By: Rand Fishkin
Where Does Google Draw the Data Collection Line?
Search EnginesGoogle has always attempted to collect an extraordinary amount of data about users (and webmasters in particular) - a few recent ...
Search Engines - Page 23
By: IBrian
How to write a quality Google News site
Search EnginesPreviously I wrote on SEOmoz about the benefits of Google News as a syndication tool for SEO. Staying on that track, I'll address writing specifically for inclusion in Google News today. Let’s underline something immediately – if you want to use news syndication for organic link development, then we’re using on...
By: Rebecca Kelley
Home Pages Disappearing from Google's UK Results
Search EnginesTeam Fresh Egg has noticed a strange phenomenon, and it appears to be an ongoing issue from at least August 2006. It seems that home pages (and only home pages) of .com sites hosted in the UK are disappearing from Google's results when you do a site: search and filter the results to only show pages from the UK. I've played around with various sites, and while the home pages pop up under the normal...
By: Rand Fishkin
Links vs. Content and the Paris Hilton Law of Visibility
Search EnginesMichael Martinez, when he was a blogger and regular commenter here at SEOmoz, often chided me for holding the viewpoint that rankings are "all about links." Recently, there's been more conversations along those lines, both here at SEOmoz and ...
By: IBrian
How to beat the Google Sandbox
Search EnginesIntroducing the problemIn setting up a ranking system based on links, it soon became clear to Google that link manipulation remained a threat to the objectivity of their search results.With patents filed in the early 2000’s such as Hilltop, ...
By: Rand Fishkin
Why Does Yahoo! Compete With Itself?
Search EnginesI'm baffled by: The new Yahoo! Bookmarks, which doesn't integrate with del.icio.us Yahoo! Photos, which doesn't interface with Flickr Yahoo! Maps Beta vs....
By: Rand Fishkin
A List of Web Page Quality Signals
Search EnginesI was inspired by Xan Porter's recent post on Evaluating Web Page Quality. Search engines have their own evaluation signals, but as they try to improve in quality, it's only natural to pursue more human metrics in order to refine to the greatest possible degree. The research she points to - ...
By: IBrian
Google News for Traffic, Links, and Rankings
Search EnginesWhat Google News syndication offers is not simply a way to develop targeted traffic, but it can also serve as a powerful indirect link building method in itself. Traffic If you get syndicated by Google news, you can immediately tap into unique traffic streams. Likewise, if you can provide a genuinely useful source of news, users will bo...
By: Rebecca Kelley
What Google Needs To Do with YouTube to Make Me Happy
Search EnginesAnd now, a brief rant about YouTube:Call me a purist, but when I do a search for something like "the killers mr. brightside music video," I don't want 29 of the 30 search results to be of some a-hole teenager lip-synching to the damn song. You may think your video is cool, Mr. A-Hole Teenager, but it's not. It doesn't have Eric Roberts in it. Only The Killers' music video doe...
By: Rand Fishkin
A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm - Revealed
Search EnginesMy post last week on the Google algorithm gave me the crazy idea to actually attempt to write out a rough outline of what the formula might look like. I've taken softplus' suggestion and given it a go using a massively simplistic weight/factor expressio...
By: Rand Fishkin
If They Did Leak the Google Algo...
Search EnginesLots of bloggers are commenting about this thread at Digitalpoint on why Google's algo has never been leaked. My take on the algo - it would barely help if it was public knowledge. Yes, we'd all sit down and analyze all the cool things Google can detect about trust and gaming and spam and manipulation... and then? Then, w...
By: Rand Fishkin
Michael Eisenberg on Yahoo!'s Strategy
Search EnginesI feel bad for not reading Michael's blog more frequently. I used to be in relatively frequent touch, but it's amazing how blogs can fall off your radar if you don't have them bookmarked. A couple weeks ago, Michael had remarkable insight into how Yahoo! can overcome Google and use their strengths to create a ...
By: Rand Fishkin
Bizarre Handling of a 301
Search EnginesNormally, I'm not the type to point out ranking problems we have at our domains, but I thought this one was so particularly odd that it warranted some attention. As some folks may have noticed, we 301'd web2.0awards.org over to www.seomoz.org/web2.0/. It was always our intention to do this once we'd given the Google sandbox a thorough ...
The Project: Generating AdSense Revenue From Low Traffic Site – the Sequel
Search EnginesIt’s roughly three months since I wrote about the project site (original post), and it’s time to take a peek how the site is doing. I admit that I’m still being extremely lazy/busy, and have done lots of t...