Bait and switch of content is considered spam in Dmoz

A very good explanation by an active Dmoz editor named hutcheson on switching content on domains, Dmoz on strict on content quality of sites and when someone cheates by switching content site will be removed from dmoz, A very good explanation below,

“Bait and switch” is when we list a site based on its content, and then the
webmaster changes the content to something else “not related.” For us, it is
sabotage — the single most harmful thing a webmaster can do to the directory.
We take it very seriously. Normally we immediately go on a crusade to expunge
all that webmaster’s sites with extreme prejudice. This is not “revenge” — this
is our way to protect the directory from further acts of sabotage.If we weren’t
talking to you here, that’s where your sites would be already. They aren’t yet,
but you need to understand that this is deadly serious to us. And, now that you
understand that, there need to be no more “switches.” OK, for now both sites are
removed from the directory. I repeat, this is not the permanent ban. Yet. Since
you’re here and we can talk to you, we can try to start fresh. Another background
bit of information: the ODP is not a listing service for the benefit of you, the
webmaster. It’s a site finding service for the benefit of surfers. Our guideline
is: if a site is useful for surfers and we can list it, then we do. There are two
parts there. It has to be useful. And sometime in the past, your automotive site
convinced an editor it might be useful. (That’s a high compliment — most
automotive classified sites are not accepted.)But the other part is, we have to
be able to list it. And this implies, we have to have a definition of a “site”
so we can distinguish what constitutes a “site”; that definition has to
distinguish few enough different “sites” that we can list them all. This means
we don’t try to list every page of every site: just the main page. And when we
see one entity with multiple domain names, we treat all the content on all the
domains as one site, if that makes sense. Now, classified ads sites are, um,
oversubmitted. Most of them are worthless, and many people who have a
classified-ads engine try to abuse us by creating lots of little sites that use
the same (or similar) engines on lots of different topics, and then submit them
all to us. But much larger, name-brand, reputable classified-ads sites have only
one listing because they aren’t depending on spamming us for their promotion, so
they put everything on one domain. That’s not fair to the users, and it’s
certainly not fair to the good sites. So we are very strict on “entities.” One
entity, one site unless there’s a really good reason otherwise. And having
several different classifications of ads is not a good reason. Here’s where you
came in, unwittingly imitating the techniques of the “ancient legions of
big-time spammers.” And — no problem, we know how to handle that, we’ve had
lots of practice: “Find the main page, list it, problem taken care of.” We don’t
want much flexibility in the guidelines here: we’re better served by letting you
link to all your own pages (no matter what domain they are on) and leting us
focus on reviewing someone else’s site. Until the bait-and-switching started up.
(Well, we know how to solve that problem, too, if necessary.)So we won’t ask
“how can you get two listings?” We’ll discuss “do you get one or zero listings?
If you get one, which is the best URL to use, and which is the best category to
put it in?”So talk to us:– Commit to one main URL (we don’t care how many other
URLs you have so long as you don’t submit them; if you need to change the main
URL, we have an “update URL” link)– Commit to leaving the major types of
content be accessible from that URL (we don’t mind additions or changes in
content, so long as the description we have still remains accurate — or you
request an “Update URL” to correct it).– Get the basic links in place (we don’t
mind site redesigns) and we can look at the site. The forum limits apply: we
can’t argue about placement, but we can make sure we’re seeing the content you
meant to feature.

Yahoo Manipulates their search results by hand editing by human reviewed editors

It seems yahoo is doing human review and editing to search results, They purposely make a site rank on top, This was pointed out by Danny sullivan on searchenginewatch.com in this thread, this is what he posted,

In short, for some queries, some sites that came up had a special code
that seemed to indicate they may be hardcoded to rank tops for that query. I’ve
highlighted that below:
rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=ca…R=1/SS=2044565/H=1/IPC=gb/SHE=0/SIG=10pe5sku9/*-http%3A//www.cars.com/

That’s the redirect code for Cars.com, listed tops at Yahoo in a query on cars. H=1 seems to indicate the site was
hardcoded to show up in response to this query. In contrast, H=0 means no
hardcoding appears to be involved. As for this hiring, I’m with others that
posted. This isn’t some push to build human spam hunters. They’ve already got
those. It looks like they want to increase the quality of results, and perhaps
in particular for cases where those results may be in non-English languages.
Spam elimination is part of that, but not the entire part.

It is very interesting and a bit worrying for many SEOs, you can read the whole posting of danny sullivan here,

forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2976

Search Engine Genie the SEO company reaches 150,000 hits

This is to celebrate our increased traffic to our site, We are an SEO company who acts as a valuable resource to the SEO community, This month our traffic has soared to more than 150,000 hits, This much hits are not each for an SEO company, Only forums and SEO tool sites get more traffic than us,

Thanks everyone for your valuable support, Search engine genie will continue to be valuable resource for everyone,

Search Engine Genie Support Team,

Various reasons for cache not loading when the site is down,

People would have encountered a problem when they try loading the cache of a page if the main page is not opening, The cache wont load sometimes There are various reasons for this, Some of the most probable reasons as said by Brett Tabke of webmasterworld,

Whether the site whose cache is checked uses an IFrame?

Whether the site a frame?

Or does it use a conditional onload javascript?

It is designed in sneaky flash?

Is the page really a huge ol gif?

one dead image spoiling the load?

The above are the best reasons why the site might not be loading, Best solution is to switch off Active scripting for your browser and check or other good reasons is to disable images,

See which one works for you,

Google Downloads, Google introduces all download softwares in one page

Check this page out,

You will see

the following softwares provided by google in one single place,

Picase photo editing software,

Google Toolbar

Google deskbar,

Google Desktop Search

Google Gmail Notifier ( an add on for the google toolbar )

Remember it is for Windows softwares only, No Linux version available yet,

Download it here, www.google.com/downloads

Adwords advisor answer in webmasterworld.com on editorial review

Does anyone know how to tell when Google has completed their editorial review of submitted ads?

suzanne, I know that this is probably not the answer that Shak was hoping for, in his post quoted below, but here are two ways to know:

* If you are showing on the content partner network, then, when looking at the date range of ‘Today’, if you see clicks and impressions, you know the ads have been approved.

* If you have elected to not show on content partner sites, then pick a keyword that has you in an appropriate position to show on a search partner site (such as AOL) and look for your ad there. If you see it, then you know you have been approved. (Admittedly, a low daily budget can make this less than 100% reliable.)

great point but with NO answer from Google

I sure wish they would address it

Point well taken, and I’ll forward this feedback to the right folks on Wednesday.

Source: webmasterworld.com/forum81/3919.htm

Thanksgiving logos Google Yahoo Askjeeves logo changed for thanksgiving day

Google yahoo askjeeves changed their logos on the thanksgiving day to pay tribute to everyone celebrating it,

There are the following logos displayed on the thanksgiving day,

Google Backlink Update in 216.239.39.104 datacenter

Google Backlink Update is happening in this datacenter of google, 216.239.39.104, As we know google has been showing only a sample number of backlinks in the link: command for a while, Now the same thing continues too, This backlink update is similar to the recent backlink updates ( showing only a sample list of backlink data ),

This google back link update is first reported in webmasterworld.com

webmasterworld.com/forum3/26815.htm

Interesting post Google guy about difference in google directory Pagerank and the google toolbar pagerank

Recently I came across an interesting post by google guy, He agrees the Directory pagerank scale and the Toolbar pagerank scale are different,

This is an extract from his interesting post in forums.searchenginewatch.com

Quirk 4: “toolbar PageRank and directory PageRank can differ by up to two

units”. Given that the toolbar and the directory go up to different maximum

values (10 and 8, yah?), and that in a fully incremental index, updates can

happen asynchronously in one area like the directory compared to the toolbar

display, this wouldn’t surprise me an iota.

Your will be interested in seeing the other quirkes too,

Source: forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=23150#post23150

Google Guy AKA Matt Cutts voice powerful in google

Google guy recently replied to a poster that he will tell his webmaster to change the information displayed on the features.html page,

That page on google site said the link: command shows all links pointing to a site, Now he made his webmaster change the wordings to the following information, immediately the information was changed to the following,

Who Links To You?

Some words, when followed by a colon, have

special meanings to Google. One such word for Google is the link: operator. The

query link:siteURL shows you pages that point to that URL. For example,

link:www.google.com will show you pages that point to Google’s home page. You

cannot combine a link: search with a regular keyword search.

Source: http://www.google.com/help/features.html

This is what he replied after his webmaster made the necessary changes,

Actually, I think the page has already been changed:

google.com/features.html now just says that it returns links, not “all links”

like it did before. I dropped an email to our webmaster last night after this

thread pointed it out, and I think they managed to change it this

morning.(Thanks to folks for pointing it out, by the way..)

Google Guy as I have always believed is an important person in google company, After lot of research evidence points to Matt Cutts, According to me he is the Googleguy who posts in webmasterworld.com and searchenginewatch.com