Resource zone on the move, Dmoz forum taken down for maintainence,

it seems resource-zone.com the dmoz forum was taken down for maintenance, I just visited in thoughts of asking some questions but was disappointed to see the following message on their site,

Resource Zone, Extreme Tech Support, What Pisses You Off, BobSchwarz.com,
Extreme VB and the rest of the sites are moving to a new home. This is a huge
undertaking so expected time to re-opening is December 8, 2004. If any further
delays are encountered I will update this page.

An Interview with Tim Converse – Interesting discussion with Tim of yahoo search posted in yahoo search blog

An interesting interview with with Tim Converse is posted in the yahoo search blog, It is an interesting insight into yahoo search worth the read check it out here in the yahoo search blog,

ysearchblog.com

An extract from the interview,

JQ: When it comes to fighting spam, there’s all kinds of software and many

people trying to stop spam attempts. With all of us trying to detect this, is

there a way to tell the search engines about it?

A: We get a lot of that

data on our own. We have a pretty large view and we’re approaching the spam

problem from a lot of different directions. But nobody should expect to see any

sudden change in spam just yet.

Take weblog comment spam, for example. Two

things will have to happen for comment spam attempts to decrease; one is that

spamming will have to not work for search engines and the second is that comment

spammers will have to realize it. (laughs). There could be a long lag there

where, even if every search engine totally nailed them, spammers could still

operate under the belief that it worked. What we can do from the search engine

point of view is make spam not help.

How do you spell Levenshtein?

Saw an interesting posting in MSN search blog about their spelling correction system implementation into their new MSN beta search, see what have are saying,

How do you spell Levenshtein?

Doing a good job of helping Search users to

correct misspelled queries is super important for two main reasons: a) 5 billion

crawled docs and a bleeding edge ranking algorithm can’t do much if the query

isn’t spelled right and b) more than 10% of all searches are misspelled! So we

made sure our new search engine included a revamped spelling correction system

that’s much better than our old one.

To improve the speller we worked with

Silviu Cucerzan and Eric Brill from Microsoft Research’s Text Mining, Search and

Navigation Group. Silviu and Eric have developed some novel techniques for using

search query statistics and iterative transformation of query strings to improve

spell correction. Their published paper on this topic – Spelling correction as

an iterative process that exploits the collective knowledge of web users –goes

into much more detail on some of the technical thinking that inspired the

spelling correction system we built.

More here, blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2004/12/06/275899.aspx

new gaggle of Groups (update)

Official Google Blog reports on the new google groups beta, Please check what they have to say about their new google blog,

Whether your interests run to knitting or brain surgery, chances are good

other people out there share them. The new Google Groups not only helps you find

information on millions of topics; now you can actively share ideas and opinions

with others about each and every obsession of yours. And if you don’t find a

group already focused on your passion, by all means start one. Invite others to

join your group so that all interested parties can read and respond to messages,

share opinions and ideas via email or your own group’s web page. If you’re

looking for a group to join, we could definitely use some thoughtful insight (or

idle speculation) over at my space elevator group. Shannon Bauman Associate

Product Manager, Google Groups

More here ( google.com/googleblog/2004/12/new-gaggle-of-groups-update.html )

Is SEM different from SEO, An interesting discussion in forums search engine watch

An interesting thread was started in searchenginewatch forums, A poster asked what is the difference between SEO and SEM, everyone gave their opinion,

Here is my opinion on the same thread,

I agree with tomslick, SEO is part of SEM,

SEM IMO consists of,

1. SEO

2. PPC

3. PFI ( Optional )

4. Link Building

5. Affiliate SE Marketing

6. ROI and conversion tracking

7. Sponsored Search engine listing(some search engines).

8. Shopping feeds ( shopping search engines )

SEO – Search Engine Optimization, Ability to improve a site to make it relevant to Search Engine Algorithm and make the algorithm rank a site based on User queries.

Source: forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3045

Yahoo reportedly settles trademark dispute with Geico

Yahoo has settled a trademark infringement lawsuit with auto insurer Geico, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times online, even as rival Google prepares to take the case to trial this month. Geico, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., sued the two Internet companies in federal court in May for allowing other insurance firms to buy ads that appear when people type “Geico” into an Internet search engine. The confidential settlement was reached Friday between Geico and the Overture Services division of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, leaving Google as sole defendant in the case. Source: Market watch

MSN Beta Adds New Drop Down Search Button for more convenience

Msn adds an excellent new feature, Now you can toggle between different options just by a drop down menu, beta.search.msn.com

Check this screen show

Brett Tabke Founder webmasterworld.com – Brett one of the foremost SEO GUY

Brett Tabke- the authority in search engine optimization

The topmost SEO intellectual, Brett Tabke was exposed to computers and the net world from his school days itself. His interest and curiosity grew from his mere childhood and it did not take much of a time for Brett to establish himself in the SEO field. Brett is now the CEO of the famous optimization site, Webmasterworld.com

When Brett Tabke finished his college, he started working part time for Epyx, Berkeley Softworks, TwinCities, and others in Commodore software. He authored a book for Western Design and Ahoy magazine. Then, Brett started working with bulletin Board system (BBS) and Net Promotions.

BBS is the precursor of the present forums. Brett put the first BBS online in 1984. From there he picked up building websites and also learned about online traffic. It did not take much time for Brett to be the authority on internet traffic.

About search engine marketing Brett explains, “Search Engine Marketing is just a fancy name for checkbook SEO. That’s not what I deal with – it is optimization and promotion I am concerned with.”

Brett looks forward to expand the forum offerings to address the growing needs of the web world. He envisions a full service site that supports all the needs of webmasters. But Brett does not like to deviate from his own field of search engine promotion.

Brett’s site: http://www.webmasterworld.com

Jill Whalen – SEO Lady – The Web Whiz – Jill whalen

Jill Whalen Biography: SEO People Category

An internationally recognized consultant in SEO, Jill Whalen is the owner of High Rankings which specializes in search Engine Optimization. She is also the proficient editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor Search Engine Marketing Newsletter. One of the experts on the internet, Jill Whalen is also famous for her effective talks on seminars and conferences.

Jill has been performing search engine optimization since 1995 and established herself in the career in 1997. Her buoyancy in the work she does motivates her in taking up new assignments from her clients and proves herself right in the way she gives away results.

A regular presenter at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies Conferences, Jill Whalen also conducts her own marketing seminars. She claims to have 5000 registered members in her site which also claimed to have an instant success within days of launching. Jill was the successful administrator and moderator of the Google Forum, at Cre8asite SEO web development Forum and also at Web Page Content Forum.

Her frequent rapport with people who writes articles on search engine optimization helps her to understand the changing trends in the market and thus brings out necessary changes in the strategy she employs. Jill’s creative expertise is proved in the articles she wrote for SearchNewz, WebProNews, WorkZ.com, ClickZ.com, Inc.com, Lycos Small Business.

The critically acclaimed Rank Write Roundtable was efficiently moderated by her. PageRank Explained written by the programmer, Chris Ridings was effectively edited by Jill Whalen. She has also started, Searchcreativ.com to design search engine friendly websites.

With gifted caliber and proficiency in the field of search engine optimization techniques, Jill Whalen leads her successful journey with strong determination and resolve unfolding newer strategies and employing better policies in the field of online marketing.

She practices search engine optimization for more than 6 years her work has brought lots of business to many website owners,

She runs a popular high traffic search engine optimization forum named the highrankings forum, I learned a lot from frequenting her forum,

Jill’s site: www.highrankings.com

Google Toolbar pagerank Not accurate – A reply possibly from google,

Recently One Guy posted saying that he got a reply from google regarding his site loosing page rank, Dont know whether it is true or not but worth a read,

“The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for

entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to

access this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequently

because is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the

Google Toolbar is several months old. If the toolbar is showing a PR of

zero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn’t been

updated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the Google

Toolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the webpage results so

there is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero. If a

site is showing up in the search results, it doesn’t not have a real PR

of zero, the Toolbar is just out of date”

Source: forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3054