The Worst Ad Campaigns of 2007

Accentuate the Positive. Forget the negative

I have noticed that there has been a new crop of broadcast media ads that do a miserable job in hawking the clients’ products and services. Let’s take a look at a few of these.

Burger King Corporation

It is already bad enough that the over-sized plastic coated, bobble-headed 'King' elicits the gut response; 'man, that looks creepy' , now Burger King has chosen to associate underlying messages of death and destruction to their services and food products.

The first ad campaign features urban mom's hiring a hit man to oust the 'King'; to make the hit, slow and painful. What does a slow painful (hit) aka (murder) have to do marketing with fast food? Agreeably, the stuff can cause a slow painful artery-clogged death.

The second ad campaign features three mom's in a mini-van, attempting to 'run down the King'.
Agreeable, the 'King's food may look like road kill from time to time, but what does extreme road rage, aka (murder) have to do with fast food?

This is very, negative and lacks taste. (figuratively)

Force Flex Bags, The Glad Products Company

A couple of bank robbers get nabbed when they take too long stuffing the Force-Flex bag with everything but the kitchen sink. The advertising agency for Force-Flex chose to use a ‘bank robbery’ at the heart of their concept.

This is very, very negative.

Wendy’s International

A group of people are in a hospital setting. Their mouths are missing and they have to communicate by writing suggesting that their ability to use their mouths was “removed” because they did not eat at a Wendy’s. The advertising agency for Wendy’s chose to use a rehabilitation clinical setting for the heart of their concept.
While rehabilitation can be a positive step in the right direction, a major fast food chain should not pin their branding to rehab.

This is tasteless as well as negative.

Nationwide Insurance

Looking through the eyes of a Nationwide representative you see a normal home. Moments later the home is in flames, cars at an intersection start crashing and finally a wedding ceremony is transformed into a funeral. I think this one titters on the line.
Any novice could have rubbed two brain cells together and come up with catastrophic examples of collision and death to brand an insurance agency.

This is lacks total creativity and is negative.

Verizon Wireless

A father and son are window shopping for phones. The son asks his dad when the phones will go on sale. His father retorts, ‘When pigs fly’. At this moment a large pig waddles into the shot – (walking) just as a Verizon sales person puts a ‘red-hot’ sales sign in the window.
I have watched this commercial several times and cannot figure out the concept. For gosh sakes! – The pig is walking and the phones are on sale. Am I missing something here?

This commercial is not necessarily negative, but is ambiguous and confusing.

And now… the absolute worst commercial for 2007

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Panicked office workers run for cover when one of the associates screams. “She’s got a knife.” The knife-wielding worker responds, “she has a knife and fork.” (Because she’s eating a KFC meal, of course). The brainchild of this concept uses killing, mayhem and murder to sell their client’s product.

This commercial is especially insensitive to families who have lost love ones in similar real-world circumstances akin to the recent rampage at Virginia Tech.

This commercial is tasteless, insensitive and extremely negative.

All of these companies and their advertising agencies have broken the cardinal rule in advertising. Never reinforce your branding with a negative idea or concept. A smart ad agency accentuates the positive. Nike, Coca Cola USA and McDonald's are good examples of running ad campaigns that touch on a positive note.

From a psychological perspective humans tend to bury and suppress bad or negative memories.
So why in the world would a business or company ever consider reinforcing their branding with a negative concept or idea?

It’s just bad business.

There's Marketing Gold All Around Your Business

Many companies have marketing gold laying around their office or hidden in their computers. These untapped assets can give you a leg up on the competition if marketed correctly.
Google wants to show its users more than text and photos, and it has successfully been rolling out a program called Universal Search that targets Blogs, News, Video and Images.

For the smart business owner, the days of posting only news releases, marketing content and still photos are over. You can now enhance your search engine results and potential client base by taking advantage of this new opportunity.

Go to the Google homepage and type in "Google headquarters." You should see three photos at the top of the results page.
Now type in "Google datacenters." You should see a thumbnail photo of Matt Cutts, the Google-Guy. This is a thumbnail from his talks posted on Google Video.

Video Shows and CommercialsIf you have a show, seminar, teaching session, marketing video, trade show video, TV commercial, instructional video, industrial video, safety video, educational video or webinar you should post it on any of the free, large video Web sites.

These include:
Truveo Video Search
Google Video also Google Beta Upload Program for TV Stations
YouTube Broadcast Yourself
SoapBox Video (Beta Microsoft)

I'm not going to promise that your image, photo and video resources are instantly going to start popping up in search results, but chances are they will over time. Especially when there are searches for more cryptic information.

Be sure to tag and title your video properly. For example, if you're uploading an instructional video about "Sexual harassment in the Workplace," make sure you include the title as such and a complete description of the video.

Convert Your Power Point to Video too!Just about every company creates Power Point presentations. Convert these to video and upload them as well. If you have a Power Point about "The Impact of Unregulated Chinese Toothpaste in the US" chances are your Power Point will appear in the Google search results for this topic.

Multiple Stores, Businesses and LocationsCompanies can also leverage there multiple locations. Google allows stores, companies and businesses to register their individual locations through Google Local. (Google Maps).

Google wants to capture, saturate and grow hyper accurate local results! So why not help them and tell about your locations across the US!http://www.google.com/local/add
If you have more than 10 locations, Google will let you manage these from one spreadsheet.

Google is so serious about this program that they're paying independent contractors to visit local businesses, gather data and photographs of local businesses, and tell the business owners about Google Maps and Google Ad Words.

Photos, Images and GraphicsGoogle and other search engines, most noticeably Ask.com, show photos, images and graphics in their search results.

Go to Ask.com and type; Andy Warhol Work http://www.ask.com/web?q=Andy+Warhol+Work&search=&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dirNotice that there are three images at the top page that link to other Web sites.

The images in your Web site may start appearing in search results depending on the amount of imagery you use and its related search query. Here are some helpful hints to pass along to your webmaster.

1) Use keywords or key phrases in the image file name.Example: < src= "red_rubber_ball.jpg">

2) Use the same keywords or key phrases in the ALT TAG.Example: < alt= "red_rubber_ball.jpg">

3) Keep the image near the supporting content or text on the Web page.

4) Upload your images to popular photo sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket.

Adding videos, listings and images to your web site will give your business a competitive advantage as Universal Search grows and takes hold in all the popular search engines.

Check Out Technorati.com

Check Out Technorati.com! Really nice site.
Technorati Profile

Doing Keyword Research? Here Are Some Resources To Help!

Jul. 9, 2007 at 8:29am Eastern by Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/070709-082957.php
Doing Keyword Research? Here Are Some Resources To Help!

Search term research is one of the fundamental activities for a successful search marketing campaign. You've got to know the words people are using if you want to target them properly. To help, I've expanded the Search Term Research section of Search Engine Land to list a variety of resources and tools you can consult. The Search Behavior section also has been updated to list places where search engines generally report on search activity, such as popular trends in searching. Both sections also recap articles we've covered on these topics. Below, a bit more about what's in both sections, along with the sad decline of the Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool and some alternatives that have come along in its place.

One of the best things when the former GoTo paid search service arrived nearly 10 years ago was that it soon began offering a free tool allowing you to see what people were searching for, ranked by popularity of search. GoTo renamed itself Overture, and the Overture Search Term Selection tool was an essential component of any search marketer's toolkit.

Yahoo later purchased Overture, and the tool to support Yahoo Search Marketing customers was renamed again, though it continued to operate as normal. Then Yahoo rolled out its new Panama paid search system, and the tool seemed abandoned, as a result.

Yahoo promised earlier this year that a new tool would be coming, and one was delivered last month. But compared to the old tool, it's a joke.

Consider a search for terms related to cars. The old tool, when it doesn't timeout, tells me these are the top five related words and their search volumes:

car insurance: 3,148,492
auto purchase: 1,734,429
buy a car: 1,311,773
new car: 1,080,103
car rental: 1,030,755

Sounds great? Sure, if you don't mind the data being half-a-year old. Those volumes are from January 2007. Normally, this tool should show search data from the previous month.

Well, Yahoo has this new keyword tool now. One disadvantage to it is that you can only reach it if you're logged into a Yahoo Search Marketing account. OK, so it doesn't take long to set-up an account (though only allowing user names only up to 10 characters long sucks -- everything I wanted was taken). Plus, placing a $5 deposit isn't much for those just after some free keyword research.

If you get past those disadvantages, there's the bigger issue that the tool isn't that helpful. A search for [cars], for example, gives a list with no apparent order. Consider the top five things that show up and the estimated monthly searches for them:

used car: 257,220+
new car: 257,220+
automobile: 20,160-257,219
car for sale: 257,220+
buying car: 20,160-257,219

Are these in order of popularity? If so, why are there further down on the list matches with ranges above that 20,000 minimum mark? And what's with these ranges? From 20,000 through 260,000 is Yahoo's idea of granularity? The tool might work well enough for paid search marketers, but for SEO work, don't bother.
Of course, the tool IS designed for Yahoo's paid search customers. Why should it care if others get a free ride off it?

Mainly, because it's good PR for Yahoo. What's the first tool I use and recommend these days? The Google AdWords Keyword Tool! Unlike Yahoo, I can link to it directly (with Yahoo, to use its tool, you have to hunt for it as part of the ad creation process). Unlike Yahoo, I don't need to log into AdWords to use it. Unlike Yahoo, the data is fresh -- from June 2007.

Sure, Google doesn't give you actual volume figures. Still, you can sort the terms generally by search volume, and the small graphs in that column give you a good idea of relative popularity. In addition, you can exclude synonyms and just find terms related to the exact term you entered. The top five terms related to cars according to Google?

cars
cars movie
cars the movie
new cars
rental cars

It would be nice to see Yahoo step up and take on Google by making its search term research tool more robust, more specific and available to anyone. Consider also that after Google expanded Google Trends (another awesome research tool) with Hot Trends (see Google Meme: Hot Trends Added To Google Trends), Yahoo wasted no time reminding the world of its long-standing Yahoo Buzz area that covers search trends.

Sure, that's wonderful, as long as you happen to be interested in whatever Yahoo Buzz is talking about. It's not so great if you want to dive into a particular area of your choosing.
Yahoo also loses to Microsoft in the PR battle of providing search term information. Consider adCenter Labs, which offers a variety of keyword research tools including adCenter Labs Keyword Forecast. This is like Google Trends, where you can drill deep on whatever terms you like -- plus you can get the age and gender breakdown of those searching, as estimated by Microsoft.

Even smaller players have cashed in on Yahoo not supporting its old, useful tool. Both Wordtracker and Trellian have fee-based keyword research tools. But when Yahoo abandoned its tool, they rolled out basic free ones to gain some PR. They deserve it, because the tools are helpful.

The Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool for [cars] tells me these figures for daily searches:
cars: 73,994
used cars: 27,871
car: 23,767
fast cars: 15,056
car rental: 10,647

The Trellian Free Search Term Suggestion Tool for [cars] tells me these figures for yearly searches:
cars" 1,036,784
used cars: 322,583
new cars: 86,787
fast cars: 69,364
rental cars: 60,904

The downside to both tools is that I'd like to see them describe more about where the data comes from (Trellian is unclear on this) and how fresh it is (for WordTracker, I think it is daily searches on average over the past two months).

Keep in mind that the volumes from each service (Yahoo, WordTracker, Trellian) won't match each other for a variety of reasons. First, the time periods are different (monthly, daily, yearly). Second, the search networks are different (Yahoo will be larger and have more searches overall).

Instead, the numbers are just guides as to the popularity of terms relative to each other. From WordTracker, [cars] is roughly three times as popular as searches for [used cars]. Looking at Trellian, you can see its figures show roughly the same percentage. Looking at figures from several services can give you a better idea in general of what terms you ultimately decide are popular enough to overtly target.

Overall, I hope this provides a glimpse of some of the current free tools out there. As I said, there are many more listed on our Search Term Research page, plus be sure to see the Search Behavior section for those ways that search engine let you have fun seeing broad trends. Meanwhile, I'll be hoping that Yahoo steps up and reclaims its former glory as a search term research resource.

How To Build An Audience On MySpace

Orginally posted on Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/070703-135507.php

MySpace is a great social media site that marketers can leverage in a number of different ways. One of these is building up a large audience for your profile, which can then be used to drive traffic to your site, interact with consumers, create mind share, and even empower people to brand your company for you.

The problem is that most people don't know how to build a large audience. And unless you're a well-known, popular brand, chances are that if you build it they won't come. Here are some things that you can do to build a large relevant audience on MySpace:
Gather in groups. MySpace has groups for pretty much every topic under the sun. Find the groups that are relevant to your business and start befriending the people who are members of these groups. It is also a good idea to establish a group of your own based on your brand or topic of interest.

Participate in forums. Many people are not even aware that MySpace has forums on their site. Well they do, and many of the sections are very popular. A good way to find people that have similar interests is to drill down into discussions based around relevant topics.

Find like-minded users. You can search for people on MySpace based on interests that people have listed in their profiles. What better way to find people that would be interested in your brand then finding them based on interests?

Seek out friends of friends. Usually people are friends because they have interests in common. Searching through friends of friends is a great place to find people who have a good chance of being interested in you, too. Not all friends of friends will be into what you're doing, but there's a good chance lots of them will be.

Don't overlook friends of competitors. Just because a user has friended one your competitors does not necessarily mean they are loyal to that brand. Often times they have just friended them based on interests and not because they are evangelists for that brand. Besides, people can like more than one company in each space.

Promote your MySpace profile elsewhere. Link to your MySpace profile from your website. There's a good chance that many of the people visiting your regular site also use social networking sites like MySpace. They may not even know that you have a profile. Let them know and they just might add you as a friend.

Optimize your profile for search. Having your MySpace profile rank well for your brand name is not only a good reputation management strategy but also a good way to increase your audience. Avid users of social networking sites like MySpace would often rather visit your MySpace profile then your regular site. So when they search out your brand make sure they have that option.

There are many ways to find potential friends for your company's MySpace page. These tactics aren't limited to MySpace—many other social networks work in a very similar way. Cameron Olthuis is director of marketing and design for ACS and writes regularly on social media issues through the company's blog, Pronet Advertising. The Let's Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Jul. 3, 2007 at 1:55pm Eastern by Cameron Olthuis

Official Google Maps API Blog: Google Maps API Version 2

Official Google Maps API Blog: Google Maps API Version 2

What's the Story on PageRank?

By Donald Nelson (c) 2007

A lot of website owners are upset or puzzled when their website's Google PageRank goes down or does not rise. Is it worth losing any sleep over changes in that green line and number that appear in a Google tool bar at the top of your browser? I think that excessive worry or thought about PageRank is not constructive, and it is better to put it all in perspective by taking a rational look at what PageRank is and what it is not.

First of all the concept behind PageRank is indeed at the heart of Google's ranking process. The Google founders came from academia and they noticed that in many academic documents some sources were continually cited. They reasoned that if a particular document such as a book or research paper was mentioned in many places then it must be important. They applied this to the web and assumed that if one website links to another it is in fact, giving a "vote" for that site. A website that has many incoming links must have a certain degree of importance. In the current Google algorithm the quantity and quality of incoming links is certainly a factor in deciding the ranking of a particular website for any given search-query.

Think about it. In the early days of the web people would build websites and then they would tell their visitors to chëck out other "cool" sites and they would link to these sites. This is the process of natural linking and it still goes on. If you really have good content, people will link to you without letting you know. Similarly, if your name is Bob Dylan and your website is www.bobdylan.com, thousands of people will link to you without you having to send a cheesy email begging for a link.

Various government agencies, educational institutions, established companies and anyone else who is "big" in the "real world" is likely to also be big on the Internet simply by virtue of their previous fame and accomplishment. Google's ranking system took this into consideration and this is one of the reasons why Google is currently the number one search engine. It gives better results and that is why people use it.

But, does that mean that only the big players can be seen on the net? Far from it. While there is a difference between one guy working in his house with one computer and a corporate giant with a whole staff, and this is indeed reflected in rankings, the Internet provides a much leveler playing field than in yesteryear. Prior to 1995, it would have been very hard for someone to spread their news and views far and wide as bloggers do today. It costs millíons of dollars to publish a daily newspaper or to print and circulate a magazine, but it costs far less to publish a website or a blog, and lots of "little guys" have taken advantage of the power of the Internet.

But what about PageRank, how much of it do I really need to get my site noticed? For those who are not familiar with the PageRank system. Google supplies a tool bar which you can download and install on your browser. If you make a complete installation with all the advanced features, then every time you open a new website you will see a green and white bar with the label PageRank. Put your mouse on the bar and you will see a number from 0 to 10. If a website is not indexed by Google or banned by Google, the bar may be grey or all white.

But what do the numbers mean? I had a client who was worried about his number 3 PageRank figure and based on my observation I answered him with my unofficial view on the rankings. Here is how I currently see it:

PageRank 0-2 shows that a site does not have many links and needs work, However, and this a big "however," it may not really affect your search engine rankings. I have a client with a page rank of 2 and his site ranks well, even number one, for several search terms in a fairly competitive industrial category. So PageRank is not everything; it may have an impact on your rankings and traffíc, but in some cases it may not matter. In any case if you have a PageRank of 0-2, you can work on it through proper link building activity which I will explain at the end of the article.

PageRank 3 can be OK in some cases but in highly competitive industries you should work to improve it.

PageRank 4 is quite a normal number and indicates that you have enough links in either quantity or quality to make your site competitive.

PageRank 5 indicates that a site has many links or links from authoritative sites, and that Google has good "trust" in the site. It is a respectable and attainable PageRank.

PageRank 6 is very difficult to attain. This rank indicates that the site has many links and links from respected places. Remember the example of www.bobdylan.com, which I mentioned above; it has a PageRank 6, so you can get an idea of the difficulty involved.

PageRank 7-10 is usually earned by large and established institutions or websites which have tremendous authority, due to the quantity and quality of the incoming links. It is extremely difficult to attain this ranking. You really have to be special to get it.

So, don't worry excessively about PageRank. First look at your traffíc, then look at your salës and finally at your bottom line. They are the important numbers to watch. If you want to íncrease your traffíc and also PageRank, then here are a few steps that you can take:

1. Add content to your website. Make your website so good and so useful that people will link to you without you asking for a link.

2. Write articles and get them published on other websites and blogs with a link back to your site.

3. Distribute online press releases

4. Judiciously exchange links, or even better, exchange content (containing links back to your site) with other websites.

5. Get your site listed in online directories.
These efforts will certainly help you to build targeted traffíc, and they most probably will also help you to íncrease your PageRank as well.

RELATED ARTICLE:
Truths & Myths to Google PageRank Tool BarSearch engines assign a value to your web site based on the links pointing to it. The most popular term for this kind of ranking is called "PageRank". The PageRank is a value that Google gives to a page based on the number and types of links into a page


About The AuthorDonald Nelson is a search engine optimization specialist and the publisher of the A1-Article Directory, a source of content for website owners and blog publishers.

How to clear bad press from search engine results

Search Engine Facts 5 June 2007 ~ Axandra.com

Disgruntled customers sometimes write negative comments about a company in their blogs or some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them. What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on the first result page for your company name?
1. Just ask
Send the webmaster of the web page in question a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Be friendly and don't threaten the other person. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

2. Give web pages with positive comments a boost
Find web sites that contain positive comments about your site. Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The web pages with the positive comments might get more inbound links and higher rankings then.
You could also suggest web pages with positive remarks about your website on social network sites such as Digg.

3. Use Wikis if appropriate
Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia. These Wiki pages might also get listed when someone searches for your company name.
It's very important that you don't spam Wikis. Only add information about your company if it is appropriate. Spamming Wikis will backfire on you.

4. Ask for testimonials
If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.

5. Make sure that your own web site has the first position
If your own website comes first for your company name then most people will click on your link and don't look further. Use IBP to make sure that your own web site has position 1 in the search engine results.
Removing negative comments from the search engine results can take some time. It's best to avoid negative experiences at the outset by providing high quality products and good customer support.
If negative comments still appear on the Internet, use the tips above to restore the positive image of your company.

Orginal Post from Axandra.com

Create an RSS Feed for Your Website Step-by-Step

By Michael Fleischner

Syndicating your own website content is a great way to provide information to your readers with little or no effort. Using RSS, your updated content is delivered to individuals who have subscribed to your feed automatically. In this article, I'll briefly explain RSS and show you how to syndicate your own website content - even if you know very little about RSS feeds.

RSS Defined
According to Wikipedia, RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website.

Syndicating your own website content is a great way to provide information to your readers with little or no effort. Using RSS, your updated content is delivered to individuals who have subscribed to your feed automatically. In this article, I'll briefly explain RSS and show you how to syndicate your own website content - even if you know very little about RSS feeds.

Feeds are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange rectangle , or with the letters RSS or XML. Many news aggregators publish subscription buttons for use on Web pages to simplify the process of adding news feeds.

Choosing the Content you want to Syndicate
Okay, so you're interested in syndication but aren't exactly sure what you should be syndicating. There's really no hard and fast rule here. Howerver, keep in mind that anything you plan to syndicate via RSS should be unique, of value to a given audience, and something that gets updated on a regular basis.

So How do you Create an RSS Feed?
All RSS feeds are written using a code type called XML. If you're not familiar with XML, don't let that scare you off. I'll provide the specific code you need and instructions on what to do with it.

To begin, you'll need to create an RSS file that contains a Title, Description, and Link URL. This information will be used by the RSS reader when individuals subscribe to your RSS feed. Follow these simple steps.

1. Go to your "Start Menu" in the lower left-hand corner of your computer screen. Clíck on "All Programs" and navigate to Accessories. There you'll find an option called "Notepad". Notepad is a simple text editor that you will use to develop your RSS scrípt.

2. Write the RSS scrípt which contains information about your website or content page and information about the content you'll be syndicating. To do so, copy the following into Notepad. Replace the bold content with your own site's information.


This RSS feed should be viewed using an RSS Reader or RSS Aggregator. Firefox users clíck the Subscribe to feed icon.
Feed URL: http://www.marketingscoop.com/
http://www.marketingscoop.com/articles.htm Marketing articles covering a variety of marketing topics en-us MarketingScoop.com
http://www.marketingscoop.com/market-small-business.htm If you own a small business, you probably don't have a lot to spend on marketing. These simple techniques will help you generate more referrals than you can handle.


That's it. As noted above, be sure to use the Title of your website and article, links, and descriptions. When your done, save your file by selecting File, Save as, from the top bar in the Notepad window. Warning: name your file with a .xml extension but save as text.(example: http://www.marketingscoop.com/rssfeed.xml).

Be sure not to use any ampersands or quotes in your code as this may cause an error. XML requires ampersands to be replaced in the code with "&" and quotes with "&amp;amp;quot; whatever is included in your quotes. The best advice I can give is just don't include quotes or ampersands and you won't have any coding issues.

3. Save, Upload, and Validate your .xml code. After saving your RSS file via notepad, the next step is to upload your .xml file to your web server. This file should be placed in the same directory as your homepage or the directory of the page you've selected to syndicate.

Now that we've created and uploaded your RSS feed, we must validate it. By doing so, we know that the feed is active and will work when individuals subscribe. To validate your feed, visit http://validator.w3.org/feed/ and enter your feed URL. The URL of your feed is simply the URL of the .xml file you just uploaded to your server. So, if your file was saved to your website's main directory and was called "rssfeed", then simply enter your website's URL, followed by /rssfeeds.xml. Once validated, your RSS feed is ready to be syndicated.

4. Place your RSS code on your website. The best way to do this is to copy the RSS button and include a link to the RSS feed you just created. You can grab the RSS or XML image by simply visiting a website like MarketingScoop.com and right mouse clicking the image. Save the image (give it a name like RSS.gif) and copy it onto your server. The code should look like this:



Be sure to replace the information above with your own feed link and image link.

5. Subscribe to your own feed. After you've uploaded all of your pages to your live site or testing server, open Internet Explorer and clíck on your own RSS button. You should be taken to a dialogue box that asks if you'd like to subscribe to your feed. Subscribe and confirm that the feed has been added to your líst of RSS feeds (it should appear in a dialogue box on the left hand side of the page).

Note: If you're using Firefox, you will only receive a text page when clicking on your RSS button. Those using the firefox browsers can clíck on a small icon that resides on their browser
nav bar to add your feed. Additionally the text file contains your feed URL which can also be used.

6. Ping aggregators to let them know that you've created an RSS feed. In order to let the world wide web know that your feed is up and running, you must give them a Ping. This is very easy to do - just go to http://pingomatic.com/ and choose the appropriate sites to inform. Select blog related sites if you're a blog and non-blog related sites for other content. Complete the information and Ping.

Another site you should Ping is Yahoo! Simply visit the Yahoo! RSS submit page and add your feed URL. This will let the big boys know that your syndicating.

A final note. Whenever you want to syndicate new content, you will need to update your .xml file with a link to the content and a revised description. Once you've done so, upload the file to your server, replacing the existing .xml file and the code will do the rest.
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Related Articles about RSS, converting RSS feeds to Java Script:
http://www.visionefx.net/articles/using-RSS.htm

About The AuthorMichael Fleischner is an internet marketing expert with more than 12 years marketing experience. He has appeared on The Today Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. For more free marketing articles like this one, visit www.marketingscoop.com.

Introduction to Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks

Introduction to Copyrights,Patents, and Trademarks
By Deepak Dutta

What is a copyright? Can everything be copyrighted? A copyright is the expression of an idea. The idea itself is not copyrighted. Ideas can be patented and I will talk about patents later.

Let's consider the example of a story: a poor man who found lots of cash on his way back to his home from his work. He decided to keep the cash to improve his financial situation. But he could not sleep at night because he was haunted by strange voices that told him to find the owner and return the cash. This idea cannot be protected. Anybody can write a short story based on the idea. What is protected is how the author expresses the idea in the form of texts, illustrations, drawings, photographs, etc.

Once an expression is copyrighted, others can still use it for fair use. You can tape a few 15 seconds video clips from a copyrighted TV program and post it in your video blogs about a commentary on the program or broadcaster, etc. This will be considered a fair use and you will not infringe the copyright.

After a copyrighted material expires, it falls into the public domain. The life of a copyrighted material is the life of the author, plus 70 years. The public domain copyrighted materials can be reproduced without any infringement. For example, if you have an old picture with expired copyright, you can post the picture in your website.
In the USA, the Copyright Act of 1976 governs all copyrights. The Copyright Act does not protect any ideas, procedures, process, systems, and methods of operations, concepts, principle or discovery regardless of how it is expressed. It is the expression that is protected by the Copyright Act. You cannot copyright titles, names, slogans, and short phrases even if those have new ideas.

As mentioned earlier, the life span of a copyrighted material is the author's life, plus 70 years in most cases. There are a few exceptions to this rule and they are: un-renewed copyrighted materials published pre-1964, materials published before 1978 without a copyrighted notice, and materials published by the US Government.

All copyrighted materials should be fixed in a tangible medium (papers, CDs, DVDs, etc.). If it is not fixed in a tangible medium, it is not copyrighted. For example, your speech to the graduating class that was never recorded, taped, or published is not protected under the US Copyright Act. Your can register your copyrighted materials with the US Copyright Office. All expressions of ideas are copyrighted regardless of whether they are registered with the Copyright Office or not. If you register the expression with the Copyright Office, you can receive statutory damages and attorney's fees if an infringement occurs. If the material is not registered with the Copyrighted Office, you can only recover actual damages.

A patent holder of an invention has the right to exclude others from using, selling, and making the invention. The United States Patent Office (USPTO) awards patents. There are three kinds of patents: utility, design, and plant patents.

The most frequently used patents are utility patents. They have a life span of 20 years from the effective filing date if the filing date is after June 8, 1995. A utility patent also requires periodic maintenance fees. A utility patent must be a novel, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, manufacture, or compositions of matter or improvement to the same. There are three things that define a utility patent. First, it must be novel. Nobody should have invented, published, used, or manufactured the invention before. Second, one should be able to do something useful with the invention. If it is just novel without any usefulness, it cannot be patented. A patentable invention should not be obvious to the person with ordinary skills in the same technology space related to the invention.

A design patent is the appearance or aesthetic of an article and it has a life span of 14 years after the patent is issued. A plant patent, as the name applies, protects a distinct plant produced asexually. It has life span of 20 years from the filing date.

A trademark is word, symbol, design, or a combination of one or more of these items. It is used to identify the source of goods or services of one company and differentiate a company's goods and services from others. A trademark should not be confusingly similar to other existing names or symbols.

A trademark is registered with the USPTO. It can also be registered through the state's Secretary of State's office. If the trademark is not registered, the rights to the trademark may be geographically limited. You cannot use the symbol ® to represent a mark if it is not registered.

If you want to maintain a trademark for your business, you must actively use it. Just registering a trademark without using it actively will result in diminished rights over time. Never allow a trademark to become a generic word. For example, the trademark "Aspirin" by Bayer has become a generic word to represent acetylsalicylic acid. Others can use it without causing any infringement. When you see a trademark used by authors as a noun or a verb, it may become a generic word. Trademark owners vigorously pursue authors from using the trademark as a noun or a verb. A trademark should always be used as an adjective. For example, Google is preventing others from using the word Google as a verb.

About The AuthorDr. Deepak Dutta is the creator of www.semanticbay.com - an interactive social network website based on user shared text and picture contents on any topics. His other website www.classifiedsforfree.com - is one of the oldest online classifieds sites.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) And SEO

Indexing has always been considered a highly targeted science. Enter a search query into Google search and the pages that are displayed are generally optimized towards that exact word or term. However, in their continual battle to server the most relevant but most natural pages with genuinely useful information Google has injected latent semantic indexing (LSI) into its algorithms.

What Is LSI?

LSI is a unique indexing method that potentially takes Google search one step closer to becoming human in its way of thinking. If we were to manually search through web pages to find information related to a given search term we would be likely to generate our own results based on the theme of the site, rather than whether a word exists or doesn't exist on the page.

Why Search Engines Might Adopt Latent Semantic Indexing

The extremely rigid form of "keyword indexing" also meant that black hat SEO techniques were easier to implement. Search engines could be manipulated into ranking a site highly by using set formula. Originally, cramming a page with a particular keyword or set of keywords meant a site would rank highly for that search term. The proceeding set of algorithms ensured that your link profile played more of an important part than your keyword density. Reciprocal linking soon followed once again making it possible to manipulate the search engine spiders by exchanging links with tens, hundreds, or thousands of websites.

Reciprocal linking was soon beaten as Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo and MSN gave less credence to a reciprocal link as they did to a one-way inbound link. Latent Semantic Indexing is another, particularly powerful, method to try and make their result pages appear more natural with natural pages filled with natural content.

The Effects

The introduction of LSI has seen some dramatic changes in the search engine result pages already. Sites that had previously performed well because of an impressive link profile based on a single keyword have found their pages slip in the rankings. Other pages with a more diverse portfolio of inbound links are taking the lead with search terms for which they had not previously performed.

SEO is far from dead because of LSI, in fact if anything, it has probably increased the need for professional white-hat SEO on your website. The field of SEO, though, has almost certainly changed. Website content copywriting for Google's benefit is not merely made up of keyword density and keyword placement as it once was and link-building techniques will need to change to incorporate LSI algorithms but it can be done.

Writing Content For LSI

If optimizing solely for Google then a web page can, theoretically, be naturally written and naturally worded. When we write we instinctively include the appropriate keyword in our text. In order to avoid repetition (or keyword optimization, as it was once called) we would often alter some instances of these keywords for other words with the same or very similar meaning. We naturally include the plural or singular form of a keyword as well as different tenses and a number of different stems of that keyword. In the eyes of LSI algorithms this is all good news.

Looking At Your Link Profile

A link profile should no longer consist of thousands of links with the same anchor text (that of your primary keyword). There's no reason to panic if you already have this kind of profile. Instead you should look at relevant and similar terms and improve your link profile by gaining links using these as your anchor text.

What It Offers Web Searchers

From the point of view of web searchers, LSI offers some distinct advantages over its earlier form of indexing. For example, LSI recognizes that the word "engine" in "search engine optimization" is not related to searches for terms like "steam engine" or "locomotive engine" and is instead related to Internet marketing topics. In theory, LSI results give a much more accurate page of results as well as providing a broader range of pages still geared towards a particular topic.

Where Google Leads, Others Generally Follow

It is widely acknowledged that Google is the search engine at the forefront of latent semantic indexing. On the whole they try to generate results pages that are literally filled with genuine, useful results and LSI certainly provides another string in their bow. Yahoo and MSN, for now, seem more than happy to go along with keyword specific indexing although Yahoo are known to look at singular and plural keyword variations as well as keyword stemming when judging keyword density.

The Effect On Your Website

How it affects the individual Webmaster is dependent on how they go about promoting their site already. If the pages are filled with natural content including keywords and keyword alternatives, and the link profile is similarly diversified for a number of related keywords then the fact is it won't change very much. However, if all of your efforts have been concentrated, either on-page or off-page, with a single keyword then it's time to readdress the balance.

About the Author:
Matt Jackson is a homepage content author for WebWiseWords. WebWiseWords specializes in natural web content writing that appeals to search engine spiders and to human visitors.

Matt Cutts: Website Reviews, Duplicate Content

by: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

I woke up early on Thursday and was at the convention center by 8am to check on my backpack and laptop. It was still tucked away under a table, untouched. Whew! I hunkered down in the speaker room and started working on my slides. (I hate seeing the same presentations over and over again at conferences, so I always try to make a new presentation for each show.)

By 9am, I was still really behind, so I decided to skip Danny’s keynote and kept chugging. I missed a few other sessions on Thursday, but I figured it was worth it to be prepared.

Around 1:30, Brett had signed me up for a site review panel with Greg Boser, Tim Mayer, Danny Sullivan, and Todd Friesen, with Jake Baillie moderating. The idea behind a site review panel is that people volunteer their sites and get advice on how to do things better. We discussed a promotional gifts company, the Dollar Stretcher site, a real estate company in Las Vegas, a chiropractic doctor, a real estate licensing company, a computer peripheral site, a hifi sounds store, and a day spa in Arizona. In his PubCon recap, Barry said I ripped on sites. For most of the sites I tried to give positive advice, but I wasn’t afraid to tell people of potential problems.

Once again, I sat on the end and had my wireless and VPN working so that I could use all of my Google tools. The promotional gifts company had a couple issues. For one thing, I was immediately able to find 20+ other sites also belonged to the promotional gifts person. The other sites offered overlapping content and overlapping pages on different urls. The larger issue was searching for a few words from a description quickly found dozens of other sites with the exact same descriptions. We discussed the difficulty of adding value to feeds when you’re running lots of sites. One thing to do is to find ways to incorporate user feedback (forums, reviews, etc.). The wrong thing to do is to try to add a few extra sentences or to scramble a few words or bullet points trying to avoid duplicate content detection. If I can spot duplicate content in a minute with a search, Google has time to do more in-depth duplicate detection in its index.

Next up was the Dollar Stretcher. I’d actually heard of this site before (stretcher.com), and everything I checked off-page and on-page looked fine. The site owner said that Google was doing fine on this site, but Yahoo! didn’t seem to like it. Greg Boser managed to find a sitemap-type page that listed hundreds of articles, but in my opinion it only looked bad because the site has been live since 1996 and they had tons of original articles that they had written over the years. So how should a webmaster make a sitemap on their site when they have hundreds of articles? My advice would be to break the sitemap up on your pages. Instead of hundreds of links all on one page, you could organize your articles chronologically (each year could be a page), alphabetically, or by topic. Danny and Todd noticed a mismatch between uppercase url titles on the live pages and lowercase url titles according Yahoo!’s Site Explorer, and a few folks started to wonder if cloaking was going on. The site was definitely hitting a “this is a legit site” chord for me, and I didn’t think they were cloaking, so I checked with a quick wget and also told Googlebot to fetch the page. It all checked out–no cloaking going on to Google. I gently tried to suggest that it might be a Site Explorer issue, which a few people took as a diss. No diss was intended to Site Explorer; I think it’s a fine way to explore urls; I just don’t think stretcher.com was trying to pull any tricks with lowercasing their titles to search engines (not that cloaking to lowercase a title is something that it would help a site anyway).

Holy crawp this is taking forever to write. Let me kick it into high gear. The real estate site was functional (~100-ish pages about different projects + 10 about us/contact sort of pages) about Las Vegas real estate, but it was also pretty close to brochureware. There was nothing compelling or exciting about the site. I recommended looking for good ways to attract links: surveys, articles about the crazy construction levels in Vegas, contests–basically just looking at ways to create a little buzz, as opposed to standard corporate brochureware sites. Linkbait doesn’t have to be sneaky or cunning; great content can be linkbait as well, if you let people know about it.

The chiropractor site looked good. Danny Sullivan made some good points that they wanted to show up for a keyword phrase, but that phrase didn’t occur on the site’s home page. Think about what users will type (and what you want to rank for), and make sure to use those words on your page. The site owner was also using Comic Sans, which is a font that a few people hate. I recommended something more conservative for a medical story. Greg Boser mentioned to be aware of local medical associations and similar community organizations. I recommended local newspapers, and gave the example that when my Mom shows up with a prepared article for her small hometown newspaper about a charity event, they’re usually happy to run it or something close to it. Don’t neglect local resources when you’re trying to promote your site.

My favorite for the real estate licensing site is that in less that a minute, I was able to find 50+ other domains that this person had–everything from learning Spanish to military training. So I got to say “Let us be frank, you and I: how many sites do you have?” He paused for a while, then said “a handful.” After I ran through several of his sites, he agree that he had quite a few. My quick take is that if you’re running 50 or a 100 domains yourself, you’re fundamentally different than the chiropractor with his one site: with that many domains, each domain doesn’t always get as much loving attention, and that can really show. Ask yourself how many domains you have, and if it’s so many that lots of domains end up a bit cookie-cutter-like.

Several times during the session, it was readily apparent that someone had tried to do reciprocal links as a “quick hit” to increase their link popularity. When I saw that in the backlinks, I tried to communicate that 1) it was immediately obvious to me, and therefore our algorithms can do a pretty good job of spotting excessive reciprocal links, and 2) in the instances that I looked at, the reciprocal links weren’t doing any good. I urged folks to spend more time looking for ways to make a compelling site that attract viral buzz or word of mouth. Compelling sites that are well-marketed attract editorially chosen links, which tend to help a site more.

The computer peripheral site had a few issues, but it was a solid site. They had genuine links from e.g. Lexar listing them as a place to buy their memory cards. When you’re a well-known site like that, it’s worth trying to find even more manufacturers whose products you sell. Links from computer part makers would be pretty good links, for example. The peripheral site had urls that were like /i-Linksys-WRT54G-Wireless-G-54Mbps-Broadband-Router-4-Port-10100Mbps-Switch-54Mbps-80211G-Access-Point-519

, which looks kinda cruddy. Instead of using the first 14-15 words of the description, the panel recommended truncating the keywords in the url to ~4-5 words. The site also had session ID stuff like “sid=te8is439m75w6mp” that I recommended to drop if they could. The site also had product categories, but the urls were like “/s-subcat-NETWORK~.html”. Personally, I think having “/network/” and then having the networking products in that subdirectory is a little cleaner.

The HiFi store was fine, but this was another example where someone had 40+ other sites. Having lots of sites isn’t bad, but I’ve mentioned the risk that not all the sites get as much attention as they should. In this case, 1-2 of the sites were stuff like cheap-cheap-(something-related-to-telephone-calling).com. Rather than any real content, most of the pages were pay-per-click (PPC) parked pages, and when I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. Having lots of sites isn’t automatically bad, and having PPC sites isn’t automatically bad, and having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.

Closing out on a fun note, the day spa was done by someone who was definitely a novice. The site owner seemed to have trouble accessing all the pages on the site, so she had loaded a ton of content onto the main page. But it was a real site, and it still ranked well at Yahoo! and Google. The site owner said that she’d been trying to find a good SEO for ages, so Todd guilted the audience and said “Will someone volunteer to help out this nice person for free?” A whole mess of people raised their hand–good evidence that SEOs have big hearts and that this site owner picked the right conference to ask for help.

Okay, that’s a rundown of SEO feedback on some real-world sites, and this post is like a gajillion words long, so I’ll stop now and save more write-ups for later.

Google Gets Personalized

Google Gets Personalized
by Kim Roach

Have you ever become overwhelmed by the number of documents accessible via a search engine? If you're like most people, then you probably have. There are often millions of results and not every result is likely to be of equal importance to you.

In addition to that, there is also ambiguity of language. Words often have multiple meanings and people can have different interpretations of the same word. How does a search engine know the difference? Well, at this point, they don't.

They certainly can't read your mind so the only other alternative is to track your online activities in order to custom tailor your search results based on your recorded preferences.

Google is one of the first major search engines to test this new technology. They have released a total of 15 new patent applications this month in relation to this very endeavor.

Actually, I'm not too surprised that Google is taking a closer look at personalization. Google has already begun testing many of these new search features in Google's personalized search http://www.google.com/psearch, which is currently in beta.

Traditional algorithmic search engines have reached their peak. Personalized search is a natural and necessary progression for Google and other search engines as well. Some alternative search engines have already taken the lead in this endeavor. Eurekster http://www.eurekster.comis one of the main ones that comes to mind, using a searchers history to bring them more relevant results.

Here is an abstract from one of the Google patents entitled, Systems and methods for analyzing a user's web history http://tinyurl.com/ycdhxl: A user's prior searching and browsing activities are recorded for subsequent use. A user may examine the user's prior searching and browsing activities in a number of different ways, including indications of the user's prior activities related to advertisements.

A set of search results may be modified in accordance with the user's historical activities. The user's activities may be examined to identify a set of preferred locations. The user's set of activities may be shared with one or more other users. The set of preferred locations presented to the user may be enhanced to include the preferred locations of one or more other users.

A user's browsing activities may be monitored from one or more different client devices or client application. A user's browsing volume may be graphically displayed.

Now, let's talk about all of that in English. Over time, we develop a history of search queries, selected results that were clicked on, advertisements that were clicked on, and a multitude of other browsing activities. Each of these actions reflect our preferences and interests. Other examples of user activity Google may begin tracking include instant messaging, word processing, participation in chat rooms, and internet phone calls.

Talk about an invasion of privacy. Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to get into that issue.

Within the proposed system, users are able to access their past searching and/or browsing activities to enhance their experience. Each of their online activities gives clues to what they might ultimately be looking for or related areas of interests.

In addition, users can also modify their profile information to better represent their interests. For example, a user may delete a search query from his/her history or he/she could also provide updated information as to new areas of interest.

One of the most interesting aspects of the patent filings involves the re-ranking of search results according to the user's preferences.

After a query is made and the results are received, they are then adjusted based upon information from the user's history. The order of the search results can be adjusted in accordance with a history score and/or any user modified result score. Search results can also be ordered based upon the combined search result score and the history score to come up with optimal results.

A searcher may also be shown an indication of previously visited pages among the SERPs, including information such as the date and time a page was previously visited and the number of times that the user has visited the site within a certain period of time.

A certain number of the most highly ranked results that the user has previously visited may be displayed in a region above the search results for easy access (kind of like memorized favorites).

They could also be displayed in another section of the page, or even in a separate window.These previously visited pages may be ordered based upon a number of different ranking criteria, including the history score, pagerank, time of last access, number of accesses, etc.

A user's browsing activities may also play a part in the ranking of search results. For example, if a website was previously visited by the user, it could have its score boosted based upon the number of times the user has visited that particular website. Google may also track how long a visitor stays at any given website. A site that is bookmarked and visited frequently will almost always rank higher.

On the other hand, search results that were previously presented to searchers but not clicked through could be lowered in the results.

What does this mean for you as a webmaster and SEO? It means that your focus should be on quality. In creating your website, you must emphasize visitor optimization and content optimization over search engine optimization.

The visitor always comes first and you must create a valuable experience for them. Allow them to quickly and easily bookmark your website. Give them a reason to hang out for a while, whether it be a forum, lots of great content, or fun quizzes.

The future of SEO is about creating quality, authority sites.

About This AuthorKim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews & SEO-Newsnewsletters. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the SiteProNews blog. Kim's email is: kim@seo-news.comThis article may be freely distributed without modification and provided that the copyright notice and author information remain intact.

More info on PageRank

Every few months we update the PageRank data that we show in the toolbar, and every few months I see a few repeated questions, so let me take a pass at some of them. Note: I wrote this kinda quickly, so I think this is pretty good, but if I spot something incorrect later, I’ll change it.

Philipp Lenssen asks: “Matt, I often wonder, how is the PageRank value stored internally, is it a floating-point number as many people suggest or is it just the integer value itself due to the heavy recursive PR computations?”

It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar.
viggen says: “Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care?

Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there?”
viggen, I think that’s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.

Andrew Hunter asks: “Will the data centers using the slightly older infrastructure be updated in due course, or will my PR be split by data center for the next couple of months?”
The latter. I think most data centers are running the newer infrastructure for things like info:, related:, link: and PageRank, and I believe every data center that has that newer infrastructure has the recent snapshot of PageRank now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took at least 1-2 months for the other data center IPs to get the newer infrastructure in some way. (Yes, this is smaller, different infrastructure than the stuff that made site: queries have more accurate results estimates.)

Lots of folks ask questions like: “Is this PageRank from day X or day Y? And it looks like backlinks are from day Z?”

Really, I wouldn’t worry about it–I’m not even sure myself. At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes. I highly recommend keyword analysis, looking at server logs to figure out new content to add, thinking of new hooks to make your site attract more word-of-mouth buzz, pondering how to improve conversion once visitors land on your site, etc.

I’ll do a follow-up. Supplemental Challenged said: “The fact that Google can only create a PR update that is a full quarter behind the times is awfully troubling.”
I believe that I’ve said before that PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm. From time-to-time, that internal PageRank value is exported so that it’s visible to Google Toolbar users (see the question below for more details on the timing).

Matt Crouch asks: “Actually, I am just curious why you are bothering telling us about a new PR update…. is this the first time you ever did?”

Well asked, Matt Crouch; I’m not sure if I’ve given the official word on a PageRank export before. It’s not a big event here at Google. Frankly, I didn’t even know we’d done our 3-4 month-ish push of this data. When I saw people talking about it online, I went to check and see whether it was a real push or not. In the past few months, people have noticed when an engineer grabs an obscure data center and tinkers around with things like backlinks or info: queries (e.g. when “Update Pluto” got downgraded because it was just an engineer tinkering at one data center). So I figured I’d let people know that this was a real PageRank export and not just one person doing something.

New Jersey SEO asked: “Will this PR update affect SERPs? Are we going to have also a SERP data refresh / update?”

Great question. By the time you see newer PageRanks in the toolbar, those values have already been incorporated in how we score/rank our search results. So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point. So you won’t see any search engine result page (SERP) changes as a result of this PageRank export–those changes have been gradually baking in since the last PageRank export.

Google's new Sitelinks and your web site

Google recently started to include a set of links below some results to pages within the site. These new additional links are called Sitelinks.
It seems that Google displays Sitelinks if a web site is an authority site for the search term.

What are Google Sitelinks?
Google explains the new links on its webmaster pages:

How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?
The links shown below some sites in our search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.

At the moment, Sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our Sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

How does Google calculate Sitelinks?

Google claims that the Sitelinks are created automatically. If Google uses an algorithm to calculate Sitelinks, there must be a way to influence that algorithm.

There are several theories on how Sitelinks are calculated:


1. Google might track the number of clicks for different results. If a web site gets a lot of traffic for a special keyword then the web site will get Sitelinks on Google's result page.For example, if you use a special trademark term on your web pages that cannot be found on other web sites then many people will click on your web site in Google's results when they search for that search term. It's likely that your web site will get Sitelinks for such a search term.

2. The link architecture of a web site might help. Links at the top of the HTML source of a web site seem to have a better chance to be included as Sitelinks.

3. Google might use the Google toolbar to determine Sitelinks. The more often a page is bookmarked the more likely it is that these pages will be used as Sitelinks. Google's toolbar can collect a lot of information about a web site.

At the moment, it's hard to tell how Google calculates the new Sitelinks. It's probably a combination of click data, toolbar data and other factors. If you see Sitelinks for your web site, then Google has probably classified your web site as an authority site for the search term.

How does this affect your web site?

It seems that Sitelinks are only used for trademark searches or searches that are similar to trademark queries.

Most search engine result pages on Google don't show these additional links.

That means that it's better to invest some time in getting listed in Google's regular result pages than trying to get listed with additional Sitelinks.

The Orion Algorithm And Your SEO Efforts

By: Mark Nenadic

Every so often there is a new development that is so enormous that it changes the way the entire SEO-using world works with their websites for optimization and proper promotional structuring.


Most recently was the purchasing of the rights to the Orion Algorithm by Google. Equally important is that Yahoo! and MSN have both taken an interest in the Orion Algorithm and vied for its ownership.

The Orion Algorithm " for those of you who arent working for a search engine " is something that has actually been kept quite secret. Its specifics are not known, but what is understood is that it is a new technology for the performance of search engines. It allows search results to be immediately displayed as expanded text extracts so that users will know the relevant information without having to actually check the site to make sure that it is what they are looking for. The option to visit the website is, however, still quite available if the user chooses to opt for it.

To web designers, search engine optimizers, and other website owners, it means that there will likely be another shift in the way that websites are ranked and indexed. Furthermore, the traffic to the website will be much more specific to that sites target market, as fewer people will land there only to find that it is not what they are looking for.

For users in general, this will mean that the results that are displayed using Google searches will be much more similar to those found at Ask.com. It will allow users to judge the sites content compared to what theyre looking for without having to click the link. It will make searching much simpler and more practical for users who will be able to review everything all in one place. Then, when they come upon the site or sites that interest them, they may still click the link and find out what the site is all about in more depth.

This means that the Orion Algorithm is essentially an entirely new way of evaluating websites with regards to the search terms that are used for them. Instead of ranking the website based on the search phrase being used by the user, the Orion Algorithm may also dig a bit deeper into the phrase, searching also for related phrases. This concept, while not entirely new for directories, is the first of its kind for the standard search engines that are typically used on the internet. This will mean that search engine optimizers will need to change their overall strategy so that they will now appeal to search engines in different ways.

Among the techniques that may be utilized in searching with other relevant terms with the Orion Algorithm are the following. Their relevancy and weight has not been determined, as the Orion Algorithm is being held in the deepest secrecy. However, knowing what we do about Orion, it is logical to believe the following:

1 - Directories are the least likely to be considered using relevant phrases. Though they may be utilized for supplementary keyword sources, they will not likely be considered as results in themselves. The drawback presented by this approach is that there will therefore not be as many cross-referenced popular keywords as there are currently due to the results brought up by directories with a search engine query.

2 - Thesaurus are relatively unlikely to be used for discovering related phrases since the technique rarely works for related keyword phrases that are used with searches. It may be possible for single word searches, but as soon as multiple words are used, or even when acronyms are employed, it is much more difficult to find proper terms using thesauruses.

3 - Search behavior is also unlikely to be used in order to document relevancy for future searches. The concept is sound, as it would allow search behavior patterns to be collected and then predicted. However, this would not allow for decent results until the search engines have had enough time to compile adequate results and then assess the behaviors that have been recorded.

We may never know precisely what goes into the Orion Algorithm, but search engine optimizers " as always " will continue testing new results for creating sites that are most likely to achieve superior search engine ranking results.

Also see:
Google and the Orion Algorithm

Google Inc. has acquired "Orion" search engine technology from an Australian university that last year described the product as potentially revolutionary.

Optimize for Search Engines or Users?

Video and SEO FAQ's from MATT CUTTS the Google GUY!

Session 1: Including qualities of a good site.
Session 2: Including some SEO Myths.
Session 3: Should you Optimize for Search Engines or for Users?

The Google Toolbar PageRank Demystified

Did you know that I don’t know what I am doing? It’s true. At least that’s how I feel sometimes when dealing with the SEO/SEM aspects of my job.

Many of my areas of operation are so beautifully stable and predictable, at least within reason. Working with programmers, we have a plan and a language to follow to achieve our goals. Life in the accounting department is fairly stable in its approaches. Administrative, Customer relations, human resource development? They all have some form of measurable reality.

Search engine optimization? Not a chance. We’re not even let into the kitchen to see what’s in the fridge, never mind given the recipe to cook a feast for our clients. It is a truly interesting and challenging aspect of Internet business development. It is tantamount to working in the dark or having business plans plucked from the pages of the grocery store rag. Heck, maybe Aliens can tell me the truth about the algorithms. Maybe even Macdonald’s ‘secret’ sauce while they’re at it.

Beware of the Great Beasts of Google!

This brings me to the greatest mythological creature to roam the Google landscape since ‘the sandbox’; The Google Toolbar Page Rank (TBPR) system. While the jury may still be out on the ‘sandbox’, I am here to slay the beast that is the TBPR, right here, right now. Forever let it rest in peace where it truly belongs, in Google purgatory. I am not saying it is without its relative value, it’s mere existence quantifies that. It just doesn’t have a ‘measurable’ value that warrants earmarking any serious marketing dollars. It is being overvalued in today’s SEO landscape. Don’t spend time and money trying to get a higher Page Rank. Just love it for what it is.

I have not taken this journey lightly. As a consequence of the ‘mystery’ surrounding the algorithms and the SEO community, I knew there would be those to lash out in a vain attempt to hold onto the LGB (little green bar) that is so much a part of their culture. He is a destructive beast though. Eating up great swaths of forum boards, causing countless hours of ‘webmaster worry’ and even deluding the minds of its followers. I am truly sorry, but it must end. This creature must die. We must move on to ‘greener’ pastures of content relevance, semantic indexing, organic link building and the other wonders that we have from the great Search Engine Gods.

What is this Page Rank Phenomenon?

PageRank is, in essence, a rough system for estimating the value of a given link based on the links that point to the host page. Since PageRank's inception in the late '90s, more subtle and sophisticated link analysis systems have taken the place of PageRank.
Thus, in the modern era of SEO, the PageRank measurement in Google's toolbar, directory, or through sites that query the service is of limited value. Pages with PR8 can be found ranked 20-30 positions below pages with a PR3 or PR4. Additionally, the toolbar numbers are updated only every 3-6 months, making the values even less useful. Rather than focusing on PageRank, it's important to think holistically about a link's worth. Have an organic approach to things.

What doesn’t seem to be commonly known is its ‘true’ and ‘measurable’ value in the marketing landscape. I have spent far too many hours of mind numbing technical document and conventional wisdom research that has lead me to my eventual perspective on the whole Page Rank and it’s ‘relevance’ (a little LSA humor there) as far as it relates to being part of a meaningful online marketing campaign.

The Value of Google’s Page Rank System

At the core of my interest is ‘value’. What is the value of the LGB? Is there one? If so, then how can it be defined and measured for ROI. I don’t look at SEO as a hobby nor a passing interest. It’s about business. It is a service that is part of a larger scheme of Internet business development. As such I have to quantify my action and investments (of time and money) spent on my activities, which is none too easy in the SEO world.
I have for too long watched and listened to a variety of hubbub about Page Rank (PR) and the Google toolbar phenomenon. I looked into, found little that warranted further research investment and we moved onto other aspects of SEM/SEO. Well, doesn’t that little beast just keeps growing, as does the myth. People’s beliefs and ideas surrounding the TBPR system it is truly incredible.

Listen to the Masters of Yore

I have had it argued, in all seriousness, that the TBPR had a value as consumers would consult it for ‘authority’ prior to making a purchase. Oh come on!

As penned by SE Guru Mike Grehan,
“Can you imagine some surfer finding the digital camera of his dreams at a knock-down bargain price but refusing to buy it because the page it's on only has a PR of one? I don't think so.”

Grehan did an interview in 2003 with Google engineer, Daniel Dulitz. When asked about data accuracy in the toolbar meter. He told Mike that there are two elements: accuracy and precision. The toolbar is accurate but not very precise. He added, "We have a lot more precision available to us than we represent in a 10-step scale."

When asked about the obsession to ‘the little green bar’ by the SEO community and webmasters, Dulitz said,

For search engine marketing, search engine optimization purposes, yeah, I'd say that there's too much emphasis placed on what that PR number actually is.... So, if people are trying to look at what we're doing and their idea is based on that single thing from 1 to 10, then... well, they're not going to be effective in figuring out what we're doing at all.”

In an interview with Lee Odden at the WebmasterWorld Pubcon in the spring of 2006;

Given the attention that people have given to PageRank, which is in Google’s toolbar, you can see how I’d feel about using toolbar data. I’m not going to say whether Google uses a particular signal in our ranking; I just wanted to communicate some of the potential problems in using things like toolbar data.”

Another chat between Matt and Lee produced “Google does not use toolbar data for rankings. He mentioned that it certainly didn't help that in the "Meet the Crawlers" session at SES NYC, the MSN rep suggested that MSN "might" be using user/toolbar info. That suggests the other search engines do as well. Matt also said that user data would be too easy to spam to use for rankings.”

Toolbar Page Rank is Dead! Long Live Targeted Traffic!

Is not the end-game of Internet marketing and SEO, getting more targeted traffic? From which, we hope to illicit the best possible conversion rates? Honestly, in my SEM/SEO background and training, Toolbar PR has not more than a passing metric for general consumption for quite some time. Those selling text link advertising would have you believe it is the all powerful measuring tool. Strange, I have seen PR0 Sites with better SERPs and traffic than PR6. Isn’t my advertising about the distribution channel?

Do I want my advertising on the site with a pretty green bar that read 6, or on the site that actually gets the traffic I am targeting? For some reason, SEO folks have a skewed marketing perspective and like things the other way around.

Just like so many websites disappearing into the Google sandbox, let this menace of Google PR terrorize SEO’s and Webmasters alike no longer. Let us rejoice and move onto new and wonderful lands with promises of getting traffic. Wonderful, life giving, targeted traffic. That’s truly what matters to the website. It’s the food that gives it life. I shall see you on the other side. Please leave this place or Page Rank hell now, before it’s too late.

Make your own conclusions;

Article Resources; Grehan ClickZ article; http://clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3522286 Grehan interview ; http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/december_2003.html Lee and Matt II; http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/04/matt-cutts-on-toolbar-data/ Lee and Matt I; http://www.searchnewz.com/searchnewz-12-20060419YPNPartyBostonPubcon.html

Do Search Engines Care About Valid HTML?

Like most web developers, I've heard a lot about the importance of valid html recently. I've read about how it makes it easier for people with disabilities to access your site, how it's more stable for browsers, and how it will make your site easier to be indexed by the search engines.

So when I set out to design my most recent site, I made sure that I validated each and every page of the site. But then I got to thinking – while it may make my site easier to index, does that mean that it will improve my search engine rankings? How many of the top sites have valid html?
To get a feel for how much value the search engines place on being html validated, I decided to do a little experiment. I started by downloading the handy Firefox HTML Validator Extension (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/) that shows in the corner of the browser whether or not the current page you are on is valid html. It shows a green check when the page is valid, an exclamation point when there are warnings, and a red x when there are serious errors.

I decided to use Yahoo! Buzz Index to determine the top 5 most searched terms for the day, which happened to be "World Cup 2006", "WWE", "FIFA", "Shakira", and "Paris Hilton". I then searched each term in the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and checked the top 10 results for each with the validator. That gave me 150 of the most important data points on the web for that day.

The results were particularly shocking to me – only 7 of the 150 resulting pages had valid html (4.7%). 97 of the 150 had warnings (64.7%) while 46 of the 150 received the red x (30.7%). The results were pretty much independent of search engine or term. Google had only 4 out of 50 results validate (8%), MSN had 3 of 50 (6%), and Yahoo! had none. The term with the most valid results was "Paris Hilton" which turned up 3 of the 7 valid pages. Now I realize that this isn't a completely exhaustive study, but it at least shows that valid html doesn't seem to be much of a factor for the top searches on the top search engines.

Even more surprising was that none of the three search engines home pages validated! How important is valid html if Google, Yahoo!, and MSN don't even practice it themselves? It should be noted, however, that MSN's results page was valid html. Yahoo's homepage had 154 warnings, MSN's had 65, and Google's had 22. Google's search results page not only didn't validate, it had 6 errors!

In perusing the web I also noticed that immensely popular sites like ESPN.com, IMDB, and MySpace don't validate. So what is one to conclude from all of this?

It's reasonable to conclude that at this time valid html isn't going to help you improve your search position. If it has any impact on results, it is minimal compared to other factors. The other reasons to use valid html are strong and I would still recommend all developers begin validating their sites; just don't expect that doing it will catapult you up the search rankings right now.

About the Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.

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Google goes to court to defend its ranking methods

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Google will try to convince a judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the heart of the company’s business: its methods for indexing and ranking Web pages.

In March, Google was sued by KinderStart.com , which alleges it suffered crippling financial harm after its Web site got dropped from the search engine’s index.

The case reflects the enormous impact of search engines on the business world at large. It has become crucial for many businesses to rank well in search engine results. An entire industry has sprouted to serve this “search engine optimization” need.

As the world’s most popular search engine, Google wields the strongest influence. Having a Web site that ranks low or disappears altogether from the Google index can have devastating effects for a company. This is what KinderStart.com alleges happened to it.

“It’s a very important case for many reasons. Everyone uses search engines, so the question is: Are you seeing true and faithful results?” said Gregory Yu, KinderStart.com’s attorney.
“Google shouldn’t have completely free range to be able to remove sites or hit them with a zero PageRank,” he added, referring to the patented technology at the heart of Google’s algorithmic ranking.

KinderStart.com is charging Google, among other things, with violating its right to free speech; illegally using a monopoly position to harm competitors; engaging in unfair practices and competition; committing defamation and libel; and violating the Federal Communications Act.

The Web publisher seeks a class action certification for the lawsuit, damages and injunctive relief, among other things.

In motions filed in May, Google argues that Judge Jeremy Fogel, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, should dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the case boils down to one essential question: Should search engines or should courts determine Web sites’ relevancy? “If KinderStart were right … neither Google nor any other search engine could operate, as it would constantly face lawsuits from businesses seeking more favorable positioning,” Google’s motion reads.

Google also asks the judge to strike three of the suit’s counts, alleging they violate Google’s exercise of free speech in connection with a public issue. This is prohibited under a California law called the Anti-SLAPP statute, Google argues.

KinderStart.com , based in Norwalk, Calif., began publishing a Web site for parents of children under 7 years old in May 2000 and in 2003 the site joined Google’s AdSense ad network, according to the complaint. Yet, starting in March and April 2005, the Web site suffered a “cataclysmic” fall in traffic of about 70 percent and a drop in AdSense revenue of about 80 percent, from which it hasn’t recovered, and which the company blames on its removal from the Google index.

KinderStart.com claims it has never been notified by phone, mail or in person of the reason for its Web site’s exclusion. Google states in its Web site that it reserves the right to remove Web sites from its index for various reasons. KinderStart.com states it hasn’t knowingly violated any of Google’s webmaster guidelines.

In February, Google decided to remove the German Web site of car maker BMW for allegedly trying to deceive its search robot to gain higher placement. Days later Google reincorporated the site to its index, saying BMW had undone the offending changes, although BMW never admitted any wrongdoing.