Everyone knows yahoo directory charges 299$ for regular site submission for a year and Adult sites it costs 600$. This is huge compared to what other paid directories are charging out there. So is it worth it? I recommend an Yes and a No



YES if your site a well established site and want to improve your yahoo search engine exposure to the maximum
YES if you are looking to spend money on a good paid directory. You can't find a better paid directory than yahoo out there.
YES if you want google to treat you better, Both Google and Yahoo consider a yahoo directory listing an authority backlink since all sites listed in it are subject to manual review.
YES if get a good category to list your site listing your site 10 levels deep is not the greatest thing to do when submitting to a directory.
YES if you have an adult site and need a quality backlink. I dont think many sites appreciate adult sites other than yahoo directory.
YES if you want yahoo LOVE , they love your site if you pay them 299$



NO if you are a small Mom and Pop business and have limited budget on online business
NO if you have good cheap alternatives for backlinks
NO the sky will not fall and you can always have good rankings even if you dont have a yahoo directory listing.
NO if you don't want editorial review of your site sometimes if your site is too spammy with too many affiliate links they will ban your site in the main index.

That is all I can think of for now

Search Engine Genie SEO Blog Team,

Many asked us whether we have an alternative for Google's webmaster tools backlink tool where we can see atleast 30 to 40% of the links a site has. From what have seen no you cannot see more than 1000 backlinks in yahoo. Probably if they add a platform like google to validate a site and download backlinks as a CSV in future it will be great. But till now by far the only search engine that is even close to showing something accurate for a site is yahoo. We have not seen any other search engine show as accurate backlinks data as google. There are different methods to check backlinks in yahoo. We had an article written couple of years back based on this. Please read it here https://www.searchenginegenie.com/backlink-strategies.htm

Recently MSN Live Search crawler bot is hitting us hard its most probably because we are working hard on unique contents on our site, as well as the tools, blogs etc. We are getting lot of new natural backlinks and this could be an important reason we are seeing increased crawler activity from all the crawlers.



Also our SEO forum has started to pick up we have seen some new posters become regular in our forum they have posted some interesting postings. Also we have started 5 new blogs A web design blog, PPC blog, Link building blog, Programming blog, personal company blog etc.
Also we have a new search engine experts directory where listing your site is for totally free even you can include your phone numbers and email IDs. Only adding active URLs are chargeable its just launched with about 60 profiles are existing search engine experts.
Our Chief technical Officer who goes by the name Tara has started a blog on our own and she will be sharing her personal thoughts from tomorrow,
Also we are launching our newsletter from this month and we are accepting subscriptions from tomorrow, there are ton of new things coming to our website. This is just an effort to catch up to our competitors.



Keep visiting our site to see great new innovative things coming up,
Good day

Search Engine Genie Blog Team,

US results in other countries:

I know many of you have this question especially webmasters and siteowners from other countries doing business with US clients. For us though we have a sales office in CA, US our development team works from india but our 100% our client base is US. We need to target US customers only and for this we need to make sure have best results in US search engines.



Even if you search google.com from here you won't have the best results delivered there will be some geotargeting jumping in based on your IP. So to tackle that we need to find other ways. I can list few of the ways we know of and which we use internally use to check our sites as well as our client sites from US pages.

1. Adding &gl=us to the URL works sometimes. But even if you add this if your IP of your internet service provider is country specific then the result still wont be as accurate as it is served in the US states. SO this will kind of work and worth the try.

2. Using the Google adwords https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool this too works sometimes but it delivers results the same way as the above option it also detects the IP and doesnt give the best results and results are not always similar to the US results.

3. A VPN with US Ip works better we have some VPN connects with some client's offices and we get US Ip where we browse to get exact US based results.

4. Last but not the least the best option infact the option we most use is a US proxy. There are some very good US proxies like

https://www.megaproxy.com/
https://www.hidemyass.com/
https://www.clickgo.info/



They are mostly US proxies and what they see in US is what you see in your country. I recommend using one of those proxies to check results in US,

When we listened to the live webmaster central live chat which happened on friday they were so tough on sites that are selling links. Also they have a link in webmaster tools to report paid links. Plus they have a good written explanation here.



https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736

According to that document:

"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results. Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the tag Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt fileGoogle works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."



Infact they did mention in their LIVE chat that sites which sell links will be penalized. Ok now when we go to the official google blog here "http://googleblog.blogspot.com/", we can see that few of the sites listed here do sell lot of text based links on their site. Though they nofollow those links I feel linking to those sites means they support those sites.
So can we assume that google's friends can sell links. I don't want to rant and I can understand they don't have control over it but still they link to sites which sell links and this is like endorsing those site's Search Engine Spamming efforts. So I feel best way to sell links on your site is to go to Search Conferences make friends with Google Employees and sell links safely on our sites with Google's direct approval.

We get questions from users asking whether where we host our website plays a role in search engines. Our answer is yes there are lot of factors when it comes to ranking in search engines and a problem with a hosting company will be an other important factor.
Here are some reasons why you should select a good host.



1. Downtime: Make sure you get the best uptime not just by guarantee but by testimonials of other companies of the hosting company you want to host. We have seen most of the web hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime but a lot of them never keep up that promise. If the site goes down you have to keep going behind them and finally if there is a major fault you site might takes about 3 or 4 days which is a massive negative effect on your site. A long downtime affects your repeated customers if they are regular to your website and find you site is down for a long period eventually they will never return back which is not good for sites which depends on repeated traffic. A long downtime also affects search engine crawling googlebot and other major crawlers are programmed to visit big high quality sites on a repeated trip which varies from inbetween few hours a day to once a day to once in couple of days. If the Search engine crawlers cant crawl the site even after repeated attempts they might boot your site out of index for a short while eventually it will come back but the risk of loosing precious ranking is not good.
Also its not about repeated visitors also first time visitors will be badly affected if you have a bad hosting company and suffer a long term downtime impact in search engines. Imagine potential customers click on a search result and see that your site doesn't exist they will never come to your again.
Bad DNS resolving: I have seem some hosting companies suffer from bad DNS resolving. If the DNS resolving is not good search engine crawlers will have trouble accessing your site from some of their datacenters and a bad crawl will affect your site. A bad crawl is bad for SEO since your site should have good credible crawling capabilities for the crawlers to visit regularly and inaccessible pages on your site due to DNS problem will result in bad distribution of link juice which will cause loss of internal link popularity.
Banned IPs hosting: There are millions websites which share hosting on same Ips with other websites. Though this is a natural phenomenon sharing an IPs with too much banned websites / spam websites / adult websites will hurt your site. There is a limit no-one can prevent a bad site from being in a shared IP but imagine 60% of all websites hosted on your IP are spamming the search engines then your site will be considered part of it and this will loose your credibility with search engine algorithms.



Shared IPs: As mentioned in the above post shared Ips sometimes hurt best solution is dedicated IP but if you cant afford dedicated Ips research more on the host an if their shared IPs are fine go ahead and host.

Hosting company Search engine rankings: If you are search engine user and looking for a web host mostly you will use search. Most of the time sites that rank in top will have good credibility since they should have worked really hard to reach what they are right now.

Mod_rewrite: Though rewriting is not important now a rewrite to the dynamic URls will make search engines job easier and your users will remember URLs better. I recommend check your host first to make sure they offer good URL writing whether its PHP, or Perl or ASP

There are other factors too but above are important and can be researched before buying with a hosting company,

We never heard or know anything about Earth hour unless we noticed the Homepage of google. When we saw the new darkend homepage and followed the link from it we were able to understand the importance of spending time with nature for atleast an hour. Yesterday we had some employees working even due to weekend and we turned off all the lights including Air conditioners to make sure we support a good cause.
We all know google always support good causes. Global warming is threatening the very existence for the world we live in and its important everyone realizes how important its to reduce the pollution we inflict on Mother nature so that it doesn't backfire us through Climate changes and Global warming.
We thank Google wholeheartedly for helping us understand a good cause.

Google webmaster central live chat log full unedited version.
Please read the log here,
Update Full Raw Unedited version of Audio transcript.
We are now posting the full chat log which we were able to save during the live chat conversation between Google's Search quality / webmaster central engineers and webmasters around the world. It was very interesting session and this is the first time in the history of Search engines did we see live online chat between a search engine company and the webmasters.



This is a raw chat log we never had time to clean it due to weekend. In the coming week we will able to select the best answers from this and will be posting in a separate blog posting till that time enjoy reading this log its interesting. We have some very good industry experts comment in this LOG apart from Google's panelists.
Already we posted the full text based Question and Answer Session here
Please read the log here.
We are preparing the transcript from the 90 minutes audio its gonna take time, we will also post the full audio though its not of the best quality. :-)

Google Answers 150 questions in today's live chat session between Google's webmaster central search quality team and webmasters around the world.
Google panelists had celebrity Googlers like MattCutts, Adam Lasik other panelists are Evan , Jessica, John Mueller, Jonathan Simon, Liza, Maile Oye, Mariya, MattD
Ramya, Ried, Susan, Wynz.

Text Based Question and Answer session happened between Google's expert panelists and
Webmasters, This is a raw unedited conversation to make it more accurate. There
are some casual conversations please ignore them.

UPDATE: Raw Live casual chat Log Posted here
Update: Raw Unedited version of Full Audio transcript posted here

Document Prepared by Search Engine Genie Team

1. Webmaster (Rahul Doshi ): what is the process?


2. Google Expert (MattD) : :
   Rahul, You will want to log out completely
   and back in. If you end up not getting onto the call, you should still be
   able to follow along in the chat windows.


3. Webmaster (Gabe) :
   What is the criteria for getting the 'more results' for the 1st search result?
   It's not just appearing first and having a sitemap recognized by Google because
   I've seen both for a given site with no 'more results', so what is it?


4. Google Expert (MattD) : : Gabe, are
   you talking about Sitelinks?


5. Webmaster (Laurent):
   About SiteLinks, what would be your advice to get results appear. I see them
   in the GWC, but not in SERPS


6. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334






7. Webmaster (Gabe):
   The first result returning specific sitelinks below just after 'more results'.


8. Google Expert (MattD) : : Gabe, Sitelinks
   are purely algorithmic, you can find some more information here: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334


9. Webmaster (Linda Farm):
   Is Website Tools verifying site not working? i've tried verifying my site
   and it just doesn't work


10. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Linda, the
    team is working on something with verification, it seems to be affecting some
    sites.


11. Webmaster (Cassiano Travareli):
    I wanna know about social media optimization! what is the Google opinion about
    that?


12. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Social media
    is a great way of attracting relevant visitors!


13. Webmaster (Mark Kaufman):
    Would you recommend no following the sorting links?


14. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Mark, if those
    links lead to duplicate content, you can either add a nofollow to the links
    or block indexing through meta tags or a robots.txt entry.


15. Webmaster (erik) : One of my clients has a thumbnail next to their serp result instead of the
    sitelinks that were there before....what gives?


16. Google Expert (MattD) : : erik, Sitelinks
    and Universal Search results are query-specific.


17. Webmaster (Terence):
    If RSS feeds have near identical content as HTML pages, might that cause duplicate
    content penalties?


18. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : RSS feeds
    do not need to be indexed, you can block indexing through your robots.txt


19. Webmaster (ali merchant):
    how does the search engine treat an https (secure) page versus an http


20. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Ali, we treat
    https the same as http -- however, https puts a bigger load on your server,
    so you might want to check that it can handle it on your side.


21. Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
    Kind of depends on what duplicate content means -- if the sort is different
    on a results screen, different products/items will appear on a given page...but
    overall it's the same set of products as the default sort.


22. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Mark, if the
    content is generally the same but just in a different order, I don't think
    it would provide much original value in the search results for the user.


23. Webmaster (Carlos) :
    We are a comparison shopping website, healthpricer.com, and we power the ecommerce
    section of 4 different sites, i.e. marketplace.healthcentral.com those sites
    have identical content to our main site, can this get me penalized?


24. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Unfortunately
    we can't do individual reviews for every site, but you could start here: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359


25. Webmaster (Terence) :
    Confusion about robots.txt vs rel=nofollow. I don't want to pass PageRank
    to my Privacy Policy. Suppose I already blocked /privacy/ in my robots.txt.
    Do I also have to use rel=nofollow when linking internally to /privacy/ to
    prevent the pass of PageRank?


26. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Pages that
    are blocked by robots.txt can still have and pass PageRank, so if you don't
    want that page to get PageRank from your Privacy Policy page, you should nofollow
    that link.


27. Webmaster (Terence):
    Confusion about robots.txt vs rel=nofollow. I don't want to pass PageRank
    to my Privacy Policy. Suppose I already blocked /privacy/ in my robots.txt.
    Do I also have to use rel=nofollow when linking internally to /privacy/ to
    prevent the pass of PageRank?


28. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Pages that
    are blocked by robots.txt can still have and pass PageRank, so if you don't
    want that page to get PageRank from your Privacy Policy page, you should nofollow
    that link.


29. Webmaster (dockarl) :
    Why's he using ALT TEXT on text at the bottom of his site - is that wrong?
    LearningGuitars.com


30. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Dockarl,
    the site Wysz was talking about was learningguitarnow.com


31. Webmaster (erik) :
    my client has the same issue as this: search for buzznet.com in google and
    you'll see the same thing


32. Google Expert (MattD) : : Thanks for
    the example erik. This site is triggering an image as a Universal result.
    Both Universal and Sitelinks are determined algorithmically, so you can't
    opt-in to either. You can opt out of Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools if that
    helps the situation.


33. Webmaster (Andrew) :
    What are your views on image replacement versus using alt= on an image. Is
    it a bad thing if used legitimately?


34. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : There are
    many high-quality sites that use image replacement techniques (such as Fahrner
    image replacement) to provide a better user experience. If you're using this
    technique in a legitimate way to benefit your users, you shouldn't have problems.


35. Webmaster (Nancy) :
    Any chance that Google will develop its own directory that folks can directly
    submit their website to?


36. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Nancy,
    we use the ODP (open directory project), to learn more go to dmoz.org


37. Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
    Can I ask a video sitemap question? We submitted a video sitemap back on Feb
    19th. In Webmaster Tools, total URL is 11k, but Indexed URLs are 0. Of the
    115 sitemaps off the index, 2 have warnings. Do video sitemaps just take a
    long time to get indexed?


38. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Video sitemaps
    take some time to get approved -- it can take up to 2-3 months.


39. Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
    So duplicate content can cause page rank issues? I thought you were able to
    filter duplicate content?


40. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : If you have
    multiple URLs for the same content within your site, each URL could be attracting
    it's own links. It would be better to instead have one page for everyone to
    link to thus consolidating the value of all the external links.


41. Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
    I setup a webmaster account an submitted my url. I also setup a Sitemap.xml
    file. Google reports that the url is indexed and the Sitemap file is OK yet
    when I google search my url the result is "No Documents Found".
    What have I done wrong???


42. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It can take
    a bit for sites to get indexed, you might want to post in the webmaster help
    groups for detailed suggestions.


43. Webmaster (Korpis, LLC) :
    Would there be a problem with doing a large number of 301 redirects at once?


44. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : I would recommend
    against doing "chained" redirects (a page redirects multiple times).


45. Webmaster (Kevin Rogers) :
    For the Guitar lesson site, should they 301 the learnguitarnow.com/index.shtml
    page to learnguitarnow.com?


46. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If that URL
    is not linked, it should not need to be redirected. If it's linked, it would
    be best to remove the links, a 301 could help to speed up the removal.


47. Webmaster (Laurent) :
    I see nofollow links in my GWC. Why is that ?


48. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That's by
    design.


49. Webmaster (Hasit Ruparel) :
    I have alread reviewed that, however I have problems in which my websites
    are not considered for higher ranking, ever after following all the steps
    on https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769


50. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You might
    want to post about it in detail in the help groups.


51. Webmaster (Terence) :
    Thanks Susan, but I'm actually asking about internal links pointing *to* /privacy/,
    not links from /privacy/. Will internal links pass PR to /privacy/ even if
    /privacy/ is blocked by robots.txt?


52. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Yes.


53. Webmaster (Scott) :
    what site is he talking about now?


54. Google Expert (Jessica) : : Hi, Thanks
    for your question. We're now discussing images in Google Search results


55. Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
    Also can we get any comments on paid link re-inclusion process? Once the paid
    links are removed is the next step Google re-inclusion through Google Webmaster
    Tools?


56. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, a reconsideration
    request is the next logical step once everything is cleaned up. Please include
    all details in your request so that we can handle it appropriately.


57. Webmaster (Allison Kulage) :
    Related to the robots.txt issue - if you've placed a no robots tag on every
    page of a site and a disallow for all in the robots.txt file, but the home
    page still shows up in the top 10 for a competitive keyword, how else can
    you get the site removed?


58. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you are
    blocking crawling with robots.txt, we won't be able to see the robots meta
    tag. If you want the URL removed, it would be better to allow crawling (not
    block it in a robots.txt) so that the meta tag can be read.


59. Webmaster (Raffi) :
    would you suggest subdomains or folders for state specific content for a US
    site? i.e. az.domain.com or www.domain.com/az ?


60. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Both work.


61. Webmaster (Cassiano Travareli) :
    i wanna know about duplicate content inside blogs. about categories, archives,
    authors, have the same content of the article. in my web pages i am blocking
    using robots txt, i blocked categories and archives. is it good?


62. Google expert (MattD) : : Cassiano, If your content is the original, I wouldn't recommend
    blocking it. If you have content fed in from another site, it might be smart
    to use robots.txt as you've said. I'd recommend taking your site to the Webmaster
    Help Group as well.


63. Webmaster (Terence) :
    What are the benefits of submitting a sitemap if our site is already crawled
    well by Google? In other words, what are we missing out if we don't submit
    a sitemap?


64. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : By submitting
    a Sitemap we see which URLs have been added and changed. We can crawl those
    earlier than if we had to accidentally "stumble" upon them.


65. Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
    Lastly can we download this cat log?


66. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You should
    be able to use File - Save to save this log.


67. Webmaster (Rob) :
    Is there any major issue with using CMS, e.g. Joomla?


68. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If the CMS
    is compliant with the normal web standard it should be no problem. However,
    each tool is only as strong as the person using it -- all CMS can create great
    sites and they can create bad sites.


69. Google Expert 2 (MattD) : : Rob, from personal experience, CMS packages are great, though
    you will want to make sure you customize the templates and page titles so
    your snippets are unique.


70. Webmaster (Phil Peterman) :
    I was hoping y'all would address the use of display:none and some basic guidelines
    for it's use


71. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : As long as
    the use of display:none is not abused to selectively hide content from site
    visitors while at the same time showing it to search engine crawlers, it should
    fine to use this.


72. Webmaster (Gijs Nelissen) :
    are you recording this conference for later reference ? i missed some of the
    advice on my website (digitalbase.eu).


73. Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : Hi Gijs, we
    weren't able to record the audio, unfortunately, but I believe at least one
    blogger was doing a transcript :) ( Ofcourse we did :-) )


74. Webmaster (Jonatas Leonel) :
    So, how google see websites what receive a lot of good links, by natural way
    but use rel="nofollow" in all of its external links?


75. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Jonatas,
    could you clarify? Good Site A links to Good Site B, and Good Site B has rel="nofollow"
    links?


76. Webmaster (Ian M) :
    Will Google provide audio and text of this chat after?


77. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : We'll do our
    best to put this content online, though I'm not yet sure in what format.


78. Webmaster (Leslie Ding) :
    Regarding subdomains, I understand google can determine country codes from
    the URL, e.g. jp.mysite.com. What about japan.mysite.com?


79. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No those are
    not recognized automatically. You can however use Webmaster Tools to set geotargeting
    for it.


80. Webmaster (Hasit Ruparel) :
    Thanks for the reply John, do you know which is the BEST place to post any
    problem?


81. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : https://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/topics?start=
    is where the official Webmaster Help group is located.


82. Webmaster (Raffi) :
    John, I work for a site where I think a competitor is trying to buy links
    "for us" to try and get your google bomb algo to kick in...what
    can I do about this?


83. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That's generally
    no problem as we always look at the bigger picture and try to assess the intent.


84. Webmaster (John) :
    One or two panelist mentioned they were part of the google health team, but
    I did not catch their names?


85. Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : Hi John, nope,
    sorry, we must not have spoken clearly... -- we're all in Search Quality,
    not Health


86. Webmaster (ParksC) :
    With regards to the paid links question above about asking for inclusion,
    would it be the same to nofollow the paid links instead of just having them
    removed?


87. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, if you
    had paid links and added rel=nofollow to them, you can explain that in your
    reconsideration request.


88. Webmaster (Nancy) :
    Yes, I've been trying for 2 years to get a listing, but there is no editor
    for my category... so things have been slow. I guess I thought that Google
    might be a bit quicker in adding entries. That said, I've had good luck in
    getting my site listed.


89. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : It sounds
    like you're talking about Google Directory, which our team doesn't really
    work with. If you're referring to Google search results, there isn't an "editor"
    process to get in. Check out our Webmaster Guidelines for help getting into
    search results.


90. Webmaster (Terence) :
    We have a regional sudomain, canada.domain.com (we don't have domain.ca).
    We set the geo location to Canada in Google Webmaster Tools a few weeks ago,
    but site is still not indexed as a Canadian site. How long does it take? Any
    other steps we should take?


91. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : This can take
    some time to take affect. If the setting is set, you should be fine in the
    long run.


92. Webmaster (Terence) :
    Does Google rank "static" URLs better than dynamic URLs? Ex. /q-digital-camera.html
    vs /search?q=digital+camera


93. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There's no
    preference.


94. Webmaster (paavan) :
    When can available option pay per call in India


95. Google Expert (ramya) : : You can post
    your question with respect to Pay per call on http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-help,they
    should be able to help you better


96. Webmaster (Jeremy Rivera) :
    Will Universal Image search results REPLACE links to sites? I.e. Instead of
    10 sites plus images, will we see 1 image, 1 video and 8 sites?


97. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : We're constantly
    testing what works well in our search results, including whether differently
    types of universal results are "additive" or will replace one of
    the 10 web results. For now I'd say, stay tuned. :)


98. Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
    Is there any process for confirming a TBPR penalty? Working with authority
    site which recently went PR7 -> PR3


99. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you know
    that the site did not comply with the webmaster guidelines, you can clean
    that up and file a reconsideration request.


100. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     I don't know where I can ask my question if I may even - down here or up there
     or nowhere ?


101. Google expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Down here!


102. Webmaster (paavan) :
     thanks


103. Google Expert (ramya) : : Thanks for
     the question Paavan :)


104. Webmaster (jtbandes) :
     How about <meta name="keywords">? Worth it? Or just let the
     search engines get it from the content?


105. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We do not
     read the keywords meta tag -- but if you want to use it for yourself, feel
     free to keep them.


106. Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
     One of my sites was severely penalized in Google though it respects all the
     guidelines. I filed a reconsideration request and it was quicklrestored though
     I didn't change anything at my end. The problem has happened thrice in 3 months..
     Can I prevent this ?


107. Google Expert (MattD) : : Amit, reconsideration
     requests are the right path. You may want to set up a Webmaster Tools account
     to check the message center if you haven't already.


108. Webmaster (Tom Smith) :
     Our site is CSS based, content pages are hierarchy based, using 2 <h1>
     tags, 2 <h2> tags and then <h3> tags for additional content sections
     to organize content sections. Will we be penalized using this approach?


109. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That's a great
     way to provide context to your content. Keep it up!


110. Webmaster (Andrew Delamarter) :
     Is it possible sap.com is being penalized on Google.com by the geo-relevancy
     component due to the site being hosted on servers in germany, japan, and the
     US? Load balancing determines which data center handles the session.


111. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : By setting
     the geotargeting in webmaster tools the server location will be less of an
     impact. We understand the need for load sharing across locations.


112. Webmaster (ali merchant ) :
     Concerned about div tags. Any harm if they are used as a space saving technique
     and used completely legitmately


113. Google Expert (MattD) : : ali, There
     should be no harm in extra div tags if they are being used legitimately. Let
     me know if this doesn't answer the question.


114. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     OK here goes. This site melinas-music.com - starts out with an optional flash
     splash page which redirects (in flash) to the proper homepage which with js
     on is a /home/. With js off you dont' get the splash flash and the page displayed
     at the root url


115. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That should
     not be a problem :-).


116. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     is the same as would be at /hom/ which is not accessible except though js.


117. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If users can
     link to it, they probably will sooner or later. In general it's no problem
     if it's just a duplicate.


118. Webmaster (Christi) :
     Should we use alt and title tags, or just alt tags, on images?


119. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You can use
     both, since the title tag is shown as a tool tip in Firefox, but the alt text
     is more of a replacement for the image -- they're two different things, which
     can be used at the same time.


120. Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
     John can you confirm that www.websitehostdirectory.com has been hit with a
     paid link penalty? So I can remove them and do a re-inclusion?


121. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi Jaan, we
     can't discuss individual sites here, but you may try the experts in the Google
     Webmaster Help groups.


122. Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
     What about the image enhancement function in Google Webmaster Tools, how does
     this help?


123. Google Expert (MattD) : : Maile is answering
     you right now. No automatic boost, but a program to help us understand images
     better. :)


124. Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
     For top menus displayed on all pages, we load the CSS menu at the end of the
     page in a hidden div and set to the proper div after loading for help search
     engines not see the common content first. Is this OK ?


125. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That's fine,
     if it works for the users and if the content shown / hidden is not misleading
     to search engines.


126. Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
     where do I access webmaster help groups


127. Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : These are
     linked from www.google.com/webmasters


128. Webmaster (Allison Kulage):
     Should you only submit for re-inclusion if your site has been completely banned
     from the index? or can you submit if you've seen a huge drop in rankings but
     you're still in the index? What if only a few pages got dropped?


129. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : You can request
     reconsideration at any time, if you've seen a sudden and significant change
     in your site's performance.


130. Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
     Does using an image caching/delivery network, like Akamaii, where the host
     domain of the image is different than the web page, a problem for Google image
     search?


131. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : The host domain
     does not have to be the same as the web page - it'll still be indexed in the
     context of the web page.


132. Webmaster (Korpis, LLC) :
     Does google better understand a page if the url contains the major keywords
     the page is about?


133. Google Expert (Evan) : : If the subject
     of the page is already adequately covered, then search engines will understand.
     Having the keywords in the URL will help your users understand what to expect
     on the page.


134. Webmaster (Leslie Ding) :
     I noticed that in Google News, the thumbnail is from a different site to the
     news content. How does Google determine what image thumbnail is paired with
     a google news entry?


135. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Google News
     has a completely different setup than normal web search. The help center has
     more information on Google news and News Sitemap files.


136. Webmaster (Mark) :
     Our site has a number of categories and within each category products are
     shown 9 thumbnails at a time. It seems that our category names come up great
     in the search results, but products below the first nine in a category do
     not appear well.


137. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : I've seen
     similar situations as this where the problem turned out to be how the product
     pages were linked using a Javascript method instead of a standard HREF link.
     Another thing to consider is if the product pages have unique content..check
     web for dups


138. Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
     I mean, we load menus at end of page, move to top of page via script. Is this
     OK ?


139. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Should be
     ok, if it's not misleading.


140. Webmaster (Charlie) :
     Should I rather have HTML drop downs to all the 50 categories on my website,
     or should i rather have the top 5 category links on my front page


141. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : I'd recommend
     thinking about it from a user perspective. If you were a new visitor to your
     site, which method of organization would be easier for you to use?


142. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     the page at /home/ is kept out of the index


143. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : that should
     be ok.


144. Webmaster (Brian Harnish) :
     Does Google have plans to include programming algorithms that provide higher
     results for W3C standards-compliant sites as well as great content?


145. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If your site
     has compliant code then that could increase your number of happy visitors
     -- which could in turn help your site across the board.


146. Webmaster (Gijs Nelissen) :
     are we able to listen to a recording of this conference ?


147. Google Expert (Evan) : : Unfortunately
     we do not have an audio recording of this chat. There should be some people
     blogging about it ;).


148. Webmaster (ali merchant) :
     can subdomains increase my visibility


149. Google Expert (MattD): : ali, pages
     on subdomains should not increase visibility any more than pages on subdirectories.
     It's more of an organization (and sometimes navigation) preference.


150. Webmaster (Felipe Miyata) :
     does a noindex, follow page pass pagerank?


151. Google Expert (Evan) : : Noindex pages
     accrue Google PR, and can pass Google PR - even though as a page in its own
     right, it does not exist in the SERP's
     
     - a good use for this would be pages such as sitemaps that you don't want
     to appear in the SERP's, but that you want to accrue


152. Webmaster (Allison Kulage) :
     If there's a paid links penalty, what's to stop my competition from buying
     paid links to get my site penalized? And, many of the top rankings sites for
     a client of mine are breaking all the paid link rules. How are they ranking
     and my site isn't?


153. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you feel
     that a different site is buying / selling links, you can report that in WEbmaster
     Tools. This helps us fine-tune our algorithms. In the end, we will take a
     look at the broader picture.


154. Webmaster (Terence) :
     We have a very large site with tons of dynamically created pages (like user
     generated content). We notice that Googlebot's crawl rate fluctuates a lot.
     Any tips on increasing Googlebot's crawl rate? Crawl rate is already set to
     Fast in Webmaster Tools


155. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : One thing
     I'd recommend is to try to limit any duplicate URLs on your site. E.g. if
     we're crawling the same content under more than one URL, we're "wasting"
     some of our bandwidth on that when we could instead be crawling new and unique
     content on your site


156. Webmaster (Andrew Shell) :
     Is there an difference in indexation for http vs https pages?


157. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No - both
     are fine.


158. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     i have been scrambling my brains to find a better way to transition without
     visible query string parameters


159. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : You might
     want to consider using hidden HTML input fields


160. Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
     Follow-up. We haven't made a full analysis, but we want to confirm the penalty
     first. No lnown contravention od TOS, but initial thoughts are that some external
     linking may have been viewed as paid while they are not.


161. Google Expert (MattD) : : Richard,
     doesn't look like we have time to do any more individual site analyses, but
     if you suspect a penalty, I'd recommend submitting a reconsideration request
     or visiting our Webmsater Help Group.


162. Webmaster (Charlie) :
     Should I rather have HTML drop downs to all the 50 categories on my website,
     or should i rather have the top 5 category links on my front page


163. Google Expert (John Mueller): : I would try
     to limit the number of links to less than 100 per page -- if you can make
     50 links more usable to your user than 5, it can be good for your site in
     general.


164. Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
     Do domains (with a 7 year history but has been redirected for 2 years) keep
     bad neighborhood links and ip penalties when they switch owners?


165. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you buy
     a domain which you suspect has a bad history, you can file a reconsideration
     request detailing the new ownership.


166. Webmaster (Aaron Chronister) :
     Site penalized, not ranking for company name. Buying links I was the only
     thing I did b/c everyone else was. Not anymore. How do I fix??


167. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you can
     get those links removed or if you can add a rel=nofollow to them that would
     be a good idea. Once you have cleaned up as much as possible, filing a reconsideration
     request would be a good next step.


168. Webmaster (Anderson):
     Site A has a link with nofollow to site B, will google visit site B by this
     link?


169. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : No, but keep
     in mind there may be other links out there pointing to site B


170. Webmaster (Mark) :
     If multiple keywords are used in a url is it better to separate with an underscore,
     dash or does it matter?


171. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It doesn't
     really matter.


172. Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
     Thanks MattD - I have a Webmaster account and I use that for sending reconsideration
     request. I am worried because the site gets penalized too frequently (once
     per month) - There are no warnings or messages in the Webmaster Message center.


173. Google Expert (MattD) : : Amit, since
     we're getting toward the end, I'd recommend taking your site to the Webmaster
     Help Group. The community there is awesome. It seems like this may just be
     normal algorithmic fluctuations as opposed to penalties.


174. Webmaster (Swaroop) :
     Can you tell us about the pro's & con's if we use the shortened URL's
     using TinyUrl or some other similar service.?


175. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Shortened
     URLs are often not as descriptive, which might make it harder for users to
     recognize the content that is behind them. For us it's generally not a problem,
     as long as the content is available normally.


176. Webmaster (Jacob Weiss) :
     I wouldn't feel comfortable posting my url in a public chatroom so all my
     competitors can see the issues we have, is there a way to disguise the url
     so only Gogglers can see it?


177. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : You can send
     me the question directly...:)


178. Webmaster (Nagaraju) :
     what is the typical google index rate for urls in sitemap. If I introduce
     about 30000 new urls today, when can I reasonably expect those to be indexed
     ( assuming I'm at medium crawl rate and the site performance is good)


179. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There's no
     guarantee for crawling and indexing of Sitemap URLs. There are many factors
     that play a role in that.


180. Webmaster (erik) :
     when is google going to get better at finding good videos that are not in
     youtube


181. Google Expert (Evan) : : Google is
     constantly working on improving search.


182. Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
     webtrain.com/solutions-business-meetings.asp - it uses the move approach to
     help SEO focus on the unique content.


183. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi Gary,
     we can't comment on individual sites here, but you can post about it in the
     groups.


184. Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
     also, we compete against webex - wish you could use us


185. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Send us your
     info! We're open to looking into WebEx alternatives.


186. Webmaster (John Jones) :
     Question on links: Many competitors in the real estate industry by far out
     rank some of my clients because they've been around for years and have hundreds
     or thousands of agent to agent links. Any chance of flushing Google's aged
     in bound links?


187. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Even giant
     sites can be suppassed by creative webmasters!


188. Webmaster (jordans) :
     Are there any detriments to 'hot-linking' videos on youtube?


189. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, that's
     fine.


190. Webmaster (Nelu Lazar) :
     If I provide good keyworks within Title and Description tags, will I need
     additional Keywords tag in meta information?


191. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): : First and
     foremost you should make sure that the relevant words are included in your
     site's content. Title and meta tags can supplement that, but they're not a
     replacement for highly relevant content.


192. Webmaster (webado) :
     The page uses at /hopme/ "noindex,follow" whereas the regular homepage
     has no block


193. Google Expert (John Mueller): : That's a
     great way to control the indexing of it.


194. Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
     My suggestion to Google is to detail issues in webmaster tools, especially
     if there's a site problem, or penalty. we have to guess. You could save millions
     of hours of effort.


195. Google Expert (John Mueller): : We are considering
     & working on that, thanks!


196. Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
     @Susan - I cant see you in the participants list?


197. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): : I'm in the
     'Panelists' section Ha, I can't type :)


198. Webmaster (Ian M) :
     What meta data so we use for geolocation, and what tags do you not use?


199. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We don't
     use meta tags for geolocation -- you can use the Webmaster Tools settings
     though.


200. Webmaster (Mark) :
     Our products can be accessed by different url's (e.g. ex.com/catalog.asp?P=1234
     or ex.com/catalog/keyword.asp). Is that considered duplicate content?


201. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Mark,
     as far as SERPs go, Google will show the most appropriate URL of the two to
     the user if they're they same.


202. Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
     If we have two websites one .ca and one .com, how would Google.com or Google.ca
     handle these?


203. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Google can
     use that information to determine which one would be most relevant to the
     users (especially those in Canada who use "sites in this country"
     as a search setting).


204. Webmaster (gaurav doshi) :
     now u can see the vide?


205. Google Expert (Evan) : : We have turned
     off the cam chat. The audio is still on though.


206. Webmaster (Amy Balliett) :
     What is your take on image replacement?


207. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It's great!
     But you need to make sure that it's a correct replacement (do not replace
     lots of keywords with a simple image). Also, those images are usually not
     indexed with image search.


208. Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
     how does Google deal with syndicated articles or duplicated content. How do
     the original content providers get the original value?


209. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If content
     is syndicated, you might want to make sure that you have a link back to your
     site (if your site is the original).


210. Webmaster (Swaroop) :
     How about getting us first into the next round of really secret beta invites
     list ?


211. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : How did you
     find out about the "really secret beta invites list? [:)


212. Webmaster (Mark) :
     Thanks Evan. So it's ok to have two url's to the same page?


213. Google Expert (Evan) : :As long as
     they follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, everything is up to you :)


214. Webmaster (Charlie) :
     There are many high-quality sites that use image replacement techniques (such
     as Fahrner image replacement) to provide a better user experience. If you're
     using this technique in a legitimate way to benefit your users, you shouldn't
     have problems.


215. Google Expert (John Mueller): : That's correct.


216. Webmaster (Doug) :
     Susan how long does it usually take to get a post to show in the webmaster
     google group


217. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : It should
     show up almost immediately, but sometimes Google Groups has problems that
     delay posts. Check their "alerts and updates" section here to see
     if they're having problems: https://www.google.com/support/groups/


218. Webmaster (David Gomel) :
     Are we safe with 302ing paid links?


219. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : if you have
     paid links, you need to make sure that they do not pass pagerank. If you can
     redirect them, make sure that the redirecting URL cannot be indexed (blocked
     with a robots.txt).


220. Webmaster (ParksC) :
     Just wanted to point out while I laugh that I am a HE and not a she, ha ha.


221. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi!


222. Webmaster (ali merchant) :
     Matt, if a site is hosted internationally, its preferred to use a top level
     domain extension such as .co.uk, however wont that affect traffic within the
     US though.


223. Google Expert (MattD) : : ali, Ah,
     I see. If you have a country-specific TLD, you are inherently already targeting
     a region. If you have a generic TLD, you can use the geolocation feature in
     Webmaster Tools to specify either a subdomain or subdirectory as targeted
     to a country.


224. Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
     I have seen aggregators like megite.com, social sites like Digg and even splogs
     rank above in Google than the actual webpage. Can we prevent this ?


225. Google Expert (Reid) : : Hi Amit -
     if you see a splog rank above the actual webpage that owns the original content,
     feel free to file a spam report to let Google know: https://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html


226. Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
     how often do take action on paid text link (or spam reports) reports in google
     webmaster tools


227. Google Expert (Mariya) : : Alan, be
     assured that all spam reports which are submitted are reviewed.


228. Webmaster (Bob Shirilla) :
     Please provide opinion on Hackersafe and Authorize.net, Should a retail store
     use these services?


229. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : if those
     services provide value to your visitors without breaking any of our webmaster
     guidelines, then that can be a good thing for your site.


230. Webmaster (ali merchant) :
     any pros cons around using h1 tags. I like to add them from a usability perspective
     (for instance on a product detail page)


231. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you can
     provide context to your content by using headers, by all means use them.


232. Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
     where do I access webmaster help groups


233. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : https://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/topics?start=


234. Webmaster (ParksC) :
     My site dropped out of the rankings for any term with a date in it (2009 widgets)
     but didn't lose any ground for main non-dated keywords. A lot of our title
     tags have dates in them, could this be an over-optimization penalty?


235. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There are
     many factors involved in ranking -- for details, you may want to ask the experts
     in the Webmaster Help groups.


236. Webmaster (Dictina) :
     I want to make some case conversion of my URLs in order to have all them in
     minor case and avoid duplicates, , but I am afraid of overloading the server
     with 301 redirection. Any idea to make efficient redirects?


237. Google Expert (John Mueller): : In general
     even a large number of 301 redirects will not be a problem in the long run.
     One way you can help that is by using a Sitemap file.


238. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     I think it does. All it is js on, you get splash and redirect to /hom/; js
     off you stay on root but see what would have been at /home/


239. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you have
     cleaned up the links to your site as much as possible, make sure that you
     detail what you did and file a reconsideration request. However, make sure
     that all of your site complies with all of the guidelines beforehand.


240. Webmaster (Doug) :
     What would be the process if you feel google thinks you have paid links but
     you do not


241. Google Expert (Wysz) : : If you feel
     that your site may have been detected as being in violation of the Webmaster
     Guidelines and it is not (or is no longer), then submitting a reconsideration
     request in Webmaster Tools is the way to go.


242. Webmaster (ParksC) :
     again with asking for inclusion, would you need to wait until Google has recrawled
     any/all sites you have had paid links changed on before asking? And how long
     would you expect to wait to see results from asking for inclusion?


243. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you have
     cleaned up the links to your site as much as possible, make sure that you
     detail what you did and file a reconsideration request. However, make sure
     that all of your site complies with all of the guidelines beforehand.


244. Webmaster (Amy Balliett) :
     I have reported a competitor for spam multiple times (they use CSS to push
     about 50 repeated keywords off the screen on load). I've seen nothing happen
     as a result of my spam report, is there a better way to report this?


245. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : The spam
     report is the best way to do this. FYI we do take all spam reports into account,
     but we don't take immediate manual action on all of them (we use many of them
     to improve our algorithms in the long term), so you may not see immediate
     changes.


246. Webmaster (Gabe) :
     It sounds like you are big on blogs. How would you rank the blog software
     out there (wordpress, blogge, etc.) in terms of which has the most SEO friendly
     coding so that we can best succeed in search results?


247. Google Expert (MattD) : : Hey Gabe,
     covering this over voice right now.


248. Webmaster (Jacque) :
     Could you go into more detailed of the links? what does "float"
     PR mean?


249. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : I'm not aware
     of "float" PR.


250. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     I guess the usual "an image is with 1000 words" doesn't quite apply
     ;)


251. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Only if you
     do not use keyword stuffing in your alt tags.


252. Webmaster (Eric) :
     can you explain rel=nofollow tags on links? When and where should we use these
     tags?


253. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : If you want
     to link to a site that you either don't trust or can't vouch for use rel nofollow.
     For user generated content like the comments section of a blog, user added
     URLs can be auto nofollowed if you don't have time to monitor these Links


254. Webmaster (David Gomel) :
     So in certain cases, 302s could be passing PR?


255. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You should
     make sure that the redirecting URLs cannot be crawled, then you should be
     ok.


256. Webmaster (Phil Peterman) :
     Thank you Jonathan, I ask because we are doing a redseign now and are using
     it in our navs rather heavily


257. Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : sure np


258. Webmaster (Manish) :
     Are .com domains better placed in SERPs than say .in domains ?


259. Google Expert (Mariya) : : Manish, the
     .com domain is a generic top-level domain, while .in is a country-specific
     domain. While they could appear mixed in the serps, the .in domains would
     be naturally better targeted for India-specific local queries


260. Webmaster (Manish) :
     Does the country where your .in domain is hosted makes any difference in SERPs


261. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Manish,
     this may affect different geographical google domains, such as google.co.uk
     or google.com. I would suggest using WM Tools to set geolocation preferences.


262. Webmaster (Doug) :
     Spam reports are good but i think that some type of reputation should be given
     to them based on how man someone does maybe


263. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you file
     spam reports, make sure that you do that from within your webmaster Tools
     account. Those reports are treated with higher priority.


264. Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
     Can you say that PR Sculpting is important for most all websites to use?


265. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Personally
     I think that the majority of sites would benefit more from spending their
     time and energy on other things (making sure the site's content is accessible,
     unique and compelling, promoting their site, building community, etc.).


266. Webmaster (webado - Christina) :
     Evan, the geolocation preference only works for generic tld's, isn't that
     true? If your tld is already a country tld then that's the geolocaiton already


267. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : True.


268. Webmaster (Doug) :
     What if a link is not paid but google thinks its paid and treats it like one.


269. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We take a
     look at the bigger picture.


270. Webmaster (Mark) :
     We recently added a favicon to our site. When I view source it appears above
     the <title> tag. Will that affect our rankings since the title and meta
     description are further from the <head> tag?


271. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No


272. Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
     Thanks. It was strange that after years of pagerank of 7 or so, to have it
     drop off to 0, but since traffic was unaffected we didn't completely freak
     out. ;)


273. Google Expert (Evan) : : Awesome,
     its always best not to freak out. We have a great blog post about housekeeping
     items at https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/good-housekeeping.html


274. Webmaster (John Jones) :
     Is it better to clean up / remove / update in bound links even if those links
     probably don't pass ANY value?


275. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If those
     links cannot pass any value then you should be fine. However, you should also
     make sure that there are not other items which are problematic with your linking.


276. Webmaster (Manish) :
     How can I know which page on my site is leaking PR. Some of my blogs are penalized
     for paid links. I have nofollowed or roboted out whatever I could find. I have
     requested reconsideration requests too. but still no PR.


277. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There's generally
     no need to worry about "leaking PR".


278. Webmaster (Ian M) :
     Seeing as you're going to look through this Q&A - can you please go over
     (ina post) about which meta language data you will look at, specifically which
     out of these: html lang=, meta name=language, meta http-equiv=content-language


279. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We do not
     look at the language meta tags -- we've discovered that they are often incorrect
     and that it is better to recognize the language through the content.


280. Webmaster (Rob) :
     Is subdomain considered a "separate" domain that will come up in
     search results as "competing" with the main domain?


281. Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Rob, there
     is usually some level of connection among subdomains and root domains.


282. Webmaster (John Jones) :
     @ John Mueller: biggest indicator that a link isn't passing value would be
     what in your opinion? If Webmaster Tools knows of the link wouldn't that go
     to say that it is passing something?


283. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : To prevent
     passing of pagerank from a link you can apply a rel=nofollow or make sure
     that they redirect through URLs which cannot be crawled.


284. Webmaster (webado) :
     so ya mean I've been wasting my time setting the language properly? lol


285. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, it shows
     that you take your content seriously, which is probably reflected in the rest
     of your content!


286. Webmaster (John Jones) :
     @ John Mueller: biggest indicator that a link isn't passing value would be
     what in your opinion? If Webmaster Tools knows of the link wouldn't that go
     to say that it is passing something?


287. Google Expert (John Mueller): : To prevent
     passing of pagerank from a link you can apply a rel=nofollow or make sure
     that they redirect through URLs which cannot be crawled.


288. Webmaster (webado):
     so ya mean I've been wasting my time setting the language properly? lol


289. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, it shows
     that you take your content seriously, which is probably reflected in the rest
     of your content! a


290. Webmaster (Doug) :
     Is it better to have a site with a different tld for different languages or
     to point someone to a language based on their IP a


291. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : both can
     work, or you can use a geeric tld and use webmaster tools to assign geotargeting.


292. Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): Again: I'd
     recommend always allowing the user to make a choice about what language to
     see; some people may prefer a different language than you would automatically
     assign to them based on their IP.


293. Webmaster (dockarl) :
     You said that words in the url are good for users Adam, but what about for
     search engines?


294. Google Expert (MattD) : : dockarl,
     I'll try to cover this while Adam talks. :) If you think about this in the
     same way as images, a descriptive file name can be more helpful than a non-descriptive
     filename for users and search engines.


295. Webmaster (John Jones) :
     would including the img url in the site map help?


296. Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, but
     it will not pass as much context for image search as an image that is embedded
     in a HTML page.


297. Webmaster (Dictina) :
     Tags vs categories navigation or pagination: which is best? which should <I
     nofollow?


298. Google Expert (Evan) : : It is up
     to you how you want to have users navigate your pages, both can work well.
     I would suggest using nofollow on links that you do not want to pass PageRank
     (links that are unrelated to your website, etc)


299. Webmaster:
     How would you rate the importance of <title> tags?


300. Google Expert: : Title tags
     are important for users to understand what to expect on your website. Google
     will serve your title tag in the results page, and you want your users to
     have a clear understanding of where they are going.


301. Webmaster:
     Wanting to serve mobile content at mobile.example.com using the same db and
     some of the same content on the main site. How do I get ranked on mobile devices
     and still avoid duplicate content filters on the mobile content?


302. Google Expert: : That should
     be fine -- don't forget mobile sitemaps
     
     
     
     Document Prepared by Search Engine
     Genie Team
     
     
     References: https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/join-us-for-online-live-chat-this.html

Google's search quality and webmaster central team did a great Job today by doing a live chat session first of its kind by a Search Engine Company. It was a grand success and we at Search Engine Genie participated and we were able to record the whole audio conversation / presentation session, record the Question and Answer Log and a complete chat long between Google's Search quality team and 200 plus users.
We will be posting one by one in our blog Audio transcripts will take 2 to 3 days to get ready. We will be posting the test based Q and A session initially which is a very useful conversation between Google and webmasters. Next post will be a complete chat log and finally we will be posting full transcripts.



Google's Panelists

Adam Lasik
Evan
Jessica
John Mueller
Jonathan Simon
Liza
Maile Oye
Mariya
Matt Cutts
MattD
Ramya
Ried
Susan
Wynz
Look forward to it I am sure everyone here will like it,,
Search Engine Genie Support Team,

More SEO spam emails we received offering SEO services,

HI We are a fast growing INDIA based company. We provide complete Natural Link Building Solution in professional Internet Marketing Services. We have a dedicated team of professionals to serve you in Link buildingand SEO. Our Link Builders who specialize in getting theme based targeted links for Client's website. We provide you the reciprocal and one way link building with following essential conditions: 1.We ensure that the page where the webmaster has added our link is indexed by Google/Yahoo/MSN.2. We ensure the committed No of links on that particular link page.



3. We ensure that the sites must be related to the theme of the campaign what we are working for.4. We ensure the webmaster is provided proper anchor text (Title)/Description to place our link at his/her sites5.We ensure that no webmaster receives a repeated Link Request Mail forthe same campaign. We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality links for your site as well. We wish you the best of luck and looking forward to a long business relationship with you and your company. we provide a quality work in Link Building and search engine optimization.also we are handling web site work,we are working in, PHP, ASP.Net(web application),we have a experienced team in development. if u want to increase the popularity and also want to be in top twenty in search engine.. Kind Regards, tanya Dear Sir, We are one of the Largest Link Building Companies in India. We can build>> Thematic Links>> Mix of PR 1-5>> All Google Cached Links>> Unique IP Address At an affordable price for bulk orders. Our team members visit sites manually, check their themes and PR (page rank) and then contact their webmasters individually. We check for the neighborhoods and SE cache for link page indexing.



Since 2003, we've been performing link building campaigns for site on different theme's with a balanced emphasis on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. We have a track record of building more than 45000 links in the year 2006 and have successfully completed more than 300 campaigns both one way and reciprocal. We are ISO certified, SEMPO registered and work as a backend outsourcing suppliers to a variety of online and digital agencies in US/UK. We will be happy to know if you outsource some part or entire Link Building client campaigns or are willing to look at such an opportunity. We have our internal systems geared up for such an association and should you be interested kindly drop me a quick mail and I will revert.Also if you want, we can set up a call to explore mutual synergies. I thank you for taking time to read this mail and assure you that this mail will not be resent. I look forward to your response. Best Regards, Rajeev Online Marketing Manager

Search engine optimization related spam emails we recieve

Dear Manager, Hope you are doing great! The purpose of this letter is to introduce you to CAT Technology Inc and our Offshore Development services. We are the leading Offshore Development service company in INDIA. We align ourselves with our customers as partners to assist them in achieving their goals and objectives. We would be delighted to demonstrate our offshore Development services to you.



Please let me know if you have any software Development work to Outsource? Dedicated Staff:When you set up an offshore development center with CAT, you get the following: All hardware, software licensing and office infrastructure already in place A dedicated team of professionals who will learn your business and become a part of your team. Seamless collaboration between offshore office and client project staff through live chat / email / voice / video .U.S. based contact point to manage all issues throughout the relationship and insure success of all projects. All staff assigned to your team will report directly to you or your project manager and follow your directives and timelines. Project Based:Are you looking for professionals to help you build your projects? If so, consider CAT as your world class partner. We will work closely with you to understand your project's requirements, deadlines, technologies and needs to determine the best team to make your project a success. Also, you can decide whether you plan to manage the project internally and utilize our development and testing resources, or prefer to have one of our project managers lead the team. Maintenance Projects:Just because your project is complete does not mean you don't need professional technical support for your existing applications.



Our staff are available to you on a dedicated basis to review your existing applications and provide you the support and technical updates that are needed to maintain the competitiveness of your applications. If you are a new customer to CAT, ask us about our maintenance plans that enable you to take care of your application beyond the major development phase. Maintenance Services are available to your regardless where you had your application developed. Out Team size in INDIA:.Net/C# Developers: 90 MembersDelphi Programmers: 18 MembersJSP/ Java Programmers: 45 MembersPHP Programmers: 30 MembersWeb developers: 50 MembersSystem/Network Administrators (MCSE) (CCNA) (CCNP):30 Members Visit us at--- catamerica.com View our development office in INDIA :You can view our development office in INDIA through this camera.Camera Server URL: 203.197.241.56 Login: catPassword: techno Wide range of .Net Services we provide:1. Application Development using .NET2. Designing and Programming using .NET3. Migration web based and other applications to .NET4. Porting of Legacy applications to .NET based applications5. Support and Enhancement of existing applications in .NET6. User needs assessment / functional spec writing7. Website architecture design8. User Interface design9. Graphic artwork development with Photoshop & ImageReady10. Database design11. Stored procedure development12. OO Design and development of middle tier objects13. ASP.Net development with C# or VB.Net14. .Net desktop application development15. JavaScript development & cross browser issues16. Ajax/Atlas Development17. IIS setup & security issues18. Website hosting19. E-Commerce development20. Conversion of legacy system data21. Web Marketing / Search Engine Optimization / SEM22. Software Testing & QA23. Web based report development24. Adobe PDF file generation25. Integration with existing systems Wide range of PHP Services we provide:1. PHP Programming2. Database development (php/mysql,)3. MYSQL PHP Programming, script installing, modification, and PHP Script repairs.4. Custom web site design/redesign and development5. Custom PHP and MYSQL web programming6. PHP shopping cart7. PHP forum8. PHP content management system Wide range of Network Support / System Administration Services we provide:1. Onsite server support (upgrades, security patches, migrations) 2. Remote management and administration 3. Configure and maintain Windows 2000, 2003 servers and services (Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, IIS, RAS, NAT, VPN )4. Install, configure and Maintain Microsoft ISA 2004 server5. Installing & Administrating, Managing of Domain Controllers.6. Installing, Configuring & Administering the following7. Microsoft Exchange Servers8. Securing your Linux Server with Firewall / Troubleshooting your Linux System9. Server installation and configuration 10. Security analysis and policy development 11. Firewall firmware upgrades/Firewall policy implementation and management 12. LAN Administration13. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers (MCSE)14. Cisco Certified Network Associate ( CCNA ) ( CCNP)15. Network Installation16. Network Management 17. Network Security and quality monitoring 18. Network Maintenance19. Security Firewalls Wide range of Java Services we provide:1. Web Application Development in Java 2. Systems Programming in C, C++, VC++, C-Sharp (C#) and Java 3. Web Hosting services in JSP and Servlets 4. Web application maintenance like bug fixing and adding new features 5. Life cycle testing for web based application and client server products 6. J2EE Design Patterns 7. Design and development of applications on J2EE compliant framework 8. Projects related to Java CORBA and Java XML Wide range of Web Development Services we provide:We have designed websites of various styles, sizes and purposes. We have a team of 50 Web designers and Developers in our office in INDIA.1. Custom Website Design2. Template Website Design 3. Custom E-commerce Design 4. Website Re-Design 5. Macromedia Flash Design6. Graphic Design Wide range of Delphi Services we provide:1. Delphi application re-engineering2. Delphi application development 3. Delphi .net development4. Delphi 7 development5. Delphi 2006 development6. Delphi 6 development 7. Delphi application maintenance 8. Delphi 5 development Our reputation for service is second to none, and our entire staff stands ready to work with you and your staff in any way we can be of assistance. Eagerly looking for your update…

We receive a lot of spam emails we want to post some of them here,

Here is one

"Dear We are a fast growing INDIA based company.We provide complete Natural Link Building Solution in professional Internet Marketing Services. We have a dedicated team of professionals to serve you in Link buildingand SEO. Our Link Builders who specialize in getting theme based targeted links for Client's website.



We provide you the reciprocal and one way link building with following essential conditions: 1.We ensure that the page where the webmaster has added our link is indexed by Google/Yahoo/MSN.2.We ensure the committed No of links on that particular link page. 3.We ensure that the sites must be related to the theme of the campaign what we are working for.4.We ensure the webmaster to use the proper anchor text(Title)/description provided.to him to place our link at his/her sites5.We ensure that no webmaster receives a repeated Link Request Mail forthe same campaign. We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality links for your site as well. We wish you the best of luck and looking forward to a long business relationship with you and your company. we provide a quality work in Link Building and search engine optimization also we are handling web site work, we are working in, PHP, ASP.Net(web application),we have a experienced team in development. if u want to increase the popularity and also want to be in top twenty in search engine.. Kind Regards neha sangal"

There has been enough discussion about this yet people keep asking. Yes TLD matters you have a .co.uk domain and want to rank in google its gonna be a very difficult job there are sites which are doing it but its very rare and extremely difficult.



other factors that affect global keyword rankings are



1. Hosting: If you site is hosted some where in the european union or Uk and you want to target US customers then you need to move your website to a US hosting. Search engines have geotargeting and they can clearly figure out where your website is hosted.
2. Backlinks: its an other important factor if you have too many backlinks from other countries then it will be difficult to rank in UK results its very important to get backlinks from US sites to rank for US audience.

We will be participating today on GOogle's webmaster live chat. Our team has been asked to stay back and listen to the conversation happening , ask questions to experts like Adam Lasik etc about Search engine optimization and search engine marketing. We are excited and looking forward to this.

Google had been providing a robots.txt validator for a long time. Its a very effective tool since the verification is done right from google's month itself. What ever gets verified in Robots.txt validator is what Googlebot sees. That made robots.txt tool a very attractive tool and almost every webmaster who has validated their site in webmaster central has one point or the other used robots.txt validator to validate their website robots.txt.



I am sure everyone knows what robots.txt is its mostly placed to stop bad robots from entering a website , stealing your email IDs , scraping your website etc




Now google has a robots.txt generator where we can generate a valid Google accepted robots.txt file.

Google's webmaster central team is hosting the first webmaster live group chat. This is a great opportunity to throw your questions to the great google webmaster team



First-ever Google Webmaster Help Group Chat (beta :)Friday, March 28, 2008
Nickname: "Can You Picture That?"
Agenda*... 8:45 Doors open This is a great time to get logged in to the chat! 9:05 Welcome! Introductions, and how to get the most out of the event. 9:15 Site Clinic: Emphasis on good fundamentals We'll examine and give feedback on one of your sites. 9:40 Advanced topic: Images in search results Presented by our own Maile Ohye. 9:50 Additional Q&A time We guides will tackle your questions about images and other webmaster issues. 10:00 End Time to say goodbye.*All times listed are PDT. Start time is 16:00 GMT.
How to join us...
Check requirements You'll need the following:
A telephone that can receive calls directly (no extensions) or a phone that can call a U.S. toll-free number or one of these global call-in numbers.
A computer and browser meeting the requirements on this page .
Sign in and install the chat application
.
Sign in with your name and e-mail address. Neither we nor WebEx will contact you using this information. Your name, however, will show up in the chat room.
You'll be asked to install a small program from WebEx, which runs the chat software in your browser. It should take less than two minutes to install.
Join the call so you can hear us :)You have two choices: you can either have WebEx call you (the default) or call us (toll-free from most places).
Option 1 - Have WebEx call you: When the chat application loads, a window will pop up asking you to enter your phone number. A moment after you do so, WebEx will call you and ask you to press '1' to be connected, and then you'll be all set.
Option 2 - Call in: Hit cancel on the window asking for your phone number. Then dial 1-866-469-3239 from the U.S. and Canada or use one of the global call-in numbers and enter this meeting number when prompted: 573 630 075.
Listen and type You'll be able to...
Listen to us Guides speaking
Type to fellow Webmaster Help Group members
Type (webmaster-related) questions to us during and after the Site Clinic and Maile's presentation
If you have technical troubles during the event...In the Chat section of the application, type a note and we'll do our best to help you.



Global calling numbers"


Australia toll free
1800-093-897
Australia toll
61 (0) 2 8223 9525
Austria toll free
0800-295-240
Austria toll
43 (0) 179 576 053
Belgium toll free
0800-71083
Belgium toll
32 (0) 2700 1703
Brazil toll free
0800-891-1716
China - North toll free
10-800-712-1281
China - South toll free
10-800-120-1281
Denmark toll free
80-884912
Denmark toll
45 3832 2993
Finland toll free
0-800-1-12585
Finland toll
358 (0) 969379744
France toll free
0800-90-5571
France toll
33 (0) 171230434
Germany toll free
0800-101-6943
Germany toll
49 (0) 695007 3857
Greece toll free
00800-12-6759
Hong Kong toll free
800-90-3575
Hong Kong toll
852 3002 7806
Ireland toll free
1-800-882019
Ireland toll
353 (0) 12421854
Israel toll free
1-80-9214652
Italy toll free
800-780-632
Italy toll
39 026 968 2079
Japan toll free
00531-12-1688
Japan toll
81 (0) 335708258
Luxembourg toll
352 3420808135
Mexico toll free
001-866-622-9902
Netherlands toll free
0800-022-6826
Netherlands toll
31 (0) 202 01 5078
New Zealand toll free
0800-44-8147
New Zealand toll
64 (0) 99120651
Norway toll
47 23162956
Singapore toll free
800-120-4239
Singapore toll
65 64155103
Spain toll free
900-97-1417
Spain toll
34 914 53 3442
Sweden toll free
020-79-7251
Sweden toll
46 (0) 8587 69451
Switzerland toll free
0800-561-201
Switzerland toll
41 44(0) 800 9672
Taiwan toll free
00801-13-7644
Taiwan toll
886 (0) 221924554
UK toll free
0800-028-8023
UK toll
44 (0) 207 365 1860
South Korea toll free
00798-14-800-6581
South Korea toll
82 (0) 234831041
India - Bharti landline toll free
000800 440 1176
India - Tata landline toll free
000800 440 1099
India - Bharti mobile toll free
000800 440 1177
India - Tata mobile toll free
000800 440 1100
Luxembourg toll free
800-24981

Google's Engineers are constantly researching to bring the best user experience for their search engine users.
According to official Google blog
"One of the most important uses of data at Google is building language models. By analyzing how people use language, we build models that enable us to interpret searches better, offer spelling corrections, understand when alternative forms of words are needed, offer language translation, and even suggest when searching in another language is appropriate."



According to them People searching around the world for the abbreviation GM search in a different way. For the US, UK , Canada and other english speaking countries GM means General Motors. Most of the time this is the fact whereas in french searches GM can mean "Guerre Mondiale" (World War), whereas in STI GM it means "Génie Mécanique" ( In english Mechanical Engineering )



More according to official google blog "To provide more relevant search results, Google is constantly developing new techniques for language modeling and building better models. One element in building better language models is using more data collected over longer periods of time. In languages with many documents and users, such as English, our language models allow us to improve results deep into the "long tail" of searches, learning about rare usages. However, for languages with fewer users and fewer documents on the web, building language models can be a challenge. For those languages we need to work with longer periods of data to build our models. For example, it takes more than a year of searches in Catalan to provide a comparable amount of data as a single day of searching in English; for Estonian, more than two and a half years worth of searching is needed to match a day of English. Having longer periods of data enables us to improve search for these less commonly used languages.
At Google, we want to ensure that we can help users everywhere find the things they're looking for; providing accurate, relevant results for searches in all languages worldwide is core to Google's mission. Building extensive models of historical usage in every language we can, especially when there are few users, is an essential piece of making search work for everyone, everywhere. "

So how does affiliate Marketing relate to duplicate content. Here is the case scenario. If a website runs a particular business and sells a product they might be the authority they also might need to run affiliate system for their site.



If that is the case some affiliates give their own website contents / design for their affiliates to sell the products this is a common strategy happening among lot of affiliate businesses so what about duplicate content how do we avoid it?



Ofcourse if 2 websites are identical then Search Engine duplicate content filter kicks in and only 1 website will survive. To avoid this even though the other website runner is a affiliate we need to make sure he gets a unique site not a duplicate of your own website. If your own website is duplicated then you have the risk of loosing all the Business coming to your website. Search engines don't like duplicate contents and if your site gets caught up in duplicate content filter then it will be lost for a very long time. Today many websites suffer from dupe content filter. We have already discussed about this in our Supplemental pages article.



What is the solution for this?

Best option if you have affiliate who needs website like yours just hire a web designer or buy a simple template setup a website that has information different from yours and give them. Don't duplicate your website since search engines don't like them. We had a client who has lot of real estate affiliates and he used to duplicate websites and provide it to his clients we stopped him from doing it since most of the websites he provide his affiliates dont even get indexed. Please avoid all possible duplicate content on your website.

SEO Blog Team,

Adding multiple languages is a common and effective business practice. Lots of websites do this to make sure they cover the Majority of the crowd who dont speak English Language. In US a recent census says 15% of the people are Hispanics that is almost 50 million people.
It is not possible to ignore those people when it comes to doing busines. Most of the Hispanics dont speak good English and this shows the importance to have a website in both spanish in English.



Same way in European union not all countries speak English targeting the regional language is a very important factor to reach the local business. Having a website in various languages are becoming mandatory these days so how does the search engines treat when they see the same information in different languages. From our experience search engines see only the contents and different language contents are unique to themselves.

Recently we have seen a surge in comment spamming and contact form spamming from Japanese guys. We get at least 10 to 15 contacts a day from Japan trying to spam our contact form. We always wondered what they get from it. When we see a contact spam we immediately delete it without notice so what are they looking for.



Most probably they are thinking that our contact form is a type of comment spamming weird guys. Some spam contacts we got,

HOME PAGE LOGIN FORM INFORMATION
Prospect_Name : Shigeru Kurisu
EMAIL_Address : kurisu03@carrot.ocn.ne.jp
Website_url :
Phone no :
Discovered seg from : Google
Comments :

HOME PAGE LOGIN FORM INFORMATION
Prospect_Name : Takatoshi Kaneko
EMAIL_Address : puyopuyo@mippi-mail.com
Website_url : an-idol-beautiful-woman.blogspot.com
Phone no : Discovered seg from : Google
Comments :

HOME PAGE LOGIN FORM INFORMATION
Prospect_Name : Kouya Kubota
EMAIL_Address : ocecib276khkm205@yahoo.co.jp
Website_url : snowboarderkk.blogspot.com
Phone no : Discovered seg from : Google Comments :

According to cyber wire a website which monitors online highest paying keywords mesothelioma and loans still top the list. Lawyers are still the highest paying bidders. Accident attorneys, DUI lawyers, mesothelioma attorneys all pay huge sum due to the stiff competition in their industry,




I just dont want to stuff our blog with all these high spammed keywords. It will make our blog look like one major spam for top paying keywords. SO I am posting a screen shot to avoid the keywords getting crawled

Spyfu a online ad monitoring company claims to monitor competitor ads and keywords and provide us. Is it true according to spyfu

"SpyFu lets you see which keywords your competitors are buying and which ones they optimize their site for. Once you understand the competition, you can beat them at their own game or your can exploit their weaknesses.
We get our data directly from the source; there are no middlemen. Every month, we extract 125 million ads and search results directly..."



Anyone tried using Spyfu before, We want to give it a try and see how it really.

Imagine a real estate company in phoenix area wants to know what an other competitor in the same area spends on his online ads. They can go to spyfu buy the basic CPC keywords for their area and it will give them an insight on how much their competitor is spending on the keywords. To calculate results Spyfu uses google's ad estimator and their own collection of 2 million keywords and compare them with real competitor sites. Other major sources from where data is extracted include dmoz, Dunn&Brad Street, Hoovers, and Wikipedia.



A spending data for geico looks similar to what they did in their SEC filing. Experts predict a 80 to 90% accuracy with spyfu data,

A Open Letter I received from our website User thinking that we are google LOL, It was horribly written probably this guy is not a English native

Hello,

I am not a computer expert ,I spent a year and a half learning how to and building my site ,I held the No #1 spot for my category, this was no accident , I spent another year and a half matching my setup to my site, now I am 50thwhen computer people play games with the internet it has REAL consequences to REAL people,what google has done is WRONG.We would have gladly paid them there F bribe money had we know what was a foot.

Dear Goggle

I can not begine to tell you how angry I am.a year and a half of back breaking work.$250,000 investment in building and equipment a year and a half building my site and bikes, and driving it to the top of the rateings. Just to have my hopes and dreams distroyed, by your damm algorium. if you think this will make you the kings of industy, on the backs of the citizens, WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!further more , its people like me and websites like mine that let people like you live in your gilded palices and I am only one small TO YOU personSHAME AND DISHONOR TO YOU!!! in case you have the balls to respond to this email!Kim.southlakeenterprize.com

Many always wondered what their hard designed and developed website is worth. Lots of sites provide ways to evaluate the value of a domain name. When it comes to search engine optimization and search engine marketing value of a domain name is based on



Backlinks: Links that are pointing to that website from external websites.

Quality backlinks: Backlinks mean one thing quality backlinks mean an other. A link from Yahoo homepage is a million times more valuable than a link from a Mom and pop site, Its important to research the quality of backlinks that are pointing to that site,

Dmoz listing: Dmoz is the world's leading human edited directory a listing in Dmoz adds the value to a website since dmoz plays a very important role in search engine's way of guaging the value of a website.

Links from high pagerank sites: If the site being sold has links from many high pagerank websites it will definitely boost the value of the domain

Pagerank of the site itself: Pagerank is google's proprietary core algorithm of judging the value of websites. Even though pagerank doesn't matter much anymore when it comes to selling sites a good pagerank website will go for a high price

Quality of information on website: A Spam directory is much less valuable than a site with quality pages and quality information, its important that the site has quality information.



Targeted industry: If its a quality site and targets industries like automobiles, real estate etc it is valued much higher.

Uniqueness of information : A site with lots of unique information is important duplicate sites are not gonna go for much money.

Existing traffic and projected traffic: This is last but not the least option when it comes to judging sites if a site is already getting 3000 uniques per day then it should be a very good site. Our site gets anywhere between an average of 2500 uniques to 4000 uniques per day. So you judge the price .

So judging by these points what's your website worth care to share? Soon we are releasing a new SEO tool which will predict the price of a website based on the above criteria till that time you can use this tool. directory.sootle.com/website-worth

I have got requests from clients to promote their sites in social networking sites like Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Friendster etc. We stayed away from it because it looks like too much spam for me. Myspace , orkut, facebook are all sites for youngsters to meet their friends and relatives online. We cannot disturb them by promoting our material, Personally if I find someone trying to promote something to my myspace profile ill find all the best ways to get him banned from Myspace



If you really want to advertise for people in social networking sites go for the paid option myspace, orkut, facebook all have paid ads which will be shown to their visitors. I recommend going by that option



Personal blogs are the best one to promote in social networking sites. If you have friends in myspace you can add a link to your personal blog in your profile and this will definetely make your friends see your blog if they like your blog it will be bookmarked and they will visit your site regularly to read interesting information in it.

I recommend if you want to promote in myspace or facebook do for your blog .

How many of you have seen sites which use special characters / smileys in their title and meta tags. I have personally come across a lot of sites doing it .



Having smiley's in title and targeting a commercial audience IMO is not a great idea. when people are looking for professional company to do service for them its better we stay away from all those playful stuff in titles but if its a site servicing a crowd that likes stuff like that we can definitely do it.



Whether it affects ROI or not is a question we never tested it if someone has tested please post your experiences here

Yahoo's Amit mar has mentioned in their official Yahoo search blog that Yahoo will be supporting Microformats in their opensearch

According to yahoo
"By supporting semantic web standards, Yahoo! Search and site owners can bring a far richer and more useful search experience to consumers. For example, by marking up its profile pages with microformats, LinkedIn can allow Yahoo! Search and others to understand the semantic content and the relationships of the many components of its site. With a richer understanding of LinkedIn's structured data included in our index, we will be able to present users with more compelling and useful search results for their site. The benefit to LinkedIn is, of course, increased traffic quality and quantity from sites like Yahoo! Search that utilize its structured data. "



So what is Microformat According to wikipedia

A microformat (sometimes abbreviated μF or uF) is a web-based[1] data formatting approach that seeks to re-use existing content as metadata, using only XHTML and HTML classes[2] and attributes.[3] This approach is intended to allow information intended for end-users (such as contact information, geographic coordinates, calendar events, and the like) to also be automatically processed by software.
Although the content of web pages is technically already capable of "automated processing," and has been since the inception of the web, there are certain limitations. This is because the traditional markup tags used to display information on the web do not describe what the information means.[4] Microformats are intended to bridge this gap by attaching semantics, and thereby obviate other, more complicated methods of automated processing, such as natural language processing or screen scraping. The use, adoption and processing of microformats enables data items to be indexed, searched for, saved or cross-referenced, so that information can be reused or combined.[4]
Current microformats allow the encoding and extraction of events, contact information, social relationships and so on. More are being developed. Version 3 of the Firefox browser,[5] as well as version 8 of Internet Explorer[6] are expected to include native support for microformats.

Several microformats have been developed to enable semantic markup of particular types of information.



hAtom - for marking up Atom feeds from within standard HTML
hCalendar - for events
hCard - for contact information; includes:
adr - for postal addresses
geo - for geographical coordinates (latitude, longitude)
hReview - for reviews
hResume - for resumes or CVs
rel-directory - for distributed directory creation and inclusion
rel-nofollow, an attempt to discourage 3rd party content spam (e.g. spam in blogs).
rel-tag - for decentralized tagging (Folksonomy)
xFolk - for tagged links
XHTML Friends Network (XFN) - for social relationships
XOXO - for lists and outlines

[edit] Proposed microformats
Among the many proposed microformats,[9] the following are undergoing active development:

citation - for citing references
currency - for amounts of money
geo extensions - for places on Mars, The Moon, and other such bodies; for altitude; and for collections of waypoints marking routes or boundaries
species - For the names of living things.
measurements - For physical quantities, structured data-values.

[edit] Uses of microformats
Using microformats within HTML code provides additional formatting and semantic data that can be used by applications. These could be applications that collect data about on-line resources, such as web crawlers, or desktop applications such as e-mail clients or scheduling software.

Several browser extensions, such as Operator, provide the ability to detect microformats within an HTML document and export them into formats compatible with contact management and calendar utilities, such as Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft expressed a desire to incorporate Microformats into upcoming projects;[10] as have other software companies.

In Wikipedia - and more generally in MediaWiki - microformats are used as part of templates like {{coord}}.


[edit] Evaluation of microformats
Various commentators have offered review and discussion on the design principles and practical aspects of microformats. Additionally, microformats have been compared to other approaches that seek to serve the same or similar purpose.[11] From time to time, there is criticism of a single, or all, microformats.[11] Documented efforts to advocate both the spread and use of microformats are known to exist as well.[12] [13] Håkon Wium Lie has said we will see "a bunch of microformats being developed, and that's how the semantic web will be built." [14]


[edit] Design principles
Computer scientist and entrepreneur, Rohit Khare stated that reduce, reuse, and recycle is "shorthand for several design principles" that motivated the development and practices behind microformats.[8][15] These aspects can be summarized as follows:

Reduce: favor the simplest solutions and focus attention on specific problems;
Reuse: work from experience and favor examples of current practice;
Recycle: encourage modularity and the ability to embed, valid XHTML can be reused in blog posts, RSS feeds, and anywhere else you can access the web.[8]

[edit] Accessibility
Because some microformats make use of title attribute of HTML's abbr element to conceal machine-readable data (particularly date-times and geographical coordinates) in the "abbr design pattern", the plain text content of the element is inaccessible to those screenreaders that expand abbreviations.[16]


[edit] Intellectual property
As part of the open participation model of the microformats community to require that all contributions be placed into the public domain. This means that any page created, or any content added to microformats is placed into the public domain for maximum possible reuse.


[edit] Alternative approaches
Microformats are not the only solution for providing "more intelligent data" on the web. Alternative approaches exist and are under development as well. For example, the use of XML markup and standards of the semantic web are cited as alternative approaches. [8] Some contrast these with microformats in that they do not necessarily coincide with the design principles of "reduce, reuse, and recycle", at least not to the same extent.[8]

One advocate of microformats, Tantek Çelik, characterized a problem with alternative approaches:

" Here's a new language we want you to learn, and now you need to output these additional files on your server. It's a hassle. (Microformats) lower the barrier to entry.[4] "

For some applications the use of other approaches may be valid. If one wishes to use microformat-style embedding but the type of data one wishes to embed does not map to an existing microformat, one can use RDFa to embed arbitrary vocabularies into HTML. An example of this would be embedding domain-specific scientific data on the Web like zoological or chemical data, where no microformat for such data exists. Furthermore, standards such as W3C's GRDDL allow microformats to be converted into data compatible with the Semantic Web.[17]

Another advocate of microformats, Ryan King, put the compatibility of microformats with other approaches this way:

" Microformats provide an easy way for many people to contribute semantic data to the web. With GRDDL all of that data is made available for RDF Semantic Web tools. Microformats and GRDDL can work together to build a better web. [17]

According to Citigroup Microsoft has offered a share price of 34$ a increase of 3$ per share. Previous offer of Microsoft was 31$ which yahoo and its share holders denied. It seems soon it will be YahSoft or you can say MicroHoo

Google looses another senior employee to social networking start up facebook. Is facebook going to a be a powerful social networking place in future. Facebook is only next to Myspace I feel it has a long long way to beat myspace but definitely seeing the effort taken by facebook people it seems to going in the right direction



"Facebook on Tuesday confirmed that Ethan Beard, the former director of social media at Google, will join the privately held company as director of business development. Mr. Beard is the second high-profile executive this month to leave Google, a company that was widely considered one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley.
"

Though google is rated by fortune the No.1 company to work recent drop in its stock value might be an other reason its employees are panicking. From over 700$ google's share value has dropped below 500$. If it continues this way they might end up with a share price of 300$ which is not good for a company like them,

About Facebook:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.



Anyone can join Facebook
All that's needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.


Discover the people around you
Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school. Join the networks that reflect your real-life communities to learn more about the people who work, live, or study around you.


Do more
Facebook's Platform enables anyone, anywhere, to build complete applications that you can choose to use. The possibilities are endless. Define your experience on Facebook by choosing applications that are useful and relevant to your world.

Many predict google will have in excess of 80% , Even after US going on recession google has started investing heavily on various products. Recently they acquired Doubleclick a leading paid advertising company. They are now doing better in wireless market possibly stealing a share from Verizon in future. Back in the early 20th century many said Ford would be the dominant car manufacturer forever too. However, I think today GMC and Toyota would have something to say about that. Now, considering that Internet technology moves at light-speed compared to automotive technology... it should be a fair assessment that while Google is dominant now, 90% is pretty far fetch.

milliondollarhomepage.com one of the greatest inventions on Modern .com era is still going strong after 5 years. Alex the founder of million dollar homepage has promised publishers of hosting the ads for upto 2010. Its going strong and should be long enough

Yahoo we announced today that it has joined forces with Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages.



According to yahoo press release

"OpenSocial addresses an emerging problem for developers who are eagerly building applications people can enjoy with their friends: before OpenSocial, if a developer built a "favorite photos" application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site. OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common "plumbing" that lets social applications run on many different websites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the websites.
The result is a vast distribution platform for social applications, whether they are for sharing photos or playing games or arranging real-world meetings or any number of other activities - everything is more fun, interesting, and useful when users can involve their friends and contacts."



This video gives a better understanding on how opensocial works and to find more resources



Self expression and communication are often fun and entertaining alone, but OpenSocial is also a platform that can be leveraged to solve real world tasks where the social graph assists us in making decisions. For example, while some might be prone to grab a book at random off the shelf, there are many who appreciate a good recommendation from a friend. With a variety of possibilities in entertainment and interests, it can be useful to facilitate meetings, purchases, recommendations, information management and learning to create a richer, more lasting experience across your application.

Christophe Bisciglia was a former hacker who hacked into his boss's company and flood his customers with 1000s emails he was pissed off when a argument with his boss turned out to be a violent one for him.



Bisciglia, who graduated from the UW in 2003, went to Lazowska with his idea in October, and they worked with engineers in Google's Kirkland office to develop a syllabus for 15 undergraduates selected to take the five-week class, which recently wrapped up. No proprietary Google software was used, no internal secrets revealed, Bisciglia said. Bisciglia enjoys his job in google now when asked he said there is no chance of dropping his job as of now. His highly paid google job gives him lot of great vacations.



I hope google doesn't piss him off :-)

Britney the troubled celebrity mother still leads 2007 celebrity searches compared with Angelina Jolie and Paris Hilton. Google trends a cool new tool shows graphics of the 3 celebrities
how often they were searched around the world for the past 4 years











Google Trends , Google trends comparision software

How many of you have searched google and found results showing more than 10,000,000 million pages. We at Search Engine Genie have worked on sites where the competition is more than 25,000,000 and still gain No.1 position in Search engines. So how come we rank a website page better than 25,000,000 pages. Actually the no of results showing up is not the real competion you will be facing when it comes to ranking a website.



When you are looking to rank in niche markets make sure you first do a complete research on your competition. You use a keyword and find millions of results I recommend go through the top 10 pages after 10 pages you will see results that are not exactly competing with you but random pages that are there just because keywords you searched somewhere occur on that page. This is true in many cases most of the time competition to get your site ranked is not more than 1000 websites. Competing with 1000 websites will be one of the most of difficult task to do. So most of time when we are doing regional search engine optimization we are competing with less than 100 sites even if the results show millions of pages.

Most of the sites that are there in internet today are not optimized for search engines so that eliminates majority of the websites from competing with you, even if they are optimized they need lots of links to compete with competitive industry. So you get good links and you eliminate most of your competition. Also never stop adding quality information for your site if you are going after a niche industry you are supposed to run a website that even evolves. It usa to evolve by itself or you need to make it evolve.



We at search engine genie make sure we add atleast 2 pages of content to our website everyday. So 6 months down the road we have a website with atleast 1000 new pages of contents. This is a major step when it comes to tackling competition. So I recommend don't worry what google shows in millions keep working on your site eventually you will be on top of Major search engines

I feel word tracker had been one of the best tools when it comes to keyword research. We at Search Engine Genie had been using word tracker paid service for a very long time. But now there are lots of other tools to do free keyword research. Adwords sandbox, google suggest , yahoo search marketing keyword suggestion tool everything works pretty good and all of them are free.



The amount of keyword suggestions word tracker provides cannot be matched by the free service offered by them. I also think their paid keyword suggestion database is updated more often then their free database is. If you are going to use it for multiple accounts it will be a great time saver. but if your using it just for your own domain then you can get away with the free one no problem I personally recommend sticking with the free one unless you are SEO company who are looking for large scale keyword research for clients

We keep getting questions from our users is there a criteria when it comes to top rankings in search engines. Google and other search engines have advanced sophisticated algorithms to separate combined words in URLs. we don't need specific domains with underscores or hyphens
Google is smart enough for e.g. to find words "good guy" in "goodguy.com"

Apart from words in domain age of domain plays a very important role when it comes to search engine optimization and search engine ranking.

How many of you tried printing your yahoo, MSN and google search results. We always do it for research purposes in our company. Recently a bug with yahoo search was preventing us from printing their search results. Not sure whether it was a bug or a deliberate attempt to stop printing their results.
Things look of now we are able to print everything fine now,

Yahoo Made a major update to their algorithm first week of this month. We saw some of our client sites slightly affected by this update. But the damage was very small we got more SEO benefit than loosing rankings.



Yahoo's official update on the report

"Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update
We're in the process of rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. To share your thoughts on this with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.
Update: With this weather update, you might also experience spikes or drops in crawl traffic for the next week or two."

MSN search live team has upgraded their web crawler which crawls millions pages per day. They included some new interesting feature which reduces the load placed on some innocent servers.



2 important features as described by MSN search blog


HTTP Compression: HTTP compression allows faster transmission time by compressing static files and application responses, reducing network load between your servers and our crawler. We support the most common compression methods: gzip and deflate as defined by RFC 2616 (see sections 14.11 and 14.39). Compression is currently supported by all major browsers and search engines. Use this online tool to check your server for HTTP compression support.
The following links provide configuration information for IIS, and Apache.
Configure Compression in IIS
Configure Apache using GZIP or using deflate
Conditional Get: We support conditional get as defined by RFC 2616 (Section 14.25), generally we will not download the page unless it has changed since the last time we crawled it. As per the standard, our crawler will include the "If-Modified-Since" header & time of last download in the GET request and when available, our crawler will include the "If-None-Match" header and the ETag value in the GET request. If the content hasn't changed the web server will respond with a 304 HTTP response
To check if your site already supports the "If-Modified-Since" HTTP header, you can use this online tool to check your server for HTTP Conditional Get support. Alternatively, you can check using Fiddler for Internet Explorer, or Live Headers for Firefox. Each of these tools allows you to create a custom GET request and send it to your server. You'll want to make sure that your request includes the "If-Modified-Since" header like the following simplified sample:
GET /sa/3_12_0_163076/webmaster/webmaster_layout.css HTTP/1.1
Host: webmaster.live.com
If-Modified-Since: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:28:49 GMT
You should receive a server response similar to the following simplified sample:
HTTP/1.x 304 Not Modified
Check out MSDN for more information on using

Here is the solution to get reindexed and reincluded into MSN Live search. Register and login to webmaster.live.com , validate your website. Contact them and explain the situation what happened to your site and how it got penalized/ banned / removed from their index. Search quality team of MSN live is very responsive they take every message they receive through their webmaster channel seriously.
To get a prompt response describe as much as possible about your website more you explain better they understand about your website.

Webmasterworld guys reported a update my Microsoft live search to their index. It seems they did a major update to their core search algorithm which affected ranking of lots of websites. It seem to targeted against authority sites which tend to dominate most of the search results even if they are of less quality.



It reminds of the mess google did way back in November 2003 when they did a major update to their index doomed infamous florida update. Lets wait and see how it goes,

Recently we have seen a lot of websites claiming to give free life time backlinks to any website which helps it get pagerank 10. We are the No.1 ranking site for a very https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=page+rank+10&btnG=Search long time in google for pagerank 10 related keywords. Since we monitor pagerank 10 sites I tell you it is almost impossible to get a pagerank 10 unless you are Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo or Google. I dont think anyone will have a website competing with these gaints. Please dont fall for pagerank 10 scam where you just link to a site thinking that they are gonna reward you after they achieve PR 10. Its impossible and its totally scam please stay away from it.

Check google for all the scam sites and beware of them

So what do you do to break the 1 million dollar mark, Can you share your here,



Skibum of webmasterworld says "While going over 1M in sales is a nice goal, its short term thinking unless he's just compensated on sales in which case the incentive structure needs a little work. The best way to get to 1M in sales is to sell more than 1M in product for 1M. The term profits should be in there somewhere.
Offer something off the next order with a current order at regular price. Preserve the initial margin and help ensure those people will come back and buy again.
Send to a friend coupons is a great idea.
Isn't FREE shipping supposed to be the number one thing people want or close to it?
If the PPC search campaigns are running at a profitable ROI and there are budget caps in there, then lift those budget caps and keep the bid prices the same.
Landing page & offer testing.
Bundling products.
Any hot new products to be released in the next few months? Order #*$! now and be guaranteed to get this hot new gadget at the wonderful price of #*$!. Probably anything that involves a Wii would bring in some traffic at least. "



More ideas

1) Financial plea - you need this because it's on sale. Or this deal won't last forever. 2) Emotional #1 - you need this because your business is in danger without it. 3) Emotional #2 - you need this because you like to be on the bleeding edge 4) Emotional #3 - your competition uses this - shouldn't you? 5) Emotional #4 - it's sexy. 6) Safety - you need this because your company/job will fail without it.

Yes identical sitewide links do count. For example a huge site has lots of PR4, Pr5, PR3, Pr2 pages then definitely all links will count. Especially if the pages of site that link to a site has good quality links by its own then definitely its going to help a lot. For example Our site Search Engine Genie has a lot of very popular pages apart from our Homepage. Pagerank 10 sites list, google rank checker, yahoo rank checker, SEO blog all has its own quality and if a site gets sitewide links from Search Engine Genie I bet its gonna count a lot more than just 1 or 2 links.

Many think creating a lot of blogs and linking back to your own site is Search Engine Spam. So where is the threshold limit when it comes to number of blogs that you own. It all depends on how much unique information you have in those blogs plus how well they are hosted and how many quality back links they have. If the blogs all have their own separate content and doesn't have spam links I would feel having even 100 blogs are still legit.



Blogs had been a driving force behind search engine optimization / search engine ranking for a long time so do what is good for you and your visitors instead of worrying too much about what search engines think about your website and your blogs.

Google made some changes in March which affected lot of sites. Lots of sites lost its top search engine ranking, Did it affect you if yes please post in comment or post your site for free review in our forum,

Google CEO Eric said, "We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft and We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be." This means a lot. Microsoft is known for the mistrust and it is got a history of antitrust problems. This would continue and it will create problems for the whole online world is what Google feels. Google shares the sentiments of many people around the world who are against this bid from Microsoft. The handing over of Yahoo to Microsoft will cost a huge loss to the whole world of Internet. It may prove bad for the internet is what they feel.

With these commotions going on here, Yahoo says that it is a financially potential company. The Chief Executive Jerry Yang said recently that "Yahoo! is positioned for accelerated financial growth--we have a powerful consumer brand, a huge global audience and a highly profitable operating model." That also means that they are more worth than the Microsoft's bid. With both the major search engines taking opposite stands against Microsoft's bid in different positions, what do the Microsoft officials do? Is there a big change that is going to happen or a small fractional change?