Posts from ‘Google’
Matt Cutts discusses ALT image tags
Something we should all be doing…
Obviously, Google likes it when we use image ALT tags, and here Matt Cutts appears suggesting it will help make your site much more search engine friendly.
The RSS feeds this morning have been somewhat lacking in excitement. I’m about 60% through them all and the first post to catch my eye is a post over at impNERD. The post is about a new blogger widget called ScratchBack.
ScratchBack is an online “tipping” system. It allows you, the publisher, to accept tips and “give back” links or images in return.
You name your price on your tips, and you earn money from every interaction through our easy-to-use automated system. It’s free to sign-up, and you can have a TopSpot widget on your website or blog in minutes.
In other words, as I read it, you “tip” a blogger and in exchange you get a link. AKA… text link selling.
But unlike Text Link Ads, Linkworth, and Pay Per Post, ScratchBack is playing by rules of the Google god.
Do My Links Pass Page Rank?
They do not. Every single link, including the link back to Scratchback, in the TopSpot widget has a “nofollow” hard encoded in them. The code is delivered in Javascript format as well. That means that Google and other search engine spiders “won’t follow” the link. I doesn’t mean your link isn’t clickable, it is.You cannot remove that code, nor should you attempt to as per the user agreement every publisher and advertiser agree to upon registration. Google has made it perfectly clear that “selling page rank” is not something they believe in. We don’t believe in it either. This system is built for fun. There are plenty of other solutions out there you can use if you want to “pass Google juice”, just not this one. Did you hear that Google?
So yes, it is a form of link selling. No, it’s not going to be looked down on by Google.
I’m getting ready to start working on a very large scale project for an organization that will be hosting conferences in more than 20 states. Each state will need its own “sub site”, so the topic of subdomains vs. subdirectories has come up a few times over the past week.
Fortunately, Matt Cutts of Google has clarified a lot of the confusion surrounding the two.
My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I
usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my
content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is
completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such
news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer
webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to
feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that
point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your
own site.
I understand what Mat is saying here, and I’m happy to see someone from Google go public with an opinion. But my question is… what if subdomains would actually be helpful to the user? I mean, wouldn’t it be better to tell someone they need to go to nevada.mydomain.com instead of mydomain.com/nevada?
Interesting none the less.
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Blog Herald has a post up about a cash prize contest currently running thanks to an online discounts voucher site out of the UK.
The contest brings nothing new to the table in regards to the idea realm, but it does beg the question… is this the new pay per post? I mean, in the past you might have had a $1,500 budget to buy text links within blog posts via the many online providers. But considering the fact that Google started it’s offensive strike on link sellers, wouldn’t it make since to just hold a contest and give the $1,500 away as Continue Reading
According to a discussion that took place during the Organic Listings Forum here at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Google has issues with product specific pages on shopping sites.
The Organic Listings forum was moderated by Danny Sullivan. The panelists were Mike Grehan, Mark Rosenberg, and Erica Schmidt.
During the Q&A part of the forum someone took the mic and asked about problems his company, Shoplocal.com, was having with product pages that were only good and relevant for a short period of time. This wasn’t so much a question as it was a revelation in one of Google’s struggles to bring timely and relevant information when it comes to search strings related to direct products.
Basically, ShopLocal.com will compare product sales on a local level. For example, if you’re looking for an ipod in Chicago, the site might give you the latest deal from both Best Buy and Circuit City. The problem is, once the deal ends the page remains online and the search engines continue indexing it as if the content never changed.
The keywords Danny Sullivan used to bring up a page on Shoplocal are “chicago ipod”. Sure enough, a shoplocal page came up as the #1 result. But, this page is no longer relevant or useful because the product on sale is no longer on sale and has vanished from the page.
One can certainly argue that chicago ipod is a healthy search term. In fact, I’ve searched for similar keywords myself. So, wouldn’t Google want the user to find timely and relevant information in the #1 spot on the SERP? I mean, I usually get peeved when I click on a result only to find that “this product is no longer available” or “this page has moved”.
Why then does Google continue to rank product pages on shopping sites so high when it is so obvious the content fluctuates? And for the record, this particular product page had changed quite some time ago. Google had plenty of time to re-evaluate the pages’ relevance.
What up with that?
Today I had the pleasure of attending the SES Chicago “Organic Track” forum, “Sitemaps: Oversold, Misused or On The Money?“.
The panel was moderated by Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief for SearchEngineLand.com. The participants included Amanda Watlington, Vivek Pathak, Jeremy Clem, Manager, Natural Search, and Trevor Foucher of Google.
During the Q&A section of the forum, someone in the audience asked an off topic question about flash websites and flash files. The question was asked along the lines of “when will Google start doing a better job of indexing flash content?”
You get the point…
Anyway, Danny Sullivan chimed in right off the bat and said matter of fact “it will NEVER happen”. Sullivan went on to say that flash files are extremely unfriendly to search engines, something most of us already knew but loved to hear re-enforced, and that anyone using them was clearly heading in the wrong direction.
When Sullivan went to pull the forum back on topic, Trevor Foucher of Google jumped in with “plus, a lot of users can’t see flash, so we feel it isn’t user friendly either”. Which says to me that Google doesn’t like flash and will likely look down on it when it comes to grading a pages’ content for the SERP’s.
Can we put this to rest once and for all?
Enough with the flash hysteria.
-Eric Odom
Today is Tuesday, December 04, 2007. This makes it day two of Search Engine Strategies Chicago. It’s 11:42 A.M and I just finished enjoying a brilliant hour of discussion on “Organic Listings”. Continue Reading
Matt Cutts really knows how to stir controversy. In a recent post titled, “How to report paid links“, Cutts lays out the simple process on how to bring paid links to the attention of the Google team.
Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
I can see it now…
