May 2008 Google update and SERP changes

Google has been into ever flux for a long time. Some webmaster world members are discussing a possible update in Google in May. I have seen some changes happen to our sites and client sites so definitely something is cooking up with Google results.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3639486.htm go to webmaster world for discussion more on Google may 2008 update

Google images are a great source of traffic

We get ton of traffic from Google images. Optimizing for Google images should be part of a good SEO strategy since Google images has good potential to send quality targeted traffic. People who search for particular product / image will like to see the image of the product to judge their ideas. A good product with good images will result in Good conversion.

There are some sites that feature their image in first page of Google regular results. If those images are featuring for some important terms like Mouse . I am sure sites that sells mouse will get the maximum benefit.

You can read more about optimizing for Google Images right from the mouth of a Google image search quality engineer here

Google now offers Hindi translations in their Translator

Google had been providing a translation platform for various languages for a long period of time. Now they offer Hindi to English and English to Hindi translation. Its an amazing improvement hope Google moves into other leading indian languages too

English to Hindi http://www.google.com/translate_t?langpair=enhiHindi to English http://www.google.com/translate_t?langpair=hien

subdomain or own domain blogs which one is better?

Many have questions whether sub domain blogs on blog service providers or blogs hosted on www yourdomain com is better.

As an expert in this first for more than 5 years ill tell you both don’t have any difference. whether its *.blogspot.com , *.blogsome.com or *.wordpress.com there are no visible differences. As long as your blog has good back links and the feed URLs are facilitated to ping regularly your blog will be indexed regularly. Use some blog software like feedburner which helps in automated pinging from Google blog search and other blog searches. If you are into Google blog search you can be sure of that you will be included into Google search results too. Search Engines love fresh contents make sure you provide the crawlers as much fresh contents as possible.

I recommend you submit your feed URL to Google Blog ping service http://blogsearch.google.com/ping I am sure it will help,

Matt cutts on web spam in recent web 2.0 Conference Oreilly

Here you can find some tips about combating spam from Google’s Matt Cutts head of Google’s Webspam team and an engineer who’s been working on the problem for eight years. During a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo Matt Cutts explained about countering Web spam as-

“Spammers are human,” Cutts said. “You have the power to raise their blood
pressure. Make them spend more time and effort…If spammer gets frustrated,
he’s more likely to look for someone easier.” How? Forthwith, some tips for
those who manage their own or others’ Web sites. • Use captcha systems to make
sure real people, not bots, are commenting on your site. He uses a simple math
puzzle–what’s 2 + 2?–but he also likes KittenAuth, which makes people identify
kitten photos. One blogger merely requires people to type the word “orange” into
a field. “The vast majority of bots will never do that,” Cutts said. •
Reconfigure software settings after you’ve installed it. A little modification
of various settings will throw bots off the scent. “If you can off the beaten
path, away from default software installations, you’ll save yourself a ton of
grief,” he said. • Employ systems that rank people by trust and reputation. For
example, eBay shows how long a person has been a member and how satisfied others
are with transactions with that person. • Don’t be afraid of legitimate
purveyors of search-engine optimization services. “SEO is not spam. Google does
not hate SEO,” Cutts said. “There are plenty of white-hat SEO (companies) who
can help you out.” Registering your Web site at Google’s Webmaster Central site
can help find bogus search-engine optimization tricks others may use on your
site, such as keywords written in white text on white backgrounds, he added.

Speech by Matt Cutts was very information he did say white hat SEO companies are definitely recommended and its not difficult to find a good SEO company. He recommends comment authentication since there are a lot of blog spam lurking out there. Mattcutts has been a major link between webmasters and Google.

Slow Crawling experienced by few webmasterworld members

Some webmasterworld members have reported slow crawling from Googlebot on their sites. When you check this thread you can see that many have posted data showing slow browsing from Googlebot. From the sites we monitor we don’t see much changes to Googlebot crawling some of the sites which are actively updated Googlebot is regular in gobbling up pages. Some sites which are not updated often see a bit lesser browsing other than that things look very normal to me.
I probably feel this could be caused by drop in backlinks to sites or Google devaluing some links. Google is very active in devaluing links recently. I recommend webmasters to keep a check on their backlinks and see if they are devalued.

Google Update reverts back – Dewey update no more visible

Google recently made an update to their index and matt cutts commented on that here http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3615693-3-30.htm . From checking different datacenters I dont see much changes now and the small changes that was visible in the datacenters mentioned in that webmaster world thread is not visible any more.

Most of the changes have reverted back and there are no visible signs of changes that happened on those datacenters propagating to other DCs.

Other cool thing is updates are not the hot topic anymore. People used to discuss 100s of pages for any major updates. When I see this dewey update thread i hardly see it go beyond 30 pages which is a good sign. People are becoming more and more aware of the changes and the communication between search engines and users have improved which has resulted in lesser worries for people.
While Google update mania is no more Pagerank Mania still continues.

False Pagerank update alarm has triggered 10 pages of posting in digital point forums

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=808970&page=2

Pending Spammers – Aggressive affiliate Marketers

Google and other search engines have weeded out most of the spam out of their search engines. But still one industry that keeps Spamming the search engines using very innovative methods. is the ever aggressive affiliate marketing industry. I know many affiliates still depend on Search Engines for traffic to their spam site will affiliate links all over the place. So how many of us like affiliate.

Personally affiliate sites are a No-No for me. When I click on Search engine results and end up an a affiliate page first thing I do is to close the browser and find an other result. I hate to buy from someone who is reselling the product than buying directly from the dealer.
Affiliates still spam the search engines using methods search engines are never aware of before. Its very difficult to tackle this industry since lot of money is involved in this industry and many affiliate marketers are not willing to find better ways to do online business. I don’t blame all affiliate sites there are some rare sites which do provide Good information while have random affiliate links mixed on their site but most of the affiliate sites don’t add any value for any visitor. Also MFA ( Made For Adsense ) sites are an other disgrace to search engine users. When i click on a result and see a page full of adsense ads, affiliate links i never enjoy the site nor will i want to visit the site again.
i hope search engines completely get rid of all sites that have affiliate links and dont add any value for users this is the last type of death to spam I am looking for in Search engines.

TPR penalty websites still not ready to change their ways

Lots of TPR ( Toolbar Pagerank Reduction ) Penalty websites which got affected in december 2007 update are still not ready to change their ways. Most of them like searchenginejournal, forbes.com, washingtonpost.com got their pagerank back,

Searchenginejournal was slapped with 3 points reduction to PR4 now are back to PR7, Forbes lost 2 points and was slapped to PR5, now they removed the paid text link ads and are back to PR7, Washingtonpost.com lost 3 points and was slapped with PR5 now they are back to PR8.
So what is the secret behind getting the Pagerank back and remove TPR Penalty.

First if you check Searchenginejournal they removed all text link ads and now all ads pass through a redirect script that doesn’t pass pagerank,

Forbes completely removed all text links and possibly the pagerank came by itself or they might have sent a reconsideration to check their site for paid links.

Washington past now has Nofollow on all the text links they sell, if you take the source of their page you can see that the text link ads that go out of their page don’t pass pagerank anymore all of them go through a nofollow.

I know there are some sites who are not ready to go friendly with Google when it comes to TPR and are happy to be at PR4 or PR5 and continue to do what they are not recommended to do. Instead they have their usual blogging power to curse Google for what they did to protect their algorithm. I recommend those sites to correct what they did and possibly file a reconsideration request to get back their Toolbar Pagerank or just keep the credit of running website that has lost some trust in Google’s algorithm.

Though I would like to stay away from commenting about individual sites one site I personally admire is SEOchat.com they look too silly to have a PR of 4. Being hit with TPR a reduction of 3 points were applied and their regular pagerank was PR7. Obvious reason is their option to sell text link ads on their site without any nofollow which is not a great sign especially for a site which depends so much on Google to discuss in their forum and so many tools that query Google. Their forum’s discussion has 75% discussion on Google and remaining about common issues and other search engines.

For all the 100s of 1000s of users who are regular to SEOchat its not a great way to welcome them with a PR4, Pagerank is like a fashion issue for a website. Most of the people out there especially people who are into search engines see Pagerank as a value of quality for a website. I hope SEO Chat a great site for SEOs will get their Pagerank back by no-following text link ads on their sites. They should set an example for all users who visit their site for SEO purposes.

rel= external nofollow and rel=nofollow difference

I have seen many people ask in forums what’s the difference between rel=external nofollow and rel=nofollow,

Nofollow is a co-ordinated efforts from Google, yahoo , MSN to stop crawling links that are considered not trustworthy or spammy. Today many blogs, message boards, forums, news sites use nofollow tag to prevent spam in their comments or other areas of the blogs or forums. Now there is a new tag that is similar to rel=nofollow that is rel=external nofollow, external nofollow works the same as nofollow tag but this tag opens links in a new window instead of the same window. If you want to try just add rel=”external” it will open the link in a new window. it sort of works like target=_blank. Target blank opens all hypertext links in the new window and rel=external nofollow, blocks all link juice and opens the link in a new window.

So if you find a blog that uses this dont get too excited, links from these blogs dont count. Move on and better luck next time