people don't have a compelling reason to personalize. It hasn't worked because the cost of doing it well usually significantly outweighs the benefits it delivers. It hasn't worked because managers have seen it as some Holy Grail of content management...
Not surprisingly, the Jupiter report finds that personalized websites are four times more expensive to run. It also finds that personalized websites are twice as likely to attract visitors who will never pay for anything. Worse still, it finds that 25 percent of consumers actually avoid personalized websites because they fear that their personal information will be abused."
A search engine (& tech change) to keep an eye on...
///ExactSeek makes use of Alexa ranking.
(October 18 2003) ExactSeek, a newcomer to the search engine scene, has announced that it is now using the Alexa ranking for a site for determining the position of a listing in search results.
Alexa, now owned by Amazon.com, is a search bar that tracks user activity. Based on the information gathered, it ranks sites according to popularity. Users of this browser plug in can therefore at all times see how popular a site is among the users of Alexa.
(To see a site's "popularity" without downloading the toolbar, go to Alexa.com and use their Google-based search engine. Click on the link named "site info" next to the relevant search listing.)
"With the exception of Google, the major search engines have offered little in the way of innovation," says Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen.
"Factoring user popularity into a ranking algorithm is ground-breaking. Link popularity, keyword density and content relevancy are subject to manipulation by savvy webmasters and SEO specialists. User popularity is a far more reliable indicator of where web sites should rank and gives the surfing public some input on the search results they see."
ExactSeek is definitely one of the smallest search engines around. The database contains some 2 million web pages, but the site receives and indexes some 30000 new site submissions daily. Unlike most search engines ExactSeek actually makes use of meta tag data.
ExactSeek.com: Web Search Engine and Directory
http://www.alexa.com/
///ExactSeek makes use of Alexa ranking.
(October 18 2003) ExactSeek, a newcomer to the search engine scene, has announced that it is now using the Alexa ranking for a site for determining the position of a listing in search results.
Alexa, now owned by Amazon.com, is a search bar that tracks user activity. Based on the information gathered, it ranks sites according to popularity. Users of this browser plug in can therefore at all times see how popular a site is among the users of Alexa.
(To see a site's "popularity" without downloading the toolbar, go to Alexa.com and use their Google-based search engine. Click on the link named "site info" next to the relevant search listing.)
"With the exception of Google, the major search engines have offered little in the way of innovation," says Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen.
"Factoring user popularity into a ranking algorithm is ground-breaking. Link popularity, keyword density and content relevancy are subject to manipulation by savvy webmasters and SEO specialists. User popularity is a far more reliable indicator of where web sites should rank and gives the surfing public some input on the search results they see."
ExactSeek is definitely one of the smallest search engines around. The database contains some 2 million web pages, but the site receives and indexes some 30000 new site submissions daily. Unlike most search engines ExactSeek actually makes use of meta tag data.
ExactSeek.com: Web Search Engine and Directory
http://www.alexa.com/
Friday, October 17, 2003
Useful Google demographics (& website):
Increase website traffic methods for optimizing press releases from SEO-PR:
Increase website traffic methods for optimizing press releases from SEO-PR:
A "Fireside Chat" with Google's Sergey Brin: "Sullivan: 'What do you do to go beyond links as a way of improving results?'
Brin: 'There are completely new ranking technologies that we are working on. We try about a half-dozen a month and launch on a limited test basis. We fundamentally work with all of the world's knowledge. There are just different ways to approach that. There are many, many things you can do, and we're not going to exhaust them any time soon. Over time, our searches will only get better.'
Sullivan: 'Will you ever consider supporting paid inclusion?'
Brin: 'You want to keep any kind of payment separate from organic search results. I think it's important to distinguish those things.'
Sullivan asked, 'What do you think remains largely unknown about Google?'
Brin answered, 'The tilde operator,' a new search command that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a ~ character directly in front of the keyword in the search box. He also mentioned, 'The calculator,' which enables users to solve mathematic problems by entering numeric expressions into the google.com or the Google Toolbar search boxes. The engineer who created the calculator was supposed to be working on our 'spelling system,' added Brin."
Brin: 'There are completely new ranking technologies that we are working on. We try about a half-dozen a month and launch on a limited test basis. We fundamentally work with all of the world's knowledge. There are just different ways to approach that. There are many, many things you can do, and we're not going to exhaust them any time soon. Over time, our searches will only get better.'
Sullivan: 'Will you ever consider supporting paid inclusion?'
Brin: 'You want to keep any kind of payment separate from organic search results. I think it's important to distinguish those things.'
Sullivan asked, 'What do you think remains largely unknown about Google?'
Brin answered, 'The tilde operator,' a new search command that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a ~ character directly in front of the keyword in the search box. He also mentioned, 'The calculator,' which enables users to solve mathematic problems by entering numeric expressions into the google.com or the Google Toolbar search boxes. The engineer who created the calculator was supposed to be working on our 'spelling system,' added Brin."
Telegraph | News | Bags go by road for travellers on new Virgin trains: "Sir Richard Branson has come up with a novel way to make more space on his overcrowded Virgin trains: send passengers' luggage separately by road and charge them for the 'service'."
Google Guy - URLS & session ids
Google makes inferences about URL paramters: "Google can do some smart stuff looking for duplicates, and sometimes inferring about the url parameters, but in general it's best to play it safe and avoid session-ids whenever you can. ...A session-id lets a site owner give each user a unique identifier. That identifier can reference customer data like the shopping cart contents stored in a database, for example.
Some people would mention that you could use a cookie to do the same thing and keep the urls much cleaner. That's true, but not every user has cookies enabled. Using session-id's is one way to try to guarantee that you know that state of a user, even if they don't allow cookies, for example.
So what's the problem with a session id, and why doesn't Googlebot crawl them? Well, we don't just have one machine for crawling. Instead, there are lots of bot machines fetching pages in parallel. For a really large site, it's easily possible to have many different machines at Google fetch a page from that site. The problem is that the web server would serve up a different session-id to each machine! That means that you'd get the exact same page multiple times--only the url would be different. It's things like that which keep some search engines from crawling dynamic pages, and especially pages with session-ids.
"
Google makes inferences about URL paramters: "Google can do some smart stuff looking for duplicates, and sometimes inferring about the url parameters, but in general it's best to play it safe and avoid session-ids whenever you can. ...A session-id lets a site owner give each user a unique identifier. That identifier can reference customer data like the shopping cart contents stored in a database, for example.
Some people would mention that you could use a cookie to do the same thing and keep the urls much cleaner. That's true, but not every user has cookies enabled. Using session-id's is one way to try to guarantee that you know that state of a user, even if they don't allow cookies, for example.
So what's the problem with a session id, and why doesn't Googlebot crawl them? Well, we don't just have one machine for crawling. Instead, there are lots of bot machines fetching pages in parallel. For a really large site, it's easily possible to have many different machines at Google fetch a page from that site. The problem is that the web server would serve up a different session-id to each machine! That means that you'd get the exact same page multiple times--only the url would be different. It's things like that which keep some search engines from crawling dynamic pages, and especially pages with session-ids.
"
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
New search syntaxes:
Google Help: "' ~' Searches
You may want to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. Indicate a search for both by placing the tilde sign ('~') immediately in front of the keyword.
For example, to search for food facts as well as nutrition and cooking information, use:
Phrase Searches "
Google Help: "' ~' Searches
You may want to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. Indicate a search for both by placing the tilde sign ('~') immediately in front of the keyword.
For example, to search for food facts as well as nutrition and cooking information, use:
Phrase Searches "
Google IPO & search wars:
Fool.com: Gunning for Google [Motley Fool Take] October 13, 2003: "according to a recent Barron's article, the IPO market may see fireworks from a Google public offering.
Many forces are driving Google to an IPO. One is a technicality; there is a regulation on the books, crafted in 1934, that forces companies to report to the SEC if they have at least $10 million in assets and 500 shareholders.
Another force: greed. Venture capitalists desperately need to show their investors that they can make some money.
But perhaps the real reason is that Web search has become a war."
Fool.com: Gunning for Google [Motley Fool Take] October 13, 2003: "according to a recent Barron's article, the IPO market may see fireworks from a Google public offering.
Many forces are driving Google to an IPO. One is a technicality; there is a regulation on the books, crafted in 1934, that forces companies to report to the SEC if they have at least $10 million in assets and 500 shareholders.
Another force: greed. Venture capitalists desperately need to show their investors that they can make some money.
But perhaps the real reason is that Web search has become a war."
Ad sense & premium Ad sense explanation:
Contextual Advertising, Part 2 of 2: "Google has two programs for content publishers: AdSense for smaller publishers; and Premium for large ones. Ad Sense is easy for publishers to set up.
Susan's description of the process is as follows: '[Publishers] fill out a form. We [review] their Web site [for quality]. They log in, get a piece of code. They can choose different ad formats, customize the color [and background], and have access to [near real-time] online reporting so they can log in and see how much money they're making.'
Google works directly with larger publishers through the Premium Ad Sense program, and even offers a revenue share. In many instances, Google will actually buy the ad space on a CPM basis."
Contextual Advertising, Part 2 of 2: "Google has two programs for content publishers: AdSense for smaller publishers; and Premium for large ones. Ad Sense is easy for publishers to set up.
Susan's description of the process is as follows: '[Publishers] fill out a form. We [review] their Web site [for quality]. They log in, get a piece of code. They can choose different ad formats, customize the color [and background], and have access to [near real-time] online reporting so they can log in and see how much money they're making.'
Google works directly with larger publishers through the Premium Ad Sense program, and even offers a revenue share. In many instances, Google will actually buy the ad space on a CPM basis."
Monday, October 13, 2003
Overture Services Inc. Investor Relations: "Yahoo! and Overture Announce Completion of Acquisition"
Pandia Search World October 11 2003 On searching
"This means that Yahoo! is now the proud owner not only of its own directory (Yahoo!) and search engine (Inktomi), but also of a pay-per-click text ad provider, Overture, and Overture's two regular search engines, AltaVista and AlltheWeb.
Overture is expected to merge AltaVista and AlltheWeb into one search engine shortly. It is unclear, however, whether Yahoo! would like to joint the Inktomi and AltaVista/AlltheWeb teams, in order to develop another unified search engine"
Pandia Search World October 11 2003 On searching
"This means that Yahoo! is now the proud owner not only of its own directory (Yahoo!) and search engine (Inktomi), but also of a pay-per-click text ad provider, Overture, and Overture's two regular search engines, AltaVista and AlltheWeb.
Overture is expected to merge AltaVista and AlltheWeb into one search engine shortly. It is unclear, however, whether Yahoo! would like to joint the Inktomi and AltaVista/AlltheWeb teams, in order to develop another unified search engine"
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Not recommending this tool in particular 9assume the stats could be recovered from site log files....but would be of interest to know how far google spiders & how often it shallow v deep crawls...
If you're interested in tracking spider traffic, Robot Manager Pro
is a killer program. It's a lot of fun to see how many times
Googlebot, for example, visits your site in a month, and how far
down into your site the spider crawls.
http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/robot.html
If you're interested in tracking spider traffic, Robot Manager Pro
is a killer program. It's a lot of fun to see how many times
Googlebot, for example, visits your site in a month, and how far
down into your site the spider crawls.
http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/robot.html
Now here's an absolutely KILLER strategy, compliments of Michael
Campbell (http://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com). Go back through
your Web site and change the "home" links pointing back to your
main page to "Keyword Phrase Home." You'll be amazed at what a
difference it could make in your Google rankings. One of our
workshop students did this with her site, and in a two-week time
period, her PageRank went from 6 to a 7! Go for it!
Campbell (http://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com). Go back through
your Web site and change the "home" links pointing back to your
main page to "Keyword Phrase Home." You'll be amazed at what a
difference it could make in your Google rankings. One of our
workshop students did this with her site, and in a two-week time
period, her PageRank went from 6 to a 7! Go for it!
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Greyed out inconsistent - So what is your site's Google PageRank? - SitePoint Community Forums: "PR is another thing- ive seen inconsistent greyed out bars one minute then restored the next kind of readings, even on google own pages during mid aug on the .co.uk. "
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