SEO BLOG

Saturday, August 21, 2004

what is Google going to do with $1.8 billion?

There is an interesting Forum discussion thread going on in webmaster world one of the leading seo marketing forum in the world, People there started speculating what google will do will all the money they get from their Stock, This IPO has brought some good money into google and we are yet to see Google's future plans on what they are going to do with all their money,

Ok Here are some pick from what people want from google from that thread.... - my comments are added as well,

1. Hire more PhDs(Search algorithm scientists) to find spammers. This is a point even I stress upon I hate Spammers winning in google and i would like Google to fight bad unethical practices more vigorously,

2. New Google directory: I would love to see one, I hate these Dmoz volunteers taking control of the whole directory and never accept many many quality site submissions, Instead we see lots of starter sites with only 3 or 4 pages accepted, That is too weird cant understand what criteria they use to accept site submissions but sometimes it looks pretty ridiculous, I wish Google comes out with an excellent human edited directory, But with real people who are paid to do their work, I wish Dmoz is dropped by Google soon,

3. Google branded browser based on Firefox or a G-branded IM client. GOod ask from google, But I presonally feel Internet Explorer is much more comfortable and adaptable than any other browers, Many applications are built around the compatibility of Internet Explorer and it makes it difficult to use other browsers which lack in compatibility, Regarding Im client I would like to see one from Google, I personally use Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AOL, Indiatimes messengers. I dont mind using an other one especially from google which I love,

4. ISP business - I dont want Google to get into ISP services just because it has a potential risk of loosing their Branding,

5. Google Auctions - Already lots of auction sites out there, Cant sit out to see an other one from Google,

6. Overture acquisition - Silly As if Yahoo is ready to sell it,

7. RSS desktop version MyGoogle - Good ask, wish Google comes out with something like this,

8. Google SEO - LOL, i had a Giggle on this, If Google is out into SEO business there are 1000s of companies willing to spend millions of dollars to them, But what happens their results will be completely corrupted and all junk sites will be on top, Anyway funny wish to google,

9. semantic web -- Ahh that will be great, Google moving into semantic understanding of queries, it is going to be one difficult job to achieve this, hope to see something like this coming soon,

10. A better search engine - SteveB an experienced poster in webmasterworld suggested this, I think steve has to say this to yahoo, Google does some great job improving their Algorithm, They are constantly working on it but yahoo on the other hand sits of Onpage factor analysis and pushing lots of junk sites on top, I wish Google takes care of them selves to build a better search engine, I appreciate all their efforts towards it,

Friday, August 20, 2004

Recent Google Bug - Homepage dropped due to Duplicate content,

There was a recent bug reported by some webmasterworld guys regarding homepages of sites dropped from the index, Many sites out there lost their homepage due to some kind of duplicate content penalty, Google Guy who is mostly regarded as an important representative of Google replies to it, Here is his response:

Hey bakedjake, I think I've found your problem. There's no penalties or anything like that; it's because you're splitting your internal linkage between two different root pages. Suppose your domain is yourdomain.com. Do the search [site:yourdomain.com inurl:https]. See those 912 https results? Click on the cached page for the first one. Now mouseover the link in the top left. Instead of pointing to http://www.yourdomain.com/, notice that it points to http://www.yourdomain.com/index.asp. All the https cached pages that I checked link to the index.asp version of your home page, and there were enough of your internal pages doing that that you convinced us that http://www.yourdomain.com/index.asp was the canonical root page for your domain. That's why when you do the search [yourdomain] you see http://www.yourdomain.com/index.asp as the first result.
So your hundreds of internal https pages pointing to a different location is clouding the water some. If you fix them to all point to the same location (http://www.yourdomain.com/) then we'll crawl all those pages in a little while, and you should be fine shortly afterwards.
I guess the takehome message for non-bakedjake members is to doublecheck your internal linkage. I'd pick a canonical root page like http://www.yourdomain.com/ and ju st stick with that by making sure any internal pages point there instead of to other versions of your root page.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Yahoo! Search to power OptusNet users

Australia's second largest telco, Optus, says Yahoo! Search would from now on power search requests from OptusNet users.
Optus said that under an agreement signed with Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand, Yahoo! Search Technology would power web search results on the OptusNet dialup and broadband portals.
The telco said the agreement ended its three-year relationship with Sensis/Looksmart.
It said that each month there were four million search requests from OptusNet users.

Source - The Age:

New ASCII image generation tool - Using Google images

I just found this excellent ASCII image generation tool, it is really exciting, It gives an oppurtunity to view some top people images all generated with small character containing their names, This tool is really amazing, it fetches images from the google database and rearranges with charecters,

Here are 2 image searches for the phrases "sergey brin" and "Larry Page" Google founders

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

SEC OK's Google IPO - Google on its way to trade as early as Thursday

The Securities and Exchange Commission granted final approval Wednesday to the paperwork required for Google Inc.'s initial public offering, paving the way for the Internet search giant to set a price for its shares and begin selling them after several stumbles and a last-minute downward revision on the size of the offering.

AnooX -- New Search Engine released, Anoox Not for Profit Search Engine

According to Anoox,

The goal of AnooX.com is two fold:
1. To deliver the most accurate search results. We are doing this by utilizing an innovative and Patent Pending search engine design, which is based on combination of machine power for gathering information, plus real majority based voting power to deliver the final best results.

2. To deliver cost of advertising which is 90% or more lower than similar costs of advertising at Yahoo™ , Google™ , and like publicly traded for profit companies. Thus enabling businesses worldwide to increase sales & success by being able to advertise effectively online and at much lower costs than they currently can.

AnooX will be operated as a not-for-profit company, which means we will drive to have the lowest prices without regard to profits and in fact we will share our profit (if any) on an Annual basis with the users*, advertisers and others helping AnooX.

Google IPO - Notice of revised date to have the registration statement declared effective

Google sent the following Mail to people who registered to bid before the IPO price is determined,

Please be advised that the prospectus for the offering of Google's Class A common stock will be amended to change the estimated offering price range and the number of shares to be sold in the offering. The offering price is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. As originally planned, Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock in the offering. However, in view of this new price range, the selling shareholders are reducing the shares they expect to sell to approximately 5.5 million shares, yielding a total offering of approximately 19.6 million shares. In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase approximately 2.9 million additional shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments.

Google and the underwriters requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission declare the registration statement effective on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). Holders of bidder IDs will be sent a notice of effectiveness once the registration statement has been declared effective. Google and the underwriters expect to close the auction when the registration statement is declared effective.
Google plans to file an amendment to the registration statement Wednesday morning. Holders of bidder IDs will be sent a notice of amendment to the registration statement when it is filed, at which time you will be able to obtain a copy of the updated prospectus from "http://www.ipo.google.com/data/prospectus.html". If you have submitted a bid, you should access that prospectus and carefully reconsider your bid(s). Please note that placing a bid does not guarantee that you will be allocated shares in the offering, if it is completed.

A registration statement relating to Google's Class A common stock has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. Google's Class A common stock may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of Google's Class A common stock in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state. No offer to buy shares of Google's Class A common stock can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time until the notice of acceptance is sent after the effective date.

Google Slashes IPO Price Range - IPO Price range reduced by Google,

In a Surprising move by Google, The IPO range price was reduced by Google from 108$-135$ to 85$-95$,

According to the reuters article:

Google Inc., the Web search engine, on Wednesday slashed the price range on its eagerly awaited initial public offering to between $85 and $95 per share from $108 to $135 per share.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=6004505

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Google's IPO delayed

Google Inc.'s initial public offering has been delayed while the company awaits final approval of its paperwork by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regulators made no decision Tuesday as Google had requested, said John Heine, an SEC spokesman. The Internet search company had requested that its registration statement be made effective at 4 p.m. EDT to clear the way for shares to begin trading as early as Wednesday morning.

Yahoo offers domain registration services at $9.95 per year

Yahoo one of the Giant internet companies is now enterning into the domain registration service industry, they are competing with big names like godaddy, networksolutions etc, Yahoo already offers free/paid web hosting, web design services, email services and many more, Now their venture into domain registration market is an important improvement, previously they were offering domain registration at 35$ per year which is way higher than the current price,

Small businesses will be benefited a lot from their exciting offer from yahoo,

MSN New beta search engine review now closed,

MSN Tecnincal review of their beta search is now closed, MSN is testing their bot and their search product for a long time, They recently gave a glimpse of their new index which will be going live soon, Many search engine optimization experts were seriously analysing their sites and their client sites on how well they were performing in the new MSN beta search, MSN search as we all know is the third most important search engine only next to google search engine and yahoo search engine, People have noticed considerable amount of search engine traffic from MSN alone, MSN search has attracted people who specifically target product search and MSN is known to send well targeted visitors to a site, Unfortunately testing is closed, Now we just have to wait till they bring their search product live, We hope to see it pretty soon,
Following message is displayed on the techreview search page,

"Thank you very much to all of those that tried our service and sent us feedback. We will make improvements based on the suggestions we received. Once we are ready, we will release another preview of our new algorithmic search engine.
On a related note, we have a site that has previews and betas of upcoming MSN technologies: The MSN Sandbox. Visit the MSN Sandbox and try out our new MSN product ideas.
Thanks,MSN Search Team"

I checked some of my client sites in MSN search, Some of my clients are performing extremely well in the new MSN search engine, I just love to see the search engine bring their index online,

Google seeks OK to sell shares

Google has signaled that its share auction is nearly complete, asking the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval to begin selling 25.7 million shares of stock starting late this afternoon.

Venture capitalists and Google watchers said yesterday's request, coming on the first business day after the bidding opened, suggested the Web search provider's much-anticipated auction already may be oversubscribed at a price in the target range of $108 to $130 a share. That would fetch Google between $2.8 billion and $3.3 billion, the biggest initial public offering ever for an Internet company.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Tactics of 'Google Guys' Test IPO Law's Limits

Playboy magazine issue is still burning hot, AN other related news on the Google guys controversy,

The "Google Guys, America's Newest Billionaires" -- as company founders Sergey Brin, 30, and Larry Page, 31, are described in the new issue of Playboy magazine -- may be engineers by training, but they are proving to be skilled at marketing too.
Having built one of the world's best-known Internet search engines through free publicity and word of mouth, they have generated global attention for their ongoing $3 billion electronic auction of stock by granting an exclusive interview with Playboy.

Auction for Shares In Google's IPO Could End Today

Google Inc.'s initial public offering took a major step forward as the company notified investors that today may be their last chance to submit, withdraw or change bids in the unusual $3 billion electronic auction for stock in the Internet giant.

Google Could Make Its Market Debut Wednesday

The Web search company said on Monday it has asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to declare its registration statement effective on Tuesday at 4 p.m. EDT

Google and the underwriters have requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission declare the registration statement pertaining to Google's initial public offering of Class A common stock effective on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 at 4:00 p.m.

Google (GOOG) on Monday said that it has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to declare its IPO effective on Aug. 17 at 4 p.m. Eastern, which could see the search company's shares trading the next day.

Source: CBS market watch

Google's Funny logos - Google Olmypic logos, Google Athens 2004 Logos

Google has a good sense of humour as we all know, They had the Pigeon rank, Lunar search etc, Now they have some nicely designed google logos on their search page, These logos are designed with The olympics in sight, Right now they displayed 5 logos which is posted below, More Google logos will be posted here as google shows them on their homepage,

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Passing Parade: Google Hype Vs. History

The Google IPO has attracted almost as much media attention as the Normandy invasion did in June 1944. Both had casualties. At least we know the assault on the French beaches 60 years ago was successful.

From the beginning, Google created a carnival atmosphere in announcing it was going public through a Dutch auction. That raised a few eyebrows and created a lot of confusion. A Dutch auction is just that: An auction with stock going to the highest bidder. In theory, all investors are equal. Anybody with a few dollars, a dream and a high enough bid can buy into an IPO at its offering price -- in theory, that is. But as the Google IPO unfolded, some investors were more equal than others. First came a requirement buried in the pages of the prospectus. A potential bidder had to be an “accredited investor.” That meant the average man or woman on the Street would not be qualified to bid on Google’s IPO, unless his or individual financial status was pretty darn sound.