Yahoo index update May 2008 – Yahoo search engine algorithm and ranking update

Yahoo has made some changes to its algorithm and ranking factors. Yahoo calls its index update a weather update and Yahoo Weather updates are posted in the their Official blog by some Search Engineer.

Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma both from Search had posted an update here

“We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but 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. “

SEO comic strip – Incompetent webmaster whining about his rankings.

Can links from foreign sites hurt your Google US rankings?

I have seen more and more people getting worried about their US ranking affected just because they get links from sites hosted in foreign countries. I recommend there is nothing to worry because of this.

Google ofcourse geo-targeting buy they also have ways to relate links to sites regardless of where they come from. If your site is hosted in US and have enough US backlinks i wouldn’t worry about links from other sites.

Its very normal to get backlinks from other language sites especially if you run an information site. We get ton of backlinks from Japanese, swedish, german, spanish and lots and lots of other language sites still our rankings never moved. So i wouldn’t worry about it. Just keep improving your site and always lookout for natural backlinks it will be a hit.

Viacom’s threat might kill internet freedom – Youtube lawsuit

Viacom sued youtube and its owner Google for allowing copyrighted videos to be posted on their website. Viacom claims there are more than 150,000 of copyrighted videos posted in youtube and they claim a billion dollar as damages for illegal viewing of their copyrighted videos.

“Viacom claimed YouTube consistently allowed unauthorised copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its website and viewed tens of thousands of times.
It said it had identified more than 150,000 such abuses which included clips from shows such as South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV Unplugged.
The company says the infringement also included the documentary An Inconvenient Truth which had been viewed “an astounding 1.5 billion times”. “

Detailed news here

According to the document:

threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information

I agree with above Google’s claim. The whole Internet is built upon sharing information with each other just because someone illegal posted a copyrighted video on a popular video hosting site it doesn’t mean video site is responsible for it. If this is the case then there wont be any Forums or blogs or message boards out there. Then every site that runs a message board will have to verify each and every comment posted since some of them might be copyrighted.

Dow Jones: “When we filed this lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights they want protected.”

Well i am not sure what is the interest of other copyright owners i feel Dow jones comments should be for Viacom only. Google’s policy has always been don’t be evil they grew up with that motto. Today they are way ahead of all other Search Engines because users are their No.1 priority. Even though Google’s Search engine indexes millions of copyrighted pages and stores in their database still no-one complains since they are done what is best for Internet users.

Video sharing websites are a great way to share legitimate information across Internet. Just because someone posted some copyrighted videos its not fair to blame Youtube totally.

Well, I can give a number of reasons why Viacom is completely wrong with their lawsuit.

1. If Youtube is suppose to verify all millions of videos posted in their site they cannot run a site at all. There are so many areas where legitimate information is shared like forums, blog comments, news sites etc. If every single information needs to be verified then there won’t be any good information sites on the web.

2. The word “copyright” itself will kill the way Internet works. Today anything and everything is copyrighted and its impossible to share legitimate information unless they are verified. I feel Copyright kills Internet freedom and there should be New laws for Internet information sharing which will help freedom of sharing.

3. After they faced lawsuit last year Google added automated copyright detection tool which stops some copyright videos from being uploaded. This is a very legitimate move and the best Youtube can do to prevent copyright videos. It also shows Google or Youtube don’t want copyrighted videos on their sites.

4. Youtube has a very clear copyright policy on videos hosted by them. If you read the following

Commercial Content Is Copyrighted

The most common reason we take down videos for copyright infringement is that
they are direct copies of copyrighted content and the owners of the copyrighted
content have alerted us that their content is being used without their
permission. Once we become aware of an unauthorized use, we will remove the
video promptly. That is the law.
Some examples of copyrighted content
are:
TV shows
Including sitcoms, sports broadcasts, news broadcasts,
comedy shows, cartoons, dramas, etc.
Includes network and cable TV,
pay-per-view and on-demand TV
Music videos, such as the ones you might find
on music video channels
Videos of live concerts, even if you captured the
video yourself
Even if you took the video yourself, the performer controls
the right to use his/her image in a video, the songwriter owns the rights to the
song being performed, and sometimes the venue prohibits filming without
permission, so this video is likely to infringe somebody Else’s rights.
Movies and movie trailers
Commercials
Slide shows that include
photos or images owned by somebody else
A Few Guiding Principles
It
doesn’t matter how long or short the clip is, or exactly how it got to YouTube.
If you taped it off cable, videotaped your TV screen, or downloaded it from some
other website, it is still copyrighted, and requires the copyright owner’s
permission to distribute.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you give credit
to the owner/author/songwriter—it is still copyrighted.
It doesn’t matter
that you are not selling the video for money—it is still copyrighted.
It
doesn’t matter whether or not the video contains a copyright notice—it is still
copyrighted.
It doesn’t matter whether other similar videos appear on our
site—it is still copyrighted.
It doesn’t matter if you created a video made
of short clips of copyrighted content—even though you edited it together, the
content is still copyrighted.

You can see they are very clear about copyright and even provide links for copyright complains.

5. As of March there are over 3 Billion videos hosted in Youtube. Viacom claim 150,000 copyrighted videos which is only a fraction of the overall videos posted in Youtube. How can you expect youtube to check through this rubble and find copyrighted videos when its actually the user who is suppose to care about this.

6. Most of the time quality of videos posted in Youtube are very bad and they are also very short videos. I feel its not a big deal for small videos of low quality posted in youtube for viewing will kill media Business like Viacom altogether.

7. Some people suggest effective verification system like asking for Credit Card details to post videos. Well i know so many people who are not willing to post their CC information for legitimate online buying how can you expect them to give their CC details just for uploading videos this is a bit too much and anything like this will stop legitimate users from enjoying the freedom of Internet.

Viacom should withdraw their lawsuit to avoid humiliation in court, i feel there wont be anything legitimate against Youtube or Google which will prove Viacom’s claim. If Viacom ever win this lawsuit which looks highly unlikely the way the whole Internet works will change and everyone will start suing each other which will be a disaster for Internet.

Lets all stand behind Youtube and Google and wish them success with their defence. Youtube should come out clear from this for the welfare of Internet.

Search Engine Genie

Google Advisor site diagnostics tool – Google’s free tool

Google now offers diagnostics report for a site for example

For our Site Searchenginegenie.com Google says the following
www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://searchenginegenie.com

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for searchenginegenie.com/
What is the current listing status for searchenginegenie.com/?
This site is not listed as suspicious.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 2 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 05/10/2008, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, searchenginegenie.com/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Well though the report sounds great for our site i am not sure how much i can believe Google on this.
I did the same search for serials.ws a popular crack download site. This site has f**ked up my system couple of times just for downloading some useless cracks. I am not sure how Google gives the following certification.

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for serials.ws/
What is the current listing status for serials.ws/?
This site is not listed as suspicious.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 1310 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 05/26/2008, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, serials.ws/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Well no malicious stuff on this site according to Google? that’s very weird since this site is very popular for malicious downloads. Don’t have a hint on what criteria Google judges the quality of a site.

Search Engine / SEO events visit us to know the happenings in SEO industry

We are proud to announce the launch of Search Engine events calendar where you can find out all the latest happenings in search engine and SEO industry. This is a completely free service, please feel free to submit your events here and we will be proud to add it to our calendar totally for a free. Plus you will get a free backlink to your Events page from our site at no extra cost. Your event will not be deleted for 6 months even after the event is over,
Check out the currently updated events here,

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/search-events/month.php

Google’s radar – An image portraying Google’s stance on spammers

A wonderful presentation of what Google feels about Search engine spammers. This image shows some of the spam tactics that are in Google’s Radar. We all know Google mostly knows all the major spam tactics used in black hat SEO industry. This image is a good example of it.

Plagiarism – Issue with plagiarism by a webmasterworld member

A webmaster world members shows his concerns with paraphrasing of his contents by an authority site.

He says
“My wife and I have a merchant site that we’ve worked very hard on since 2004. We created it to sell our unique niche product. We have done a lot of research and my wife has written a lot of unique content. We are proud of what we have accomplished.
Life took a detour and for the past year and a half, we’ve pretty much let the site run on autopilot (have not added any new content or product or kept up with the industry). Fortunately, our site and reputation have not been damaged, and we have sold out of almost all of our merchandise.
We’ve recently begun working on the site again. An authority site has sprung up in our industry and is beating us in Google. Many of our articles have been devalued in Google. I started studying this new authority site and have discovered that much of it is a paraphrasing of our content. I’ve tried the Google quoted search and cannot turn anything up, but on manual searches of this and our site, there is not doubt they have copied our stuff.
I have a few questions about what I can do about this…
1. Is this Plagiarism?
2. Is there an easier way to detect this without having to manually finding it all myself?
3. Instead of, or in addition to following the traditional steps to getting the content removed, I’d like to post screenshots of my content and the plagiarized site to discredit them. I’m really upset about this. What are your thoughts? “

This thread has some very good replies from industry experts its worth the read.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/content_copywriting/3653270.htm

A cartoon on Search Engines Love fresh Content

We are adding cartoons twice a week, this is the 2nd cartoon of this week you will see the next Search Engine related cartoon on Monday,

For more cartoons please visit

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-comics.htm

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-comics-1.html

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-comics-2.html

Jill whalen and the nitty gritty of copywriting cartoon

Jill Whalen, most of the people in SEO industry will know Jill and her in-famous High Rankings forum. Jill is famous for her good copywriting skills and SEO skills. She has written lot of Newsletters and some of them are very famous ones.

Here is Jill Whalen ready to Teach copywriting in her class.