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.

Higher traffic from Yahoo after latest yahoo update.

We are experiencing quite a significant amount of increase in traffic from yahoo search engine after yahoo made an update before 10 days. Yahoo Search Engine recently updated their algorithm and this made lot of sites shuffle in their rankings. Some sites lost rankings some gained we gained very good ranking for our site and now yahoo accounts for about 15% compared to Google. We probably got good boost in Yahoo Search Rankings. We used to get only 3 or 4% of traffic from Yahoo now it has increased significantly

We are happy that yahoo still have a good market share in search

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.

SEOmoz can i have an optout / Unsubscribe link please

Sorry to say i am not happy about commercial emails from SEOmoz, When i joined i never found any option where i opt-in for their commercial emails. This is the recent email I got from them

“You may have seen our launch of our new SEO Video Training Series on the
blog last week. Dozens of people took advantage of our special
introductory pricing and the feedback on the series has been fantastic. We want
to make sure everybody who wants to learn sound SEO fundamentals can get their
hands on this awesome training product, so we’ve got a special offer for
you.
We promised we wouldn’t offer the ridiculous Introductory Price of
nearly 40% off again, but here’s what we can do: make it more affordable than
ever for you to get the SEO Video Training Series at the PRO Member price of
$199 ($200 off of the Retail Price of $399)…
Until Saturday, May 3rd, you
can get the complete SEO Video Training Series AND 1-Year of SEOmoz PRO
Membership for only $499! Purchased Separately, these items would
cost $798. Even with the PRO discount on the Video Series, you’d still pay $648
for both. Look at it either way you want, you’re saving a minimum of $99!
To
take advantage of this awesome, limited-time offer, simply go to the SEOmoz
Store and add a 1-Year SEOmoz PRO Membership and The SEO Video Training Series
to your shopping cart, then use the Coupon Code COMBO50 during checkout to
receive your special price on this great package.
Cheers, The SEOmoz
Team
PS-Remember, this offer is only available for Three Days, until
Saturday, May 3rd!
PPS-If you’re thinking of attending SMX Advanced in our
hometown of Seattle, PRO Membership will get you 10% off (early bird rates still
apply!) as well as an invite to our incredible party (check out what happened
last year)!
This email was sent by: SEOmoz4314 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle, WA,
98105, USA”
Update profile:

Ok i dont see an opt out link in this email. When i click on update profile i am taken to the login page where i have to find the email settings and then i need to remove tick to opt out. Why do i need to do this? . I think SEOmoz should ask whether i opt in for commercial emails from them when i register.

i don’t want to receive couple of commercial emails and then run and find a way to opt-out,

Thanks for understanding
Search Engine Genie.

Digitalpoint Forums Down due to overactivity

Today when I visited Digitalpoint forums I got the following Error,

“
Database error
The database has encountered a problem.
Please try the following:
Load the page again by clicking the Refresh button in your web browser.
Open the forums.digitalpoint.com home page, then try to open another page.
The forums.digitalpoint.com forum technical staff have been notified of the error, though you may contact them if the problem persists.
We apologise for any inconvenience.”

Its very rare to see such popular forum go down. I feel its mostly due to over activity recently Google made a Pagerank update. Most of the visitors in Digital point forum are very addictive and passionate about Pagerank updates. I feel this pagerank update made a crazy impact on their server and it let to database crash.

I think we should be hearing from soon about this,

Search Engine Genie,

Pagerank Update April 2008 Happening now,

After a lot wait Google is updating its Toolbar Pagerank data, You can check your Pagerank updated using our future page rank tool http://www.searchenginegenie.com/future-pagerank-checking.html . Remember Pagerank is updated internally before being like in Toolbar. First Pagerank was live on Google directory. Google updated its directory pagerank before 5 days now slowly some all the datacenters are getting updated with New Toolbar pagerank data.

Enjoy the pagerank update, Hope everyone are doing fine in this update.

SEO Tools to be upgraded with Ajax Technologies

We have the best , most comprehensive list of SEO tools for FREE here http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-tools.htm , All tools are provided Adfree to give the best experience for our users. Right now we are in process of upgrading all our SEO tools to the latest Ajax Technologies. Remember we will continue to provide all our tools Adfree which has always been our policy.
lyfavor we ask from our loyal tools users is please link to the tools, that brings attention to the tools which will result in backlinks which will result in increased traffic and search engine rankings. We are more than happy to live with it. Currently we have around 50 tools. We will be expanding the number of tools to around 75 with an investment of 8,000$. We are happy to do it as long as our users are happy. Again though we invest we will not make the tools paid tools like our competitors. We are in a open source world and we love to give our stuff free.

Text link brokering companies and other Search engine related sites please dont contact us for paid text link or banner advertising on our site we will never now or infuture sell links. We do get lot of requests and all requests go into Trash without any consideration so don’t waste your time asking us to selling links.

Search Engine Genie Team

launching inhouse team SEO challenge

We have about 8 teams working on SEO, Currently we are organizing a small inhouse SEO challenge. The team that comes up with the best tactics that brings maximum attention to the client site/sites they work on will get a treat in one of the best local Star Hotel and one day outing to a favourite play they choose. We are running this challenge for a month and results to be announced around May 25th. May the best team win.

Tactics like Controversial articles, top level quality attractive articles, amazing tools, new innovative ideas are all allowed. We are waiting to see who is the best SEO team in our company. All teams have already started working hard and are doing lot trial and error ideas to come up with the best strategies.

Wish our teams good luck

SEG

Most recent SEO related Informative Thread in Google Groups.

I have already read this thread in detail but i keep reading it again and again. Just one single thread and it has ton of information from some of the best Search Engine Experts. Especially I enjoy the SEO expert’s friendliness with Search Engines. Most of the forums i see there will be a huge crowd ready to bash Google. But this thread is so much fun to read just because it has real valuable information from experts like Matt Cutts, John Muller, Aaron Pratt, JLH, SEO101 etc.

I recommend everyone to read this thread and understand how a webmaster was able to over come his penalty and get back his ranking in Google. Accept you are wrong and Google is always ready to forgive. We had a client who came to us with a penalized site. They bought links from TLA and Google has detected those links and imposed some sort of penalty. We reviewed the site and recommended client to remove all paid links and file a re inclusion. You know what his answer was?
“Google is the looser since it has banned his site. Google is unlucky because it doesn’t have his company site in their index” . Come on client if not your site Google has millions of sites to index and they are not worried if one aggressive site is not in their index even though it might be world’s best. It took us lot of time to convince him to clean up paid BLs. Finally he did but still he was not ready to give up his Ego and submit re inclusion. We on behalf of him filed a re inclusion and finally the site came back to Good top rankings. He was all praises for us but the truth we didn’t do anything all we did was explain in detail mistakes that was previously done on site and said that it will never be repeated again. Google accepted our words and included the site so lesson learnt if you want Google to send free traffic for your site play by their guidelines if you going to spam them face the consequences.

Read that thread again its better than my voice