Archive for January, 2007

Google Inside Scoop with Matt Cutts

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

One very important blog - if you haven’t found it - is Matt Cutt’s blog. Matt works at Google and has become the primary interface between Google and the SEO community. This is as close as you are going to get to the inside scoop on how Google works. You can find his blog at:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

Check it out - search by topic or scan the archives.

A good recent posting is available at:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/infrastructure-status-january-2007/

This describes some of where Google is going in 2007. It’s a little big of technical stuff here, but those supplemental results he mentions are the listings Googe returns when it can’t find enough information on a search in its main database. These are labeled as such in the return from a search. Obviously, that isn’t a good place for your site to be listed. If you are there, it generally means you have a weak image to the search engine (too few links to your site?) or you are doing borderline spamming of the search engines. Matt says it basically means you have low PageRank.

Posted in Adwords - Google, Blogging, Google, Google Mapping, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | 1 Comment »

Yahoo’s New Paid Advertising System

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Yahoo has changed its bidding system (paid advertising) to compete more effectively with Google. You can find more details of this at:
http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/01/08/the-new-bidding-system/

Posted in Adwords - Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Overture, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

What happened to the DMOZ Directory?

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

DMOZ is the without doubt the major directory on the Internet. It’s unlikely, however, that someone will search it for your website. Why, then, is it so important? It’s important because (1) it is updated by human operators (2) it’s free and (3) it is Google’s directory. If you are in DMOZ, Google considers you important and that helps your ranking. More than that, the DMOZ drives your position not only in Google, but also in AOL Search, InfoSpace, Lycos, Netscape Search, and many others. In other words, a listing in DMOZ is important for good listings in the search engines.

A bit of terminology here. DMOZ is the directory name. It is the product of ODP, the Open Directory Project. The editors that keep it updated are ODP editors, not DMOZ edtors.

If you have followed our directions for getting listed in DMOZ in our book, you will notice these directions haven’t worked lately. The problem is that DMOZ crashed in late October. In addition, there wasn’t adequate backup. The directory was patched back together with clones from various sites (including Google’s clone) and is now operational again. The directions in our book for getting listed are still correct once DMOZ is fully operational.

Unfortunately, if you submitted a site back then and were waiting to see it listed, your request is probably lost. Check the DMOZ, and it you are not there try to submit it again. We’ve noticed in the categories we’ve tried they aren’t quite ready for submissions yet. Just keep watching for your category to get back up. Then submit again. Getting your site listed here is important.

Posted in Google, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

Comcast Email is for the Birds

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

For the second time, we’ve had a client having problems with their email through Comcast. Comcast is blocking their email when using another host, even though they aren’t spamming. Contacting Comcast about it doesn’t do anything. Comcast is on our blacklist of hosts that support spammers at:
http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.pdf

They are also on our short list of the most serious offenders. This list is at:
http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/badhosts.htm

We use Comcast broadband services at the moment, but do not use their email because of these serious problems. We had our Comcast address deleted from our email program when we saw strong evidence that they had sold our address and we started getting spam on the Comcast address. Since we never used the address, the only way anyone could have gotten it was from Comcast.

Our advice to our clients: Don’t use the Comcast POP server for your email, and don’t use a Comcast email address on any other hosting system for people to contact you. You could very well never get that email from a potential client from Comcast blocking. And Comcast won’t tell you what they are doing. Nor can you recover damages.

Posted in General, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Spam, Web Design | 1 Comment »