by David Wallace | Mar 5, 2007
Will the fact that search engines are adding more “personalization” to the search results eventually kill the business of performing search engine optimization for web sites? SEO has become a very lucrative business and has seen many new companies as well as individuals come into the space for the last several years. SEOs fear that their livelihood may be in jeopardy as engines like Google, Yahoo and others cater to the personal searching habits of their users.
by David Wallace | Feb 28, 2007
We’ve been asking for some time. It was even promised as a possible future development. Well now it is finally arrived – support for a “NOYDIR” meta tag. Web site owners have long been frustrated over the lack of control they have had in they way their home page appears in the Yahoo! search results if they are also listed in the Yahoo! Directory. This due to the fact that Yahoo! would use the title and description from the directory listing as opposed to the site’s title tag and meta description tag and/or snippet of content from the actual web page.
by David Wallace | Feb 22, 2007
I conducted a test last April (almost 10 months ago) in which I added a phrase to our SearchRank MySpace profile that at the time produced no search results at any of the four major engines. I linked the phrase to Justin Timberlake’s official web site to see if I could get the site to rank for that phrase even though it did not appear anywhere within his site – a Google bombing of sorts. I won’t repeat the phrase here as I don’t want any more pages ranking for it but you can read about the results of my experiment 4 months after link was originally placed.
by David Wallace | Feb 20, 2007
Establishing trust with consumers is crucial to the success of any online business, especially those who are selling a product or service. This is oftentimes easier to do in the “real world” than it is on the Internet. For example, you as a consumer are in a brick and mortar storefront looking to buy a particular product. You can be comfortable with the atmosphere, enjoy the selection of merchandise they have to offer, and even be assured of their stability as a business because they have been around for some time. The sales person can also put you at ease if they are friendly and helpful to you. Web sites are a bit different in that they are not physical locations. Plus you are dealing with a digital medium as opposed to a real person.
by David Wallace | Feb 15, 2007
Loren Baker has an excellent post on why the nofollow tag sucks. In fact he provides thirteen reasons why it has failed to deliver on its original purpose. I couldn’t agree more. Loren reminds us that the NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming. However this has not dealt with the real problem and that is stopping people from spamming blog comments in the first place. Things like asking a question or requiring authentication works much better in combating comment spam.
by David Wallace | Feb 13, 2007
Is Google looking to dominate the world? Many believe so. They certainly have their hands in more things than most people can keep track of. A video entitled “Master Plan – about the power of Google” suggests that not only is Google becoming too powerful but that they have obtained a mass of information on people, disregarding our privacy. The video even suggests that Google is sharing this information with the CIA.
by David Wallace | Feb 7, 2007
Can giant corporations not only admit they are wrong but act quickly to make the wrong right? Yes they can. The National Pork Board has done just that, issuing a letter of apology to Jennifer Laycock over a big misunderstanding. If you recall last week an attorney representing The National Pork Board had sent Jennifer Laycock a C&D order over an alleged trademark dispute. They had claimed that a shirt Jennifer sells to help raise money for the non-profit milk banks was violating their trademark “the other white meat.” Her shirt read “The Other White Milk.”
by David Wallace | Feb 5, 2007
As promised last week, Yahoo! is rolling out their new ranking model today for its paid search advertisers. Gone is the highest price gets the highest position model and what is replacing it is a system that operates in much the same way as Google AdWords does.
by David Wallace | Feb 1, 2007
Would you ever confuse breast milk with pork? The National Pork Board apparently thinks people will and has threatened to sue my friend, Jennifer Laycock, over a shirt that is being sold to help raise money for the non-profit milk banks. The shirt reads “The Other White Milk. “The National Pork Board feels it violates their trademark “the other white meat.” Give me a break! How does pork have anything to do with milk or breastfeeding for that matter?
by David Wallace | Jan 30, 2007
Have you noticed any changes in the way Google search engine results pages look when searching for local businesses? They just announced today the closer integration of maps, address and contact info and even reviews of local business when they detect a local search query. In fact, Google states that we will see this kind of information every time we search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, they will also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews.
