PageRank:
goes missing from toolbar. Brett Tabke said it is just a temporary glitch though.

Google Engineers:to appear at the New Orleans WMW conference

Does Reciprocal Linking Work?
Recently I saw the Blue Gecko SEO forums ranking at #10 for SEO. Most of his link popularity looked like it was from link trades associated with his webmaster resources directory. The reason people say link trades do not work are mostly because:

• they are usually slow and expensive to build if you do not outsource or automate

• most people exchanging links in bulk are not doing so with quality sites

DMOZ Weighting in Yahoo!:
I created a one page site about Effexor which is listed in DMOZ. I have not built any other linkage data, and it is ranking in the mid 30s for Effexor out of over 7,000,000 sites.

So I just got an affiliate commission notification for a piece of SEO software that I thought was cool about a year ago, but no longer think is that great.

So the question is, how do you go about maintaining older posts. Is it ok to delete or edit profitable posts if you feel that they undermine your current credibility? Should you edit them? Should you delete them? Even if you do prune the past you will likely miss a few posts. Should you feel guilty because someone bought bunk software? Should you not feel guilty since the person ignored the post was a year old? Should you feel guilty editing or deleting them as though you are hiding your past?

This also reminds me about handing out recommendations and testimonials. It can be a great link and reputation building activity, but after stuff ages and loses its value (as SEO software is known to do) it could likely wear your credibility thin to endorse too many products. Many people who are eager for testimonials are also greedy hucksters who will make sure you pay for your endorsements. As a web marketer my reputation is by far and away the most valuable thing I have.

I am not afraid to admit that I am sometimes wrong or make lots of mistakes, but it does make little sense to leave errors that could and should be easy to fix, right? I think the forward going answer is to always be cautious and forward looking with your endorsements.

Am in the UK now. A few observations:

• everyone uses the word "ish"

• NFFC was wearing an eSpotting looking shirt. Clearly a reason to like FWHT :)
• the Down Hall hotel is in a pretty cool remote setting
• JasonD likes the Gaping Void t shirts
• a bartender gave a mate 7-UP when they ordered a lemonade
• they have street signs that say Queing
• Gurtie does not like the nickname TheGurtster
• Z is for some reason zed in the UK
• Rumours have it DaveN was showing off his back end?
• my friend argued that they drive on the right side of the road, but clear as day it is the left side

Just got done doing another update of my ebook right before I left, and would think everyone is really really cool if I sell a bunch of them while I am gone. Of course, they may be cool anyway, but like peanut butter, SEO Book makes everything better. Buy the book. Wear a smile ;)

I posted stuff like this before, but did not give away all my insider secrets. What would you do for a link? ;)

• Create a quizes or contest

• Get the top score in a quiz doah, I should have cheated - talk about black hat link building ;)
• Win the Cooney Island hot dog eating contest.
• See how much weight you can gain in a month.
• Tell someone they are out to lunch. Has got me a few links.
• Say something out to lunch or offensive.
• Buy someone lunch. Give them something to talk about. Any Penn State proffesors want a free lunch? email me. If your university position is high enough and your university has a great link reputation I am also will to fly.
• Go to college to become a system administrator and web designer for a school. A friend of mine as a freshman was both last year. I am thinking this friendship may soon grow leaps and bounds.
• Get a crap job you do not care about. Write a humorous blog about it until you get fired for it.
• Have your child send $8.43 cash to the government to help pay down the federal debt. Make sure you are available for press comments and get links in your coverage.
• Move to Texas. They have big links there.
• Always carry a big flag around with you. Even in the shower.
• Help your local congressman get reelected. Get links from their site.
• Join the local government.
• Draft government bills with Orwellian terms, calling them exact opposite of what they do.
• Point out said flaws in Government bills.
• Join the military and work the .mil link angle.
• Buy your way into the government for .gov links. If you can not afford this move to a poorer country where you can afford to buy your way in.
• Get on the terrorist list by being a peaceful Muslim.
• Work on a plan to overthrow your government.
• Join or start a religious cult.
• Go to a conference - I go to learn too - but there is lots of link popularity floating around at conferences. I have got a free PR9 link from a conference I went to.
• Wear crazy clothes to a conference.
• Eat lots of food at the conferences. Refuse to bathe, use deoderant, or change clothes while at the conference. Tell everyone how you have had a lucky streak and did not want to change anything.
• Go to Vegas. Climb to the top of a casino and repeatedly yell jackpot while jumping up and down.
• Get on Donald Trumps TV show. Compete with him in a money losing contest. Take lots of pictures of yourself.
• Create a competing show and / or tell Donald what you think of him.
• buy a sports team. be its biggest rabid fan.
• Become a pro wrestler. you can do it young.
• Go streaking at a sporting event.
• Get caught on tape doing something illegal yet humorous.
• Get on a radio show. A friend of mine who used to sell adult sex toys (he sold his site, but it still ranks #1 for his primary keyword phrases) would go on the radio to get them to link to him. The shaddier your marketplace is the more value legitimate links.
• Donate or help someone with their site.
• Fix someone's car tire on the side of the road.
• Accidentally wreck into the car of a famous person, obscenely exclaim it was their fault, and then sue them.
• Get ran over by a rich person. etc.
• Become a semi stalker. Sue the celebrity for stalking you.
• Admit yourself to a psych ward or rehab where you know a link rich person is currently at.
• Tell others that they should start a site, knowing they will link to you.
• Create free tools or software with powered by or designed by links in them.
• Intentionally do something to get sued by a large overbearing company.
• Date or marry an annoying overhyped celebrity or marry into a link rich family.
• Talk about your brother's court case. Create a phpbb skin for a site pleeding his innocence. <-- cheap marketing. more people should do that.
• Routinely have cosmetic surgery done that deforms your face.
• Talk about Google showing nude pictures of LaToya Jackson when safesearch is on. What is that? That is not safe.
• Talk about how Google is ruining the world.
• Place controvercial 5 cent AdWords ads for hot issues.
• Talk Google's stock down at $85 and less than a year later talk it up at $260. Give people the hype they want. Avoid honest investment advice.
• Fraudulently invest others money on a massive scale. Serve 6 months and get a lifetime of free linkage.
• Start a .com company with an ignorant business model. See if you can lose money fast enough to build serious linkage data.
• Join the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation board of advisors. I still need to help them some with on the SEO front a bit, and get a link on that page. If nothing else this is a personal reminder. I think the brain is really cool and would love to learn a lot more about it. I think that is a kick ass project. :)
• Become a verb. The domain (http://www.verb.com/) is a ppc directory site
• Assume a fake identity. Sneak into the pressidential press room and ask bogus questions. Make it easy to find out that you work with gay porn sites. It has been done.
• Stay awake and stare at your computer long enough to make random lists until you actually post one.

I am a Book Junkie:
My cost of living is generally dirt cheap other than an odd obsession with books. I have book cases full of books (only had about 10 - 20 a year or so ago) and buy them way faster than I read them. Recently I have been trying to read many books to reverse that trend.

Competitive Analysis:
I have been reading a good number about SEO and related topics to see how everyone else writes them, if there are certain graphics I should add, etc.

When I initially wrote my ebook I used no graphics at all because I did not want to create a fluffy image book. As time has passed I have been adding some grahics, as they can be useful and help explain some things better than words.

I keep reading lots of books on marketing and web related stuff because you only need to learn a few things for a book to pay for itself.

Marketing a Book:
A while ago Boris Morokovich offered me a free copy of his Pay Per Click Marketing Search Engine Handbook and I have yet had a chance to read it. He just emailed me again to mention his book, so I glanced through it and am writing my thoughts.

At a glance it looks like it is well written and has some good information about the various engines, history of ppc marketing, ppc & branding, contextual advertising, click fraud, roi tracking, ppc tools and the like.

Again, I have only glanced at it for a few minutes, but a few things I did not like:

• The general overall view looks solid. Covers lots of stuff.

• Uses affiliate links. Fine to do that on your site, but I don't like the idea of doing that in a book that is for sale. I used to do that, and did not let it effect my reviews of products, but as I increased the price of my book and it got broader distribution I realized it was not going to be a wise idea to have some people think the book is there to get upsells.
• Along the lines with using those affiliate links, I thought the book could of - and should have - given far more coverage to Google and Overture, instead of giving similar review sizes to Google AdWords and PageSeeker, which were both part of the top 10 search engines. To me, Google AdWords and Overture are their own group, and then second tier starts after that. PageSeeker might be like 3rd or 4th tier IMHO.
• I would have also liked lots of information about creating useful profitable campaigns on Google and Overture before even thinking of trying any of the smaller engines.
• The reviews are short (about 1 page) and list pros and cons and. The cons many times did not state what some of the more important cons were. Examples:
  • If an engine has little to no traffic, then that is a con that should be stated. Don't give an Alexa ranking and expect me to know their level and quality of traffic from that. I mean, I launched a 6 page site about a month ago (spending under $1,000 building it and its tools, and $0 on marketing) which has a better Alexa ranking than some of the reviewed PPC search engines.

  • Why isn't there a mention of poor traffic quality in the LookSmart review? To leave that type of information out and place an affiliate link next to the reviews put the authenticity of the reviews in question.
• Opinionated reviews are usually worth far more than factual sounding reviews that do not give in depth information about personal experience. Quality customer service does not matter if they get no traffic and have garbage traffic quality. Good or bad ROI and net profits, as personally experienced, should be listed in most of the reviews.

RustyBrick reviewed this book a while ago. Peter who appears to be blogging regularly again yeah! recently did a short review too.

Report:
State of Search Marketing 2004 - not sure if I linked to that yet. Thanks to AussieWebmaster for reminding me about it.

Cash Keywords:
has a blog. Fantomaster has hundreds on his list now.

Keyword Ranking Performance:
new free tool from St0ney which weights your percent distribution from your rankings on the top search engines. Would also be cool to link off to pages which showed:

• keywords vs the buying cycle

• how longer queries typically convert better
• reference that many searches are unique

Rumours Confirmed:
there are Borgs at Google.

Should write a press release about Google not being about to control their search index, and nefarious webmasters hijacking other sites to remove them from the search index. Why?

Currently the ball is in Google's court, with SEO being branded as spam and scum of the web.

If someone could push the idea that Google could not even control their own index, or how to rate their own site, then perhaps they could somehow shift the frame, saying that Google does not know how to control their index and needs the help of good SEOs to improve their search relevancy.

They should reference:

• Google's general denial of the hijacking problem

• GoogleGuy's comment about how the sites that get screwed are of low quality
• a screenshot of Google's search for AdSense, showing another site ranking #1.

Search engines have yet to be seriously challenged about:

• censoring results without notification, and accepting ads from merchants they would otherwise censor

• freely using webmaster content, and knowingly publishing false or deceptive helpful webmaster information to those same webmasters
• click fraud
• consumer confidence in search relevancy

Most consumers do not realize how search results are manipulated, and most don't even know where the ads are.

It would be cool to see an SEO more daring or less lazy than me use this opportunity to toot their own horn and talk about how they help Google solve a problem it hasn't fully figured out yet - relevancy.

It would certainly be cheap marketing if you get national media coverage with the current feeding frenzy for Google's stock.

A major site is hiding a few ;) links. Tempted to gain the 50 - 100 links & readers I would have got from mentioning it, I bet on the side of good karma and sent them a kind email instead.

Hopefully they fix the issue before someone else posts on it, or I will be mad that I missed the scoop, and they still got screwed bad.

These hidden links could totally undermine the credibility of that site.

To give a hint of what is going on, in an internal message I intercepted

At the suggestion of Mike xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxx Website Development, I've used the CSS attribute "display:none"

The message continues:

This trick is, I'm told by Mike, who knows more about SEO than most, is search engine friendly.

Mike should be drug out in the street and shot. Not only for providing such bad advice, but for assuring them that its search engine friendly.

Chatting with Todd, he said:

you'll be reincarnated as an eagle rather than a hunk of donkey dung
damn...those links are workin' well too
did you check the rankings on some of those?

I sent them an email and Todd said:

nice....you will make a wonderful eagle;)
at least you can know you gave them a chance
it is a good story
but it is also enough to destroy an entire organization
who is probably 99% good

Will let you know how it goes.

A while ago I wrote a bit about TrustRank after reading the PDF about it.

It is fairly easy to understand many of the concepts of it (like attenuating a possitive trust score or offsetting the effects of link spam with a negative trust score), but it is even easier to understand them if you visualize the concept of trust attenuation.

Most sites are not exceptionally compelling, so there are usually not many legitimate hubs in any industry, but many sites are glorified link farms which will not pass any positive trust value.

For a while I helped promote many directories, but many of the new ones on the market have little to no legitimate value, and some of the links from them may even have negative value.

I just wrote an article called TrustRank & the Company You Keep, in which I made this graphic explaining the concept of AntiTrust (yet another SEO phrase I made up hehehe).

The red X's represent things that should be, but are not there.

Yes, I know, the drop shadow is too dark, my web designer friend already yelled at me for that. Other than that, I hope the image clearly demonstrates the concept I was trying to get across.

Other than drop shadow remarks, please leave comments on the article and image below.

Not that it is huge news for the average SEO, but when SEO Inc was removed from Google the story got so much negative coverage and the SEO Inc PR department botched the issue that it was just a really bad thing for them.

Another great example of how you reacting to something being more important than what actually happens.

Right now I am not getting SEO Inc to show up for their site name and the like, but their home page was cached in Google 2 days ago and is showing up under Search Engine Marketing Firm.

Congrats for getting back in SEO Inc.

Lee Odden mentioned it in SEW forums.

My friend fixed the error in Link Harvester's code & updated the free source code with a few new features.

The new features are:

• sorts .mil domains with the .gov domains.

• added links to Google cache and Google cache text of each page

If you have not heard of Link Harvester yet, here is some background on it. Are there any other cool features you can think of? I might have a friend create another SEO tool tomorrow too if he has time. I will probably be adding features to Hub Finder soon too if I have enough money and my friends have enough time.

BTW, someone pointed out Search Lores in a comment at ThreadWatch recently. The site is so amazing I can't believe I haven't came across it yet.

Portalized:
Google offers portalization of Google.com. Danny Sullivan has an in depth review. They have a number of features and intend to add many, such as RSS feed support.

Stemming:
Rand points out a post by Xan on stemming and a free online stemming tool

DMOZ:
kills the submission status review. Now its even easier to be corrupt ;)

New York Times:
Begins charging for some of their content. Most of their content remains free. They are also replacing the CEO of About.com.

When Not to Submit to Directories:
when a person creates about a half dozen general directories and promotes them all together. that is not building value, that is trying to cash out and milk the web.

Many directory owners have become exceedingly greedy recently. All the while search algorithms continue to advance and few of the directory owners are actually trying to build any legitimate value.

The Search:
You can pre order John Battelle's new book. He said if you use this link he may be able to autograph it for you, assuming he can work out the shipping details.

The Size of Google's Index:
might have been a bit frothy

Google Factory Tour:
video presentations (should be up soon), Philip Lessen has highlights

Mirago AdSense:
Apparently they have a product similar to AdSense, which might be useful for companies like HotNacho.

Sounds like a marketing product name, eh? Actually this is a link to a research paper Orion mentioned, a 20 page PDF about AdWords and Generalized On-Line Matching, which covers the idea of allowing search services to extract the maximum ad revenue out of advertisers.

One problem current search related ad systems have is that after one advertiser exhausts their budget the competing sites may get ads below their fair market value.

If a college student wanted to get a job at Google you could bet that writing a research paper about making AdWords more profitable would be a good idea :)

In related news...
AdWords Smart Keyword Evaluation Tool:
Sometimes without human review it disables some exceptionally well targeted terms even before you get a chance to display your ads. That is not so smart, as it frustrates advertisers and prevents them from selling part of their inventory.

You can't know how well an ad will perform based on past advertising experience since so much of Google's ad space is full of "Buy dead animal at eBay" type ads.

Why Disabling Some Generic Term Makes more Money:
I advertise one product line on Overture where part of the name is an acronym. I can use that acronym to make a decent number of sales on Overture for a good sum of money. If I want to advertise for that term on Google AdWords, even with like 20 negative keywords (filtering out unrelated traffic), the term consistantly gets shut off, despite getting a clickthrough near their minimum rate and converting exceptionally well.

Then again, maybe Google does not want me to get those conversions for a nickel. In how broad search engines allow you to advertise they are also trying to control the way searchers search. If a person searches for a short acronym Google would prefer that person to give them more data, so they can gain a better understanding of what the person wants, and deliver more targeted and hopefully more expensive advertising.

In my example for targeted terms I pay over 10 times as much per click, which really sucks since the acronym had a conversion rate higher than the campaign does.

So the people suing the major search engines for click fraud issues created a website.

With the money that is going to be needed in that sort of a case you would have thought they could have made an attractive professional looking site, but you would be wrong. They even have (not so) flashy "click here" banners.

From their press release:

"What we'd like is for http://www.LostClicks.com to become an electronic meeting place for advertisers and individuals who are concerned about pay-per- click (PPC) fraud," says attorney Joel Fineberg of Dallas, who represents online advertisers in the class action lawsuit. "It's very important that all of us share information because we're dealing with a new technology and a new challenge. The more people who visit the site, the more knowledge we can all gain."

Sending what visitors I can. They are surely in for an expensive battle. Wonder why don't they have a blog, forum, or anything that would encourage community activity? They probably could have put a bit more effort in on that front.

The purist will hate the ads, but if RSS is going to transition from early adopter to mainstream it will need to pay for itself. The two options are that the RSS post is a summary that brings visitor to your site to see ads or you place ads in your feed. Google wants ads in your feed.

Google, wanting more ad inventory, has opened up Google AdSense for feeds (of course, BETA).

You are supposed to have at least 100 subscribers to sign up to the new AdSense for feeds program.

It's kinda funny how Google determines how feeds are supposed to work so that they justify creating more ad space, for better usability for the user of course ;)

Syndicate the full text of your articles. The more content that is available in a site’s feed, the better the user experience, and the more likely people are to subscribe your feed. If you can’t put the full text of your articles in your feed, then in addition to the headline of each article, include as informative a snippet as possible of the article’s text.

Typically most people do not view a feed until after they subscribed to it, so how does showing the full content of your post in your feed make people more likely to subscribe?

Parts 1 & 2

While those articles are not directly associated with SEO, I know many SEOs who:

• rarely sleep

• rarely exercise
• smoke & drink
• have lots of caffiene
• eat unhealthy
• are under heavy stress
• constantly multi task
• etc.

I don't think depression is just a physical or psychological issue, but is deeply intertwined. The articles focus more on the physical reenforcing aspects of severe depression.

Before doing SEO I was in the Navy and then later a mid level manager for another company. At my prior jobs it was not uncommon to drive & work 80 (mid level manager guy) to 120 (Navy) hours a week. I also did much of my initial learning SEO / marketing / web while in that mid level management position (and got so many speeding tickets during that time period too).

When you are first getting started in SEO you may have to work long hours, and sometimes it can be hard to escape work when there is so much to learn and it rests just beyond the edge of your bed. This is especially true when the alternative is to go work for a company that wants to chew you up for all you are worth, and then fire you or go under before you get any benefits out of your retirement.

A few other things that make it easy to stretch yourself too far doing SEO are

• that many times you do not have to leave the house or interact with society in general to get by

• pricing SEO services can be somewhat hard, especially when you are new and do not appreciate the value of your services. about a year ago I had like $20,000 of credit card debt, which has since been joyfully erased.

I don't necissarily agree with everything those articles said (particularly the endorsement of the prescription drugs), but did find the articles interesting.

Hopefully this somewhat off topic post helps more people than it makes mad.

Bo Peabody is the guy who created Tripod, who only accidentally had their everpopular site builder added to that site because his workers created something other than what he wanted. Lucky or Smart is a super quick book (58 pages) which explains some of the tips which helped Bo and Tripod along.

A few tips from his book:

1. "Lucky things happen to entrepenuers who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically possitive companies."

2. entrepenuers usually are satisfied with well enough, whereas managers try to make things to perfect and thus move too slowly in starting new companies
3. startups generally attract many sociopaths
4. no is the most common word, but is an open door
5. being gracious is key
6. always spin your company / story / self to sell #1
7. press is sensationalistic. never believe in it.
8. news is past tense. doing is more important than reading the news.
9. know that you do not always know the answers and when to say you don't know

Lucky or Smart: Secrets to an Entrepeneurial Life is a book that is quick to read, and reads in a conversational tone, which will make it easy to read in a single sitting.

Not how to get more out of your ad spend, but how to spend more money on your PPC ads. Never did I think I would read an article about how to spend more. Why not though, eh?

The 1st major question they listed in evaluating your spend:
Any Search Engines Missing?
Kinda funny that the article was sponsored by FindWhat and there is a huge FindWhat ad next to it ;)

From the few chats I have had with him Kevin is a super bright guy, and probably one of the top half dozen PPC experts in the world, but do you think ClickZ is being a bit transparent with the advertising business model there?

Sometimes when doing link analysis you come across pages that would be appealing to get links from, but may not fit the profile of a page or site that the owner of the page in question would likely link to.

Of all the pages on the web, most of them are not overtly amazingly thoughtful or original. With that being said, it costs next to nothing to write an article or hire an article writer to write about a topic which could likely gain links from various trusted or authoritative resources.

For most people it is easier to create something worth promoting than trying to promote something not worth promoting. Along those lines of thinking, it is easier to create something people care about if you use their interests as the source of the content or idea.

Whether or not you care about Search Engine Spam, it is easy to let the author of a page about the topic think you care by writing a piece that cares, even if your only goal is the link.

Of course, you don't want to destroy your brand value in the process, but there should be ways to use tact and get a link without writing something that is untrue.

If the thought or reasoning behind the article does not totally agree with you, then it might be a good occasion to hire a guest writer.

Huge news for the beaten down FWHT stock, which was recently down to 4.07 from it's 52 week high of 23.94, gained about 10% on the day.

A judge declared a mistrial in a patent infringement lawsuit between Yahoo Inc. and FindWhat.com Inc. after a jury failed to reach a decision on all of the issues in the case, FindWhat.com said on Thursday.

In a note to clients on Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan said the most likely outcome of the case would be a modest out-of-court settlement. He estimated that FindWhat could settle the case for around $7 million to $8 million.

Rohan said some investors had worried that a ruling against FindWhat in the case could wipe out the majority of the company's $50 million cash balance.

Most of the second tier search stocks are fading into irrelevance. Maybe this will help FWHT hang on a little longer. Also noted eariler today:

FindWhat.com noted the judge has yet to rule on the issue of whether the patent is unenforceable because of inequitable conduct committed by Overture. A hearing on the inequitable conduct issue and other motions that could impact the ultimate outcome of the case is currently scheduled for June 24, 2005.

Keyword Locator is new keyword research & monitoring software which sells for $87. When I tried to download it there were download errors, but Frenchie Sano was quick to reply and help me with the download. On to the reveiw... Features:

• Like many of the other current keyword research tools on the market, it pulls keyword suggestions, search volumes, and bid prices from Overture.

• Set which Google URL and Overture market you want to review ads from, and reports the number of competing ads.
• Select Yahoo!, Google, Overture, or digging to grab your various keywords.
• Easy data import and export.
• Shows the number of competing ads in each engine.
• Allows you to filter keywords by a term or select a group of them. After you select a set of results you can scroll through the URLs, ad titles, common words in ad copy, and bid prices by search engine. (please note Google AdWords does not give out ad price and search volume data).
• By collecting and sorting the combined keyword data you can see what terms & emotional triggers people are using most frequently in your marketplace.
• Has a character stripper and ad formatter. The character stripper could also be improved by letting you also remove character sequences by doing something like placing the phrase or character set in [] or something like that.
• Tool also includes FindWhat & Enhance Interactive.
• Can access data via proxy.
• The format tool makes it easy for you to format keywords as exact match terms, phrases, or broad match terms. It would be nice if they added an all feature to that for those who may want to bid on all levels of relevancy matching.

Things that would Make Keyword Locator Better:
Many people access keyword data from the same sources. This means:

• this data is going to be inclined to being spammed or thrown off course by automated bots and marketers.

• These portions of the market are going to be much more competitive (and thus less profitable) than words from sources of unique or limited data.
• Outside of good sex and choice narcotics almost nothing feels better than being the only bidder for a term which converts at 30% and only costs a nickel a click.

I like free access to data and information (I only sell my ebook because it is my main functional business model and I have not been creative enough to think of another yet), but sometimes paying for data creates a barrier which adds value to the usefulness of the data. It would be cool to see a tool like this interface with data from WordTracker, Keyword Intelligence, & Keyword Discovery.

I think Keyword Locator could also be improved by adding:

• a term combination tool (like the permutator)

• a misspelled terms tool
• allowing users to set custom term operations. for example, I should be able to enter www.blah.com and output the terms:
  • blahcom

  • wwwblah
  • etc
• Interface with or link to other common keyword tools & ideas such as:
  • a thesaurus

  • Statistically Improbable Phrases
  • a lexical database

Overall Keyword Locator is pretty good software, but a few of the ideas listed above could make it a bit better.

If you spend signifincantly on PPC advertising it can likely help save you time and money, but some things can't be automated. Tools which show you what your competitors are already doing may not show you how to beat them (as you can't put think creatively into software).

Keyword Locator can help you as one tool to use with PPC campaigns, but you may also want to use other tools and research databases & techniques as well.

[Update: a WMW thread highlighted a potential problem with Keyword Locator]

Left, Right, Or Center? Can A Search Engine Be Biased?

Biased Search Ads:
Ads are going to be inherently biased, as paying for them means that the person buying them aims to use that money to manipulate others to perform a desired task.

From time to time someone will go too far and search engines will say the ad is out of bounds. The process will repeat.

Are Search Results Biased? Working with a Limited Information Pool:
Lets presume that the search engines aimed to be completely unbiased. Search engines can only display information they know about. They can not serve up information that does not exist.

Creating Information:
Information creation is either a labor of love, or must pay for itself.

Ideally it does not happen, but if a site creates profit the business model is going to bias the content.

If information is a labor of love then it is probably going to be highly opinionated - showing the world from a biased perspective.

If you pour yourself into something at a financial loss hopefully you are gaining in other areas, or else why would you create it?

While the best answers are usually somewhere in the middle, it is much more exciting to propose something that is cutting edge or deeply rooted in some ideology.

Linking to Information:
People are more inclined to link into overtly biased information. Whether they like the person:

Some might think ABC is a bit out there, but this is just a briliant idea (link)...

or hate them:

XYZ is a real tool. This moron said "blah blah blah" (link)...

Political and religious related topics are going to come out with a higher ratio of biased to unbiased information. Stories where religion and politics overlap will build heavy linkage data.

In being somewhat biased people get more feedback (potentiall more content), more readers (can make more money from ads and thus can further the content creation, brand, and distribution), and more links (furthering their authority score). Using the results of this type of social network how could search engines be anything but biased?

Credible Sources:
The Wall Street Journal is branded as honest information about business and finance in a capitalistic society, and yet they are reporting bad quarters and shrinking some of their edition sizes to cut costs.

Do the people reporting about money not know how to make any?

Part of the bad quarters may be due to

• the slugish stock market

• rapid consolidation of wealth
• uncertainty
• trade and federal deficits
• lack of trust in the market
• and energy shortages.

They are also losing out due to the web being a faster moving and cheaper distributed advertising network. Another thing that really hurts them - and all unbiased trusted sources - is that I can read exactly what I want to from whatever channels I like. News biased the way I like it.

While news search algorithms can use systems like TrustRank to unbias their news results, you can't fully remove bias from search results.

Most people are not cited or remembered as social significant for being unbiased and centered. The channels (websites) which do not have to ask for citation (links) will usually beat out those that do.

Privacy:
Google Web Accelerator takes your data, and shares it with others?

Block Google Accelerator:
courtesy Fantomaster

Click Fraud:
search engines leave advertisers in the cold lurch. Lurch is a cool word.

Block that Channel:
Google AdSense allows channel blocking

Stop:
Collaborate and listen, Ice is back with his brand new edition SEO Inc, being cool like Vanilla Ice, sends out a cease and desist letter.

New SEO Tool:
SEO Browser

Audio Search:Sounds like Yahoo! may be first to market

A while ago someone shot me an email about Constant Content and I forgot to post about it. I just remembered it again and thought to post on it.

From their site:

Constant Content is exactly what the name implies: A website where you will be able to find text to complete your website or project. This is a place to locate high-quality content at affordable prices. We will assist you in delivering the whole package, ensuring that the clients you service will be receiving a polished piece of perfection.

I have not bought or tested the content quality, but with the wide range of authors there is likely to be some real gems and some real duds in the mix.

Business model:
Constant Content is a database which keeps 50% of the funds received when people purchase the content created by authors who submit their articles to the site.

Some of the articles are free, while others are available for sale to use exclusively or to buy an individual license for. Constant Content also runs AdSense on some of their article abstracts to help create another revenue channel.

They already have over 600 writers, and it seems like it would be a fairly scalable business model, and is a rather untapped market.

Economics of Link Buying VS Submitting Articles:
If you buy them, even crap links can usually cost $5 to $50 each. You could likely buy one of these exclusive articles and submit it to a few sites to build a dozen or so links for the cost of one link.

Economics of Buying Ads VS Buying Content & Selling Ads:
To further appreciate the economics of this idea, a single click from Google AdWords on legal, health, insurance, and other high margin subjects can cost $2-$50, while you can buy the rights to an article for about $5 - $10 (usage) and $50 for exclusive rights.

As this and other related business models develop it sure can put another spin on the AdSense business model. With some of these articles you could buy them, place AdSense ads on them to get a 30% CTR, and after a few dozen visitors you would pay for the usage cost and be into the pure profit zone.

Similar Competing Business Models:
I believe the people at Traffic Logic / Article Insider also sell content. I doubt they could compete on the price aspect with how cheap some of the articles at Constant Content are. I also have found much of the Article Insider content to be a bit less than impressive.

Some auctions such as Elance allow you to bid on similar projects, but its hard to be certain of quality. The nice thing about Constant Content is you can request articles and bid without obligation to buy, even if a half dozen people make articles for you.

Disclaimer:
I don't think I know who is behind Constant Content. The post was fairly positive because it sounds like a cool idea. Whether or not it pans out, the business model seems smart to me.

Tool from Last Month:
None of the major text link analysis tools for sale allow you to check co-citation, or pages which link to multiple related resources.

Last month I had a friend create Hub Finder, which is a free on topic link analysis tool which looks for co-citation. I have not got much feedback on the tool yet, but a few people have said they found it to be useful.

New SEO tool for this month:
Another common problem with most link analysis tools is that they do not make it quick, easy, and convenient for you to be able to search past the 1,000 backlink barrier set by most search engines. What is the point of being slow to give you more details than you need, only to survey a small portion of the inbound links?

A friend of mine is a decent programmer, and I had him whip up a tool I call Link Harvester, which has a ton of cool features:

• uses the Yahoo! API, so it is in compliance with their TOS.

• free
• makes saving and exporting data in CSV as simple as a click of the mouse
• does not require any software downloading
• quickly grabs the number of .gov, .edu, & .ac.uk inbound links while also listing each individual link.
• quickly grabs the number of unique linking domains while listing them
• quickly grabs the number of unique linking C block IP addresses while listing the C block next to each domain
• allows you to check links pointing at a page or at a domain
• displays the total number of links showed by Yahoo!
• displays the total number of pages indexed by Yahoo!
• links next to each domain that point at its WhoIs source information and Wayback Machine information.
• if a site links at your site more than 5 times then it is bolded in the results and a checkbox is autochecked, which allows you to filter out that site and spider deeper through the link database. This harvesting action is how you can spider deeper than 1,000 backlinks and where the tool got its name from.
• Link Harvester is open source. If you like the tool & find it useful you can add it to your site. Also if you can think of ways to make it better you can modify it however you please.

Why Not Look at Anchor Text?

• I did not want this tool to spider websites.

• I wanted this tool to be faster than anything on the market.
• It is important to understand what anchor text variations people are using, but usually you can figure out how stiff the competition is just by quickly glancing through their backlink profile without necissarily looking too deeply into anchor text. The current off the shelf tools that monitor the anchor text only give you a small sample of backlink data.
• This tool was not designed to be the comprehensive show all link analysis tool, but just something that was useful and quick and easy to use.

After you see enough linkage data you become aware of how competitive a site is and how you should go about promoting it. It is kinda like the thin slicing concept Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Blink.

Feedback:
Please let me know what you think about Link Harvester in the comments below.

Want to Host Link Harvester? Want to make it better?
grab the source code here.

If you are a search geek you may like Fractals, L-Systems and Semantics

Xan questions the paper a bit at the SEW forums.

You guys as you say find inspiration in Orion's theories, even if they have not been proved, and it gives you the motivation to improve your content. This is sufficient enough to see the use of them.

The problem of the ideas as a whole as they do not take into account the big picture but focus down on a very specific are which is the content on the page, when what you should be looking at is the content you share with your peers, and how this all links in together. Starting to look at the various different dimensions your content has in relation to the rest of the world around it may tell you some more. Demo's I've seen do include the use of clustering but in the sense of topic classification. Each site or even each part will belong to 1 or many different spheres of belonging if you like. I've seen demo's that spit out the "topic sphere" if you like and enable the user to visually manipulate this or textually manipulate this to get the results they want.

Never forget the big picture!

I think Xan's point is valid in that by following rules or focusing on specific things sometimes we miss out on the big picture or create artificial machine identifiable patterns. With that being said I find lots of the stuff Orion posts interesting.

Off topic, but Orion the Hunter is my favorite constellation. I have been exploring the universe a bit recently, watching some Cosmos :)

Google AdWords Relevancy Changes:

The difference is that now, the CTR of the ad copy itself is factored in, instead of it being solely the CTR of the keyword. Which only makes sense, IMO, given that it is the quality of the keyword and the particular ad it brings up that defines relevance, for a given search. source

Thomson:
sells Google AdWords ads

SearchEngineWatch Forums Live:
mini conference to hit Atlanta Tuesday, June 28th, 8:00am - 1:00pm.

I always like smaller conferences because when they get too big you (as in me) feel lost in the shuffle. It only costs $100 to attend this one. Smart move by JupiterMedia, as this will surely prevent others from having an easy entry into this market space.

Urchin Discount:
Google discounts Urchin price

The $199 per month Urchin On Demand also now includes report profiles for up to fifty individual websites (Urchin's previous offering included reporting for only one site). The price includes up to 100,000 pageviews per month. Users can add one million more pageviews for only $99 more per month.

In addition to the reduced price and increased number of profiles, Urchin On Demand is now able to import -pay--per-click costs directly from Google AdWords accounts.

Many smart search marketers probably are not willing to be paid to give Google all their data. As time passes you can be sure that Google will drop their costs further as they try to kill off the business models of everthing between them and ad dollars.

Stocks:
Look, Fwht, & Mama are dropping like it's not hot. InfoSpace (which does search & mobile technology) recently lost about 30% of their market value as well

When I was new to SEO I did a bunch of on the page analysis to try to figure out exactly what other people are doing. The problem is that it gets you focused on things that do not matter. A site may end up ranking high at the sacrifice of conversion.

As search algorithms advance basic link analysis tools, at least for Google, are starting to become what keyword density tools are: a waste of time.

Link analysis software was cool, especially when Google used to show all of the PageRank 4 and above links, back when their search relevancy algorithm was a bit more dependant on raw PageRank.

Now Google only shows a limited random set of backlinks, and the other search engines also limit the search depth to 1,000 results, which makes it hard to do useful analysis with the various link analysis tools on the market.

If it were quick and easy to query a database deeply (deeper than 1,000) then the link analysis tools would be much more useful. None of them currently on the market really make that a quick and easy process.

The other problem mentioned above, of harder relevancy algorithms, is not one that is going to go away. WMW supporters forum has a thread about the Google "Sandbox". A friend of mine just got through reading the whole thing, stating that most of it was of little value, but he found a couple posts enlightening. The second post here by Ron Burk has some good tidbits

To keep improving the results, you find more variables for the algorithm-creating machine to use, and you add to your store of human-ranked pages for it to "learn" from. What you don't do is bother understanding the actual algorithm -- it was constructed by a machine and is way too complex for anyone to keep in their head.
...
Psychologists have shown repeatedly that when you give people a system to optimize, all you have to do is secretly introduce a delay between their actions and the results of their actions, and they will go bonkers. In fact, in a very simple (single variable!) model in which people are trying to control the temperature in a virtual refridgerator, you can get some of the same irrational responses you see in these forums

and the first post here by Captain CaveMan (which incidentally is the name of an awesome cartoon character) does as well:

Without giving away the store, I don't know how else to say it. There is no sandbox. People speak of it as though it were some simple 'thing' that stops new sites from being seen. That has simply never been true. What was true was that in its early days, some of the algo elements and related filters were so tight that only a very few new sites got past them (some accidentally; some methodically). Over time that changed; more sites started getting out, presumably as G worked to surface more new, higher quality sites.

There is no sandbox. There is only a serious of rotating algo's and related filters, that make it far harder for sites launched after spring of '04 to be widely seen in the SERP's. Not impossible. Harder. And certainly not as hard now as was true seven months ago. This has been hashed and rehashed so many times that it's hard to understand why it's still confusing.

If you can only see a few of the variables and overexert effort to satisfy those variables you may end up tripping filters and not satisfying other criteria.