Posted by rebecca

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Three star links:

• Want to learn how to do 100 pushups? This site gives you a nice training program that"s bound to turn your T-Rex arms into hefty guns in no time.
  
• This Wired article says we need to ask ourselves "What can science learn from Google?" Oh geez...
• Google announces the launch of Ad Planner, which provides site data for publisher sites you might want to place your ads on. And next week Google will announce ShowrStalkr, in which they spy on you while you"re showering and inform you of any areas you"ve neglected to soap up.
• Hey, check out how trendy SEOmoz is! Suck it, Cutts!
• Andy  Beal is offering an online reputation management workshop August 7 (the day after my birthday!) at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. This should be an extremely valuable clinic and there are only 17 seats left, so scoop one up if you want to learn more about how to manage your brand and reputation online.
• MindValleyLabs provides some tips on how to get and leverage attention from the mass media. Racist remarks seem to be working for Don Imus...
• Eric Enge interviews Vanessa Fox about holistic online marketing, her new Jane and Robot site, and other tidbits.
• Apparently Thursday at noon PST is the best time to post a blog entry. I think I linked to another study that came to the same conclusion in a previous Roundup Thursday post.
  
• The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers is opening up domain names to endless variations. Expect to see .wtf and .lol TLDs soon.
• Plurkable tells us how you can become a power plurker. You pretty much have to stay up 24/7 so your karma points don"t dip. Bastards.
• This is insane. Apparently a bunch of idiotic teenage girls at Gloucester High in Massachusetts made a "pregnancy pact" and all got pregnant at the same time because they thought it would be cute to raise babies together. They even went so far as to get knocked up by a 24 year old homeless man (Arrested Development reference in 3, 2, 1..."I just want my kids back!"). Good lord. Whatever happened to slap bracelets being the big trendy thing to have at school? Why is it babies now?!
• According to RSS Applied, Facebook finally beat MySpace in monthly visits. MySpace was too busy trying to take a pouty photo of itself standing in front of a bathroom mirror to comment.
  
• The New Yorker has a video interview of Eric Schmidt, the CEO and chairman of Google.
  
• Can Google define what"s "obscene"? This NY Times article highlights how the Internet could be changing obscenity standards in court cases. Sarah should weigh in for an upcoming Legal Monday post!
• Richard Baxter reviews Blip, the "musical Twitter."  Apparently they don"t nofollow the links in the status bar, so SEOs, start yer spammin"!
  
• This is interesting--50 resources for how to make Flickr work for your library. It"s neat to see libraries and other institutions adopting web 2.0ey goodness. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
  
• Here"s Eric Ward"s site translated by Gizoogle. I particularly like the quote by "D-A-Double-Nizzy Sullivan."

Four star links:

• One of my favorite bloggers, Gord Hotchkiss, authors an intelligent post stating that we shouldn"t crown Google as the search engine king just yet because Google"s biggest competitor could still be out there--a scrappy young startup like, well, how Google was back in the day.
  
• nTrendsMaster is a really good tool for traffic keyword analysis (beware the slow download, though). It claims to "give you as accurate as possible information about the popularity and level of competition for any keyword you like."
  
• Danny Sullivan writes a great post about how Yahoo! is mistakenly being painted as a "loser company." Rand"s thoughts on the matter: "I"m pretty tired of people saying Yahoo!"s beat, when in fact they"re one of the most amazing companies in the world. They"re just competing against possibly the most amazing company in the world, so all the comparisons are ridiculously unfair."
• Psychology Today has the last interview George Carlin gave before he died. I actually saw George Carlin perform in Detroit when I was 16, and he was incredible. We"ll miss you, George! Thanks for bringing us some great fucking comedy. :)

Five star links:

• Matt McGee has a fantastic post about how he thinks XML sitemaps are the most overrated SEO tactic ever. It"s an honest, refreshing perspective and a great read.
  
• SEOmoz worked with Geosign at the height of their fame and fortune, but nonetheless it"s fascinating to see their rapid rise and fall due to PPC arbitrage.
  
• I already have my next bike picked out for upcoming triathlons...

5-Star Achievement:

Okay, I don"t have a fancy badge to display, nor do I have a link to share, but I"m going to shamelessly plug the fact that I completed a half Ironman on Sunday.

Check out those guns

After enduring confusing registration forms, coping with flat tires, carbo loading, and training for 5 months, I was able to successfully swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, and run 12.4 miles (a traditional half Ironman is 13.1 miles, but the race was in Victoria, BC, Canada, and they did it as a 20 km run). My finish time was pretty mediocre, but I don"t mind--now I know what to improve upon for the next race! I have to say thank you to my coworkers for putting up with me running out of the office clad in spandex on far too many occasions, Manstery Guest for training with me and for putting up with my Jessie Spano freakout moments when I was unsure as to whether or not I could do the race, everyone in the SEO community and all of the SEOmoz members for encouraging me and for sending me well wishes, and Christine, our director of operations, for persuading me to sign up for the race, for lending me tons of gear (including her old bike and wetsuit), and for being extremely supportive.

Oh, and since I was in Canada, yes, I did get to indulge in a cheese and bacon baked potato from Wendy"s:

Victory has never tasted so calorically delicous.

YOUmoz entries:

• Get Your Banana Out and Start Monkeying Around with Yahoo Search. Stephen T gives us an intro to Yahoo SearchMonkey and shows us how to create an application.
  
• The Logical Path to Keyword Research. Scotie shares with us his keyword research process, which involves finding a workable solution via a logical path.
  
• Keyword Research for Emerging Markets...Or Not. Mitch Turk asks how to do keyword research for emerging markets.
• Great Expotations: My SES Top 11. LinkDev shares a list of lessons learned while attending SES Toronto.
• Does the Google SandBox for Domains Still Exist? Or How Quick Can I Get Around It? Paisleyseo sets up an experiment with a new domain to see if it will get sandboxed or whether it"ll get indexed fairly quickly.

Best of YOUmoz:

• Google"s Top 100 SEOmoz Member Profiles. Darren Slatten identifies the top 100 SEOmoz member profiles as seen by Google.
  
• At What Stage Do You Say "Bugger the Users, I *Need* to Do This!"? ChristianB runs into the dilemma of putting ads on his site at the risk of alienating his existing userbase. It"s a conundrum many of us have faced in the past: can you make money AND keep your users happy?

New events added to the Events Calendar:

No new events added.

Upcoming events:

• Mobile Social Networks & UGC July 2-4 at the Moevenpic Hotel in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Social Networking Conference July 10-11 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• SEM specialist for Impact Media in Southampton,  UK
• Contracted SEO advice as well as ongoing SEO work for toycollector.com in London, UK
• Web marketing associate and SEO/SEM expert for imageMEDIA in Tarpon Springs, FL
• On-page optimization specialist for seOverflow in Denver, CO
• Senior research scientist for a vertical ad network in New York, NY
• Contracted SEO for UGT Servers in Florida
• Search marketing specialist for Sesame Communications in Renton, WA
• E-commerce marketing manager in North Atlanta, GA

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• Talent Gurus in Houston, TX
• Deographics in San Francisco, CA
• SEER Interactive in Philadelphia, PA
• SEMinhouse.com in San Francisco, CA (uh, nice URL, especially when you read "SEM" as "seem"...)

UK/Europe:

• Impact Media in the UK

Asia:

• Info Cubic Japan in Tokyo, Japan

Featured resumes:

Currently looking:

• Heather Braswell McMahon is an experienced copywriter and is looking for an opportunity in Atlanta, GA, developing copy, search marketing and social networking strategies, and content strategies for clients in an agency or web dev firm setting.
• Lewise Hiltz is an Internet marketing manager who has experience in both online/e-business and traditional sales and marketing.

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Posted by randfish

The story starts with a smart SEOmoz member, Per Svanström, getting stumped by a perfectly legitimate, white hat subdirectory, with plenty of PageRank, dropping out of Google"s index:

You can see from the image that the single URL was dropped, but a site:birdstep.com/database query reveals that in fact, all of those pages are out of the index. Time for some detective work.

Jane & I spent a few minutes trying to puzzle out if bad links were pointing in or if the pages were somehow cloaking or violating TOS. As we were digging through the backlink profile, we saw that, naturally, the birdstep.com domain was linking to the subdirectory on most every page. When we viewed the source code of those pages (for example, the homepage - www.birdstep.com), we saw something strange. Below is the tail end of the source code for their top nav bar:

<li class="menuObject"><a href="http://www.birdstep.com/Corporate/"><img src="/images/menu/Corporate.gif" border="0" alt="Corporate" /></a></li>
<li class="menuObject"><a href="http://www.birdstep.com/Contact-us/"><img src="/images/menu/Contact_us_active.gif" border="0" alt="Contact us" /></a></li>
<li class="menuObject"><a href="http://www.birdstep.com/database/"><img src="/images/menu/Database.gif" border="0" alt="Database" /></a></li>

Looks fine, right? Just a regular menu serving up images as the clickable link. Only problem is...

Notice the navbar? See the missing link? That"s where the "database" section should be linked-to, only the image is missing. Apparently, it was just a design mistake and so they used a 1x1 pixel gif until they could get it fixed. There are plenty of other visible links in the content body of many pages over to the database section, but that top link in the navbar is invisible - technically violating Google"s rules. Despite the fact that plenty of other sites and pages link to the database section legitimately, and Birdstep certainly has no reason or intention to hide that link (other than a miscalculation on pixel width), the whole subdirectory was removed from the index.

Luckily, we caught it, Birdstep has removed the link and they"ll hopefully have the subdirectory re-included in the near future. They also generously gave us permission to discuss the Q+A issue on the blog, which we very much appreciate. I think this serves as a wise warning to developers and designers everywhere - unintentional, white-hat spirited mistakes can be just as dangerous and have just as dire consequences as black hat manipulation. Watch your code!

One more point of interest - in searching around on this issue, I noticed that a Google search for http://www.birdstep.com/database/. (with the added period at the end) brought up this result:

I ran another query on a page I know was removed from the index, and it also yielded a result like the one above (unfortunately, I can"t share that page publicly). It"s possible that this might help diagnose future pages that are removed for bad behavior and exhibit similar symptoms - definitely not a bad query to have in your arsenal if it really does work consistently.

UPDATE: Looks like although this hidden nav element could be a problem, it wasn"t actually this issue coming into play here. The answer was... capital letters cloaking 404 pages to Google (an excellent find from John Mueller). Basically, Birdstep was using some user-agent and port detection to redirect Googlebot to a 404 error page (obviously, not an intentional, we"re cloaking because we want to trick Google, but the oops, that was dumb kind). The odd part is, it looks like Yahoo! and MSN/Live got it right (and there are plenty of links), but Googlebot was being treated differently.

We didn"t notice this initially due to multiple problems - first, just switching your user agent to Googlebot in Firefox won"t expose the issue. Neither will using search spider emulators like SEO-Browser. You need to actually telnet to Port 80 (as Matt Cutts notes in the comments). Second, you will see the page in Yahoo! and MSN (making it feel more like a penalty than a crawl issue). I seriously doubt they"ll be banned for this - the intent to spam or deceive isn"t there - but once again a fascinating detective story about the problems a site can have. Big thanks to Matt and to John for their help.

p.s. Removed the bottom part of the original post due to overwhelming feelings of sheepishness.

p.p.s. Dave Naylor has a tool that can help detect this sort of thing (though it wasn"t originally intended for that use).

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Posted by Jane Copland

The first thing I noticed was the unfortunate title tag and snippet. However, things got stranger when I clicked through to the site. Before I go on, I should say that before it was bought by Microsoft, Farecast was an SEOmoz client. They aren"t anymore, but the fact that I"d worked within the niche and with this site before was what caught my attention.

The page loaded, but I definitely didn"t recognise the content as belonging to either Farecast or Microsoft.

Refreshing the page brought consistently different results. Here is a sample:

Each refresh brought up another strange page, including several error pages. Attempting to complete a search on a page that did load properly was also impossible. I wondered what would happen if you visited Farecast"s previous domain: Up until a few minutes ago, www.farecast.com was not redirecting to farecast.live.com for me. Without the www, it was redirecting. It appears to be working now.

Web-Sniffer"s results were also amusing, as refreshing farecast.live.com"s Web-Sniffer result brought up alternate pages on every attempt as well. Whilst the strange, rotating content was interesting, the fact that the parked page showed up was more so. Suspecting that this was a DNS error of Microsoft"s making, Rob wondered if he could add Live.com to his list of parked domains. He could.

Holy Christ. Sedo thought that Rob owned Live.com and was crediting him with the commission from the page. The conversation went something like this, with a couple of edits:

 

23:02:05 Rob: oh s**t!
23:02:23 Rob: "Live.com has successfully been added to your parking account"
23:02:28 Jane: no
23:02:29 Jane: f***ing
23:02:29 Jane: way

 

A couple of weeks ago, Duncan wrote about Apple.com and the localisation issues they have in using Akamai, whose load-balancing system results in solely U.S. content being shown to Googlebot. Akamai serves content based upon location, and it seems that someone at Microsoft added a Sedo IP address to the routing system Akamai employs.

Since earning income in this manner is well and truly illegal, Rob emailed Sedo immediately. The traffic and commission has stopped and the problem appears to have been rectified. Similarly on Microsoft"s end, farecast.live.com now resolves correctly.

Because Rob can explain this stuff far better than I can (although he"s promised to teach me if I continue buying him pints of Guinness), I"ll let him spell out what happened:

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Posted by rebecca

The only problem I see with going the micro-site route is that they"re starting from scratch with a domain, which sucks for building link pop. Second, the movie name isn"t always available, so they end up with some weird-ass name that they have to work to brand as part of the movie too.  If they work with just adding it to the current site hierarchy, they get all the link-generation the movie buzz would build as well as the ability to use existing link pop to help usher spiders to content. Plus, since the studio"s domain already has age, they"re not fighting that battle...though, I would guess that they buy a domain and start building age for it as soon as they have a project, assuming that the movie"s title doesn"t change.

Hack: Do the movie studios care about their sites in search? How many of them are doing it that intelligently or care?

Syzlak: Why should studios care about an old movie? They"re already focused on promoting the next film. They"re thinking, "I don"t care about Elizabeth the Golden Age, I"m all about Zohan now."

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Posted by Danny Dover

Update: You can now download the complete list of Google User Data by clicking here.

Code From Google Account Sign Up

1. Input type is hidden so user doesn"t see or enter data into given field
2. Location to send user after submitting (hidden)
3. Input type is hidden so user doesn"t see or enter data into given field
4. User"s referrer data is used and sent via the form so Google knows where user clicked "Sign Up" (hidden)

Unique cookies stored on user"s computer from multiple Google web properties

Example of a log file

URL - "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seomoz&ie=UTF-8"
1. IP Address from user making request. This can be used to geo-locate the user
2. Date, time, and time zone offset of user
3. Language of requested result (in this case, English)
4. Search query
5. Operating system of user
6. Browser of user

The additional information is less important but details the server type of request, the server response, and rendering engine.

Ompa Loompas working hard at Google writing pretty primary colored code.

The Comprehensive List of All the Data Google Admits to Collecting from Users

Download as:
PDF Doc Pages

Cookies and logs (described above) are used in addition to the methods used below to track users. Note: a few of the items below require a user to opt in.

Google (Normal Search)

• Search Engine Result Pages
• Country code domain
• Query
• IP address
• Language
• Number of results
• Safe search
• Additional preferences can include:
  • Street Address
  • City
  • State
  • Zip/postal code
• Server log
  • Query
  • URL
  • IP address
  • Cookie
  • Browser
  • Date
  • Time
• Clicks

Google Personalized Search

• Logs every website visited as a result of a Google search.

   
Google"s data on me while I researched this article

• Content analysis of visited websites

Google Account

• Used as resource to compile information on individual users
• Sign up
  • Sign up date
  • Username
  • Password
  • Alternate e-mail
  • Location (country)
• Personal picture
• Usage
  • Friends
  • Google Services usage
  • Amount of logins

Toolbar

• All websites visited
• Unique application number
• Sends all visited 404s to Google
• Toolbar synchronization function
  • Stores autofill info with Google account
  • Sends structure of web forms to Google
• Safe browsing
  • Stores response to security warnings
• Stores autofill forms data
• Spellcheck sends data to Google servers

Web History

• Every website visited from Google SERP
• Date
• Time
• Search query
• Ads clicked
• Which service

Translate

• All text sent to Google servers

Google Finance

• Stock portfolio
  • User’s stocks
  • Amount of shares
  • Date/time bought
  • Bought at price

Google Checkout

• Buyers
  • Full legal name
  • Credit card number
  • Debit card number
  • Card expiration date
  • Card Verification Number (CVN)
  • Billing address
  • Phone number
  • E-mail address
• Sellers
  • Bank account number
• Personal address
• Business category
  • Government-issued identification number
    • Social Security Number
    • Taxpayer Identification Number
  • Sales Volume
• Transaction volume
• Business information from Dun & Bradstreet
• Transactions
  • Amount
  • Description of product
  • Name of seller
  • Name of buyer
  • Type of payment used
• User trend data
  • Web Beacons
• Referrer data

YouTube

• YouTube SERP data
• Registered user data
  • Videos uploaded
  • Comments posted
  • Videos flagged
  • Subscriptions
    • Channels
    • Groups
    • Favorites
  • Contacts
  • All videos watched
  • Frequency of data transfers
  • Size of data transfers
  • Click location data
  • Information display data
• E-mail
  • Web Beacons for tracking
    • E-mail opened or discarded
• Account basics
  • E-mail
  • Password
  • Username
  • Location (country)
  • Postal code
  • Birthdate
  • Gender

Gmail

• Stores, processes, and maintains all messages
• Account activity
  • Storage usage
  • Number of log-ins
• Data displayed
• Links clicked
• Stores all e-mails
• Contact lists
• Spam trends
  • Gchat
    • All conversations and who they involve.
    • When service is used
    • Size of contact list
    • Contacts communicated with
• Frequency of data transfers
• Size of data transfers
• Clicks

Calendar

• Name
• Default language
• Time zone
• Usage statistics
  • How long the service is used for
  • Frequency of data transfers
  • Size of data transfers
  • Number of events
  • Number of calendars
  • Clicks
  • Deletes every 90 days
• All events
  • Who is going
  • Who was invited
  • Comments
  • Descriptions
  • Date
  • Time

Desktop

• Indexes and stores
  • Versions of your files
  • Computer activity
    • E-mails
    • Chats
    • Web history
• Mixed with web search results
• Content analysis of data on computer for integration into SERPs (opt-in)
  
• Unique application number
• Application interacts with Google’s servers
• Number of searches and response times

Goog 411

• Phone number
• Time of call
• Duration of call
• Options selected
• Phone number used as identifier
• Records all voice commands

iGoogle

• Settings stored in Cookies
• Settings linked to Google Account

Blogger

• User photo
• Birth date
• Location
• Frequency of data transfers
• Size of data transfers
• Clicks
• Blogger Mobile
  • Phone number
  • Associates with Google Account
  • Device identifiers
  • Hardware Identifiers

Google Docs

• E-mail address
• Number of logins
• Actions taken
• Storage usage
• Clicks
• All collaborators
• All text
• All images
• All changes (previous versions)

Groups

• E-mail password
• Contents of posts
• Contents of custom pages
• Contents of external files
• Account activity
  • Groups joined
  • Groups managed
  • List of members
  • List of invitees
  • Ratings made
  • Preferred settings

Orkut

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Religion
• Friend graph
• Hobbies
• Interests
• Photos
• Invites
• Messages
• Orkut Mobile
  • Phone number
  • Wireless carrier
  • Content of message
  • Date
  • Time
• Everything a user writes
• Every blog post a user reads

Picasa

• Friend graph
• Favorite lists
• Clicks (almost all Google services track all clicks)
• All photos
• Geotags (Exif data)
• People who subscribe to albums

Mobile

• Phone number
• Device type
• Request type
• Carrier
• Carrier user ID
• Content of request
• Maps for mobile
  • Location information (GPS)
  • Address
• Websites visited if user asks Google to transcode
• Voice commands

Web Accelerator

• Web requests
• Cache of websites before you go to them

Double Click/AdWords

• Ads clicked
• Age
• Sex
• Location
• Trends of past visited websites
• IP address

Health

• Medial records
  • Doctors
  • Conditions
  • Prescriptions
  • Age
  • Sex
  • Race
  • Blood type
  • Weight
  • Height
  • Allergies
  • Procedures
  • Test results
  • Immunizations

Postini

• E-mail address
• Traffic patterns
• Clicks

GrandCentral

• Credit card
• Credit card expiration date
• Credit card verification number
• Billing address
• Stores, process and maintains
  • Voicemail messages
  • Recorded conversations
  • Contact lists
• Storage usage
• Number of log ins
• Data displayed
• Clicks
• Telephony log information
  • Calling-party phone number
  • Forwarding numbers
  • Time of calls
  • Date of calls
  • Duration of calls
  • Types of calls

Google Merchant Search

• Name
• Contact information
  • E-mail address
  • Phone number

Notebook

• Stores, processes and maintains
  • All content in notebook
  • Nickname
  • Storage usage
  • Number of log-ins

---

Google Web Services That Conveniently Don"t Have Individual Privacy Policies Disclosing What User Data is Collected 

• Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics
• AdWords
• AdSense
• Alerts
• Reader
• Earth
• FeedBurner (technically has one, but it is useless)

Search Verticals

• Image search
• Map search
• Blog search
• Book search
• News search
• Patent search
• Product search
• Scholar search
• Special search
• Video search
• Code search

---

By the way Google...

I found some broken links and errors on your website. On your main privacy policy page the link anchored with "Video Player" is broken. Additionally, you capitalized your own product incorrectly. "GMail" should be "Gmail." Lastly, the Google Store has text encoding issues on the homepage and the link to download sketchup is broken.

Please send my check in the mail (I am sure you already have my address).

---

Sources:

3D Warehouse Advertising Apps Blogger Calendar Desktop Docs Firefox Extensions Gmail GOOG-411

GrandCentral Groups Health iGoogle Maps Merchant Search Test Mobile Orkut Personalized Search Picasa

Postini Store Talk Toolbar Web Accelerator YouTube Youtube Google Privacy Channel

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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

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Posted by randfish

Last week, Google held a live chat session with a number of terrific engineers from the spam, search quality & webmaster central teams. Barry Schwartz posted a text transcsript of the chat up on SERoundTable that I read through, hoping to find some interesting nuggets of information to pass on. Unfortunately, the space given to the Googlers for responses was only 3-4 lines (due to the WebEX client used), so there wasn"t much of an opportunity to provide detail.

I thought it would be more valuable to provide the answers from Google alongside the answers I would have given. Hopefully, in this fashion, folks can compare side-by-side.

Matt Cutts - 5:15 pm
A: Andrea, normally we"re able to take a look at the reports pretty quickly. I like the idea of giving a little more feedback though.

Rand: Google can take anywhere from a day to 2 years to take action on spam reports. Generally speaking, unless the violation is egregious (or appears publicly in the media), Google likes to find scalable, algorithmic solutions to spam issues. Thus, they"ll take your report, compile it with dozens of similar reports of the same types of violations, and work from an engineering perspective to come up with a solution that will catch everyone using the tactic, not just the single site/page you reported. We"ve filed spam reports with Google through clients on numerous occasions and it"s very rare that any fast, direct action is taken. In several cases, reports that were filed a year or more ago for cloaking, keyword stuffing, and link manipulation still haven"t seen any results.

My best advice, if you"re seeking to really get a competitor booted from the index or penalized in the SERPs immediately, is to write about them on major SEO-related forums or submit a thread at Sphinn or a blog post to YOUmoz. When spam is reported publicly, Google tends to take action much more quickly and directly.

BTW - For a much better answer to a very similar question, see Susan Moskwa"s response later on, which read:

A: We usually use them to improve our algorithms, so changes may be more long-term than immediate. But we definitely take these reports into consideration.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/impact-of-user-feedback-part-1.html

--------

seth holladay - 5:14 pm
Q: how do you define and penalize duplicate content? are syndication deals excluded?

Mariya Moeva - 5:15 pm
A: Hi Seth, we just did a post on duplicate content on the Google Webmaster Central blog which has a lot of useful information that may be helpful for you

Rand: Sadly, syndication deals are not excluded, but I also wouldn"t necessarily say that duplicate content is always penalized. I believe the post Mariya is referring to is here - Duplicate Content Due to Scrapers. It"s a solid discussion of the topic, and notes that most of the time, you"re not going to encounter real "penalties" for copying content, you"ll just have those pages filtered out of the results.

However, in any syndication deal, you need to carefully manage expectations. If you are licensing the content out, you need to decide whether you still want the majority of search traffic to come to your site. If so, you"ll want to write rules into the contract requiring links back to your original version, and possibly even request the use of the meta robots directive "noindex, follow" so the engines don"t get confused by another version. On the flip side, if you"re taking the content, it"s very wise to make sure you know how many other parties have licensed and posted that same content piece, whether you"re required to link back to the original source, and what rules exist on search engine indexing. Many times, new content properties or smaller content websites will experience search traffic and rush to acquire more content without thinking through the consequences. I"d strongly suggest reading these four pieces on the subject:

• Ranking as the Original Source for Content You Syndicate
• The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content in the Search Engines
• When Duplicate Content Really Hurts

--------

brian vastola - 5:08 pm
Q: beside content, what are the top 3 things to do to your site to reank [sic] high ( short version)

Susan Moskwa - 5:22 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

Rand: I"m not sure how much the linked-to page on building a search-friendly site will answer a question about important metrics in the search results algorithm. If you want the opinions of some very smart SEOs, I"d check out the search ranking factors document. The real answer here is that we don"t know for certain, and Google wouldn"t be able to freely share this information in a direct, transparent, accurate way because it"s part of their proprietary operations. However, if you wanted just my personal opinion, that"s here.

--------

Tim Dineen - 5:22 pm
Q: What can we do to get the geo-target country correct when ccTLD isn"t available and Webmaster Tools declaration (3-4 months ago) did nothing.

Matt Cutts - 5:26 pm
A: Tim Dineen, I think we offered the feature in the frontend and then started supported [sic] it in the backend a little later, but I believe that we handle the geotargeting in the webmaster console pretty quickly these days.

Rand: There are a lot of other factors besides just the Google Webmaster Tools declaration that can help to put you in the right country for geo-targeting. I"d think about first using a domain name with the proper ccTLD. You mentioned that the right name wasn"t available - I"d consider some other alternatives before giving up. I"d also make sure to host the site (whatever the TLD) on an IP address in the country you"re trying to target, using the language of that country, getting links from other domains from that country, and registering with Google Local/Maps with a physical address in the country. Adding the physical address to the pages of the site and getting listings in local directories will also aid you. We"ve experienced the same problems with the Google Tools country-specific targeting and find that in general, although it suggests that it will solve the issue, there are actually a myriad of factors Google considers before they"ll "take your word" from Webmaster Tools that you"re actually intended for a country-specific audience.

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Jonathan Faustman - 5:21 pm
Q: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when google indexes the site?

Mariya Moeva - 5:26 pm
A: Hi Jonathan, when building your site and considering hiding navigation elements, it"s best to always think, "is this good for my users?" and "would i do this if there were no search engines?

Rand: I"ve got strong opinions about the phrase "Would I do this if there were no search engines?" In fact, I believe it needs to be dropped from the engines" lexicons. We wouldn"t register with Webmaster Tools, we wouldn"t noindex duplicate content, we wouldn"t use meta tags (and many times even title tags), we wouldn"t nofollow paid links, we wouldn"t create sitemaps, we wouldn"t build HTML alternatives to Flash and we wouldn"t worry about CSS issues or AJAX if it weren"t for search engines. Asking us if we"d do something if there were no engines is a completely useless way of thinking about SEO or website accessibility in the modern era.

That said, Jonathan, I"d say that so long as the number of elements is very small in relation to the amount of content on the page, and so long as you"re providing easy, intuitive ways for users to reach those navigational elements, you"ll probably be OK. SEOmoz itself fell under a penalty for keeping a large amount of content on a page in a display:none style, though it was in a perfectly legitimate, user-friendly way. Be cautious about how you hide content from users and what search engines might misinterpret - you can"t just build for one or the other if you want to have a successful SEO strategy. I"d have to look at your specific page to make a judgment call, but my general advice would be to walk on eggshells when it comes to hiding navigation with CSS, and do it sparsely.

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Peter Faber - 5:11 pm
Q: Question: Suppose you rank #1 for inanchor: intitle: and intext: But for just the keyword phrase you"re on second page. Any tips on what to do to get up for just the phrase as well?

Matt Dougherty - 5:29 pm
A: Hi Peter, echoing what John just talked about, I"d say making sure your content is useful to users is the best approach.

Rand: Matt"s answer really frustrates me, as it is almost a non-sequitur to the question. Peter - we see rankings like that happen quite a bit as well, and very frequently it has to do with how Google is ranking in the normal results vs. more modified searches. Intuition and seeing a lot of SERPs like this tells me that some element of the trust factor and domain authority algorithms aren"t coming into play as strongly with the inanchor/intitle/intext results. Generally, when I see those sorts of results, it means you"re close to achieving your rankings goals, but need to get more "trusted" links from high quality domains into your site. We also see rankings like this when a "sandbox" like effect is in place - it could be that one day, you"ll see your domain "pop" out of the lower rankings and into top positions for many of these searches (what SEOs call "breaking out of the sandbox"). So, the good news is that you"re doing a lot of things right, but the bad news is that you either need more trust juice (from high quality links) or time (to "break out") before you"ll achieve those rankings in the normal SERPs.

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Wall-E The Robot - 5:30 pm
Q: I have some Amazon Associates webstores. Obviously they have the same content that Amazon has. And obviously Google sees duplicate content and dont indexes [sic] a lot of my webpages. Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this?

Mariya Moeva - 5:31 pm
A: Hi Wall-E, as long as your Amazon Associates store provides added value to users, there"s nothing you should be worried about

Rand: I"m worried that Mariya"s answer here is misleading. Wall-E has a lot to be worried about, even if the store adds value to users. First off, if the pages aren"t getting indexed, duplicate content might be one issue, but PageRank/link juice accumulation might be another. Google has a certain threshold it likes pages to reach in terms of PageRank before those pages earn the right to be in the main index. If Wall-E"s earning lots of good, high quality external links to his site, looking at the internal link structure to ensure good flow of that juice through the pages would be a good start.

On the duplicate content issue - Amazon"s always going to have the benefit of the doubt when it comes to who owns the content. The best solution here is not just to create value for users, but to stay away from making large portions of copied content indexable - using iframes or only minor snippets at a time is important. You probably also want to find automated ways to change some of the input fields you receive from Amazon. Just copying the titles, prices, categories, tags, photos, etc. could get you into dangerous territory. Google has a requirement for indexation that each page you produce meets a certain, secret threshold for unique, valuable content - you"ll need to solve that issue in order to achieve consistent rankings.

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Robert Longfield - 5:16 pm
Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting geotrageting [sic] so users are directed to the appropriate language page for their country. The concern of some is that Google may penalize me...

John Mueller - 5:35 pm
A: I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It"s better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches.

Rand: Such brazen hypocrisy! Google can geotarget its search results, geotarget its homepage, geotarget many of its other service pages, but heavens forbid anyone else do it. This is ridiculous. Robert - I"d say to simply do a quick check before you redirect your users. If their browser accepts cookies, feel free to drop one, re-direct them to the appropriate page and let your user data, feedback and analytics tell you whether or not it"s the best experience or not. If the browser doesn"t take cookies, drop them on an international landing page that lets them choose their country/language - this will also work well for search engine bots (which don"t accept cookies), and will be able to find all of your country-targeted content.

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David Thurman - 5:39 pm
Q: Does Google favor .html over say .php or do you treat all URL"s the same

Bergy Berghausen - 5:41 pm
A: A URL is a URL. As long as it"s serving content we can read, Googlebot doesn"t care what the file extension is.

Rand: I hate to be a stickler, but didn"t we just go through an episode over file extensions? Bergy really should point out that .exe, .tgz, and .tar (and .0, although that appears to be getting cleaned up) aren"t indexed by Google.

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Gordy Harrower - 5:40 pm
Q: Do Google tools help a site"s ranking?

Mariya Moeva - 5:43 pm
A: Hi Gordy! The most important thing to focus on is the quality of your site and the content that you provide for users

Rand: That"s a really obvious, unhelpful non-answer, and disappointing to see. I think the message being conveyed here is that Google can"t answer the question, which to my mind is a "probably." I"ve long suspected that if you run a statistical check on all the sites that have ever registered with Webmaster Tools vs. those that haven"t, you find a much lower correlation with spam in the lower group, and thus, it might be a metric used in judging trustworthiness, even if it doesn"t have a direct impact on rankings.

As an aside, anytime Google (or any of the engines) can"t give an answer, I think it makes them look so much better when they say something like, "That"s the kind of question we can"t answer directly, because it"s in regards to our ranking system, which we need to keep private to help prevent spam." I have so much more respect for that directness and treatment of the webmaster/question-asker as an adult and a professional than I do for the "make good sites!" malarkey. From a corporate communication standpoint, it instantly flips that goodwill switch that Google has ingrained into most of the web-using populace from "you"re awesome" to "Oh man, seriously? I thought you guys were better than that."

None of this is to say there weren"t some really good answers from Googlers, too. In fact, I"d say it was about 1/3 terrific answers, 1/3 mediocre and 1/3 seriously lacking. I also recognize that Google has absolutely no obligation to do this, and by engaging with webmasters in a public chat like this, they"re leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft & Yahoo!. Kudos to Google once again for their efforts to reach out.

All I really want to highlight with this post is that, for Google, or really any representative of any company or organization (US government, I"m looking in your direction), responding to your audience in direct, honest ways (even when you can"t be fully truthful or revealing) gives you far more credibility and more respect than hiding behind irrelevant links/references or repetitive, company-line jargon. Whether it"s at a conference, during an interview, in a private conversation or online, there"s a higher level worth aspiring to, and I"m both inspired by the efforts to date and left with the feeling that even more could be done by Google"s public faces & voices. Here"s to hoping.

EDIT: When writing this post, I failed to realize that WebEX was the client used for the chat, and that 3-4 lines was the maximum amount of space available for responses. I think this blunts a significant amount of my criticism (and teaches me, once again, that I should try to understand more about a situation before I antagonize). I"ve changed the title of this post to help reflect.

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Posted by great scott!

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Posted by randfish

Tonight I made an online purchase at a store called Widgetco.com (no, I"m not kidding, and I"m not using "widget" as an example, the site is actually www.widgetco.com). Sixty seconds later, this email shows up in my inbox:

When I read the second-to-last line of the message, I realized that SEOmoz needs a "headsmacking tips" series on the blog, and that this was a perfect candidate. It"s unreal that in all the link building tips, all the blog posts and Whiteboard Fridays, not once have I brought up what a terrific idea it is to leverage your customers for link building.

Why Should I Have My Customers Build Links For Me?

• They already like you
• They have a relationship with you, so the link request is more like "If you liked our barbershop, please refer your friend."
• Google loves these kinds of links - in their greatest dreams, the Internet, through links, is a realistic model of the relationships between people, companies and organizations. Links like these get them one step closer to that fantasy.
• Your customers are usually relevant to you, and it"s likely that if they link, the post they use or the content they link from will have the right kind of relationship with your niche.
• It"s scalable - the more customers you get, the more you can ping them with link requests and the more links you"ll receive (again, bolstering Google"s desire to show the most popular and successful businesses on top of the results).

But, There"s Downsides, Right?

Maybe one - most of your customers probably won"t do it, and many of them who might don"t even have sites/pages where they could link (unless you provide website services). Of course, compared to a spammy link request email campaign, this is infinitely more effective.

How Do I Do It?

Just like WidgetCo did! Include a brief request in the order confirmation or shipment confirmation email. You might even consider following up with the customer and making sure everything was OK a day or two after the shipment arrived (assuming you"re doing shipment tracking), and requesting the link then, when they"re probably feeling most generous towards you.

If customers have a good experience and they want to share it, encouraging them with a widget, a badge,or even just a simple link request is not going to hurt your relationship, and it"s going to bring you a lot more customers - both through search (thanks to all those juicy links) and through direct referral traffic.

Oh. So I Should Really Get On That, Huh?

Yep.

Why Haven"t You Told Us This Before?

Oh what, I can"t make a mistake sometimes? Just cause you"re in bold doesn"t mean you"re all that. I bet Aaron Wall"s got a post on it somewhere (can"t seem to find it right now but I"m sure it"s somewhere), why don"t you go read his blog? Oh, what"s that, you already do? Well good. Cause it"s a really good blog.

Sorry - got a little upset there. I"m good now, and I"ll almost certainly post some more Headsmacking tips in the future :)

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Posted by Jane Copland

Off I went to MySpace to see how Tom deals with cell technololgy, both via the web at mobile.myspace.com and on my phone, and was met with this. You can"t make this stuff up.

 

 

 

A refresh brought up MySpace"s mobile page, but I was unable to access the site on my phone due to the same error. Its mobile page was actually far better looking than a regular MySpace horror story.

 

Of course, upon getting my phone, I sat around for quite a while and visited sites I frequent when I"m using a computer. There was probably a 50 / 50 split between sites that did well with mobile and those that took an excrutiatingly long time to load and were then unusable.

 

For some sites, it"s not so important to be available for mobile users, although leaving mobile to rot isn"t a great idea for any site. I do feel that any site with social functions, which would include ours, needs to be accessible anywhere. It may seem ridiculous to you that someone would want to check SEOmoz comments from the bus, but when you see one of those comment tracker emails come in on a post in which you"ve been taking an interest, you want to read it!

The majority of cellphones don"t seem to live up to real computer accessibility yet and thus it"s a mistake to neglect an "m" version and leave phones to their own devices when dealing with content. Consider this "on the list" for us, as we know a lot of you look at SEOmoz, especially the blog, on mobile phones.

 

As an aside, I"m composing this post in Internet Explorer because, after downloading Firefox 3.0 this afternoon, all of my links turned into nightmares like this: javascript:void(0);/*1213760150698*/ Has anyone else had this problem and, if so, how do you fix it?

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Posted by great scott!

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Posted by rebecca

• Make sure your list of services is constantly updated. If you used to offer a particular service but don"t any more, remove it from the list.
  
• If you still get contacted by folks looking to hire you for services you no longer provide, try to keep them satisfied by referring them to a colleague or to someone who can provide the appropriate service.
• If you have a product that"s sold out, specify it loud and clear on that product page. Inform customers when the product will be available again. You could offer to take back-orders or reserve products for customers in order to minimize grumpiness.
• If your shipping takes longer than expected or if you have an especially disgruntled customer, offset his/her disappointment by offering an added incentive to make up for the inconvenience (free shipping on the next item, a coupon or discount, a free item, etc). Obviously you can"t do this with every single customer, but if you make an effort to save the really pissed off ones, you"re investing in your own reputation management.
• If the product is being discontinued or will no longer be carried, don"t leave it on your site to rot. 301-redirect any links to that product and point them to a similar product or to an appropriate category page.
• If you have a physical store location (or several franchises) and advertise a product or deal on your website that may not be applicable or available in stores (ahem, Wendy"s), explicitly state that on the page (e.g., "Offer may not be available in select stores," "Product may not be in stock in our physical storefronts").

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Posted by randfish

Last year, SEOmoz hosted a sold-out training series in September for 150 guests. That seminar covered the SEO basics - keyword research, building search-friendly sites, algorithms & social media marketing 101. We got fantastic feedback and really enjoyed getting to meet and spend time with our PRO members.

Rand Speaks on Title Tags at the 2007 SEOmoz PRO Training Event

Scott (SEOmoz"s lord of all things video) also worked with professional camera crews to film the 7 hours of training content and package into our video training series. It"s been a hot item - over 200 copies have already been downloaded.

This year, we"re doing something very similar - hosting a PRO Training event at Seattle"s University of Washington (the Fishery Sciences Building) geared towards more elite search marketers. Whereas the first seminar in our series was focused on beginner/intermediate level content, this one is geared towards experts. As we crafted the schedule and presentations, we assumed an exceptionally high level of knowledge, and that makes it not only fun for us (though certainly challenging), but we believe, extremely valuable to members who"ve already nailed down the basics.

Yesterday around 12:00pm (noon) Pacific Time, we launched an announcement of the seminar to our PRO members via email. Out of 150 seats, we currently have 70 spots left (3 fewer than when I started typing this blog post - wow). I"d predict we"ll be sold out before the week is over, so if you"d like to join us, I"d recommend making arrangements ASAP.

Inevitably, the topic of timing is going to come up. Our PRO Training Seminar is scheduled on two of the days of SES San Jose. There are several reasons for this. First, we"re running the two days before Gnomedex and have been working with Chris Pirillo and his crew to offer discounted Gnomedex attendance to PRO Training attendees. Second, I"m getting married in September, so pushing the seminar to the same time as last year wasn"t possible. Third, and certainly not least, it was our intention to offer an alternative to San Jose. While that show is always very good, it"s extremely expensive to attend, and much of the material is more focused to a beginner/intermediate audience.

The Training Seminar is not like a major search conference (I"ll use a table to illustrate):

I certainly wouldn"t be arrogant enough to suggest that our training is categorically better - it"s a completely different experience. For many folks, San Jose will be the right choice, but for others, the PRO Training offers a unique option. You can check out the schedule & list of sessions here. It"s definitely more expert-level than what you"ll find at the major search conferences, but for those who are wondering - NO, it"s not blackhat. The folks here at SEOmoz are very talented in white hat marketing & tactics, and this seminar is geared towards in-house SEOs and agency/consulting folks who want to learn strategies they can legitimately employ.

Currently, the Training Series is limited to PRO members only. If you"re not PRO, you can sign up for 6 months of membership and the seminar for $748 (still less than 1/2 the price of SES). I"d also suggest that if you"re planning to come but are more of a beginner to the field of SEO, check out the video from the first seminar as well as the guides (free and PRO) in the articles section. If there are any questions about the seminar, please feel free to leave them in the comments below and I"ll try to answer this evening.

P.S. For those who are planning to attend, we"ll send an email in the next week to everyone who registers with details on hotels, directions, etc. For now, I"d certainly suggest checking out flights to Seattle via Farecast or Kayak to help get the best pricing. Do make sure you stay the extra night at the end (Wednesday night), as we"re throwing a big SEOmoz party (probably outdoors with BBQ of some kind) in the late afternoon.

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Posted by Brent D. Payne

In the last big Matt Cutts interview, Eric Enge managed to get Matt Cutts to say PageRank Sculpting (or siloing, for you Bruce Clay fans) was okay to do on your site and that noindex pages still have PageRank attributed to them.

Well . . . Eric Enge did another interview with Matt Cutts this month that he posted moments ago.  As usual, Eric managed to get Matt Cutts to tell us some juicy info and he did it all so nonchalantly.  ;-)

Take these, for example:

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Posted by randfish

This one keeps popping up, so I"m taking a short blog post to address it as quickly and efficiently as possible (mostly because I have an SEOmoz board meeting tomorrow, so I need my zzzs).

Many SEOs ask themselves how many individual word and phrases are ideal to target together on a single URL. The tough part is - there"s no hard and fast answer. The number can be as low as 1 and as high as 15 (maybe 20). Below, I"ll share the process I like to use to find the right answer and include a real life example to help illustrate:

Choosing Keywords for the Page:

We"re not playing long tail with targeted SEO like this, so you"ll want to do your keyword research and assemble your list. Usually, it will look something like this (at least in the early stages):

Naturally, you"d want to refine this list and cross-compare with a few other services (I"ve used MSN AdCenter above, but I don"t like relying on less than three independent sources when generating lists). From the list, you need to know which keywords have actual relevance to the page content. This can get a bit tricky, and our "Ted Baker" example above can be used to perfectly illustrate.

Let"s say I"ve got a landing page for "Ted Baker" on an e-commerce website. I"ve also got specific categories for "Ted Baker Shoes," "Ted Baker Eyewear," and "Ted Baker Dress Shirts" - in fact, I probably have a dozen sub-categories or more. So which phrases do I target on the landing page vs. the interior pages? My answer is always to go with searcher intent. If the search intent is too broad to be classified as any of these obvious subcategories, try to target on the main category landing page (even if that gives you a lot of terms).

In our example, I"d have the following terms targeted on the "Ted Baker" category landing page:

• Ted Baker
• Ted Baker London
• Ted Baker Clothing
• Ted Baker Mens
• Ted Baker Mens Clothing
• Ted Baker Mens Collection

I"d reserve phrases like "Ted Baker Shoes" and "Ted Baker Eyewear" for those more specific pages. They"re more likely to earn relevant anchor text links on their own and more targeted to searcher intent, so even if I get lower traffic (which can sometimes happen when you split things up, at least), I"m probably making up for it with increased conversion rates.

Targeting Multiple Terms & Phrases on a Single Page:

Here"s how I"d incorporate those terms:

Title Tag:

Ted Baker London - Men"s Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org

Meta Description:

A Complete Selection of Ted Baker London Men"s Clothing with Apparel & Accessories from the past 3 Years of Collections. In Stock Now with Fast, Free Shipping.

H1 Header Tag:

Ted Baker London | Men"s Clothing Collection

H2 Subheader:

The Ted Baker Men"s Collection features classic British tailoring with fun, modern fabrics and designs.

With this formula (and probably a few uses of the keyword phrases above sprinkled in subeaders and bold text on the page), you"ve got a very good opportunity to rank for half a dozen unique phrases on a single page.

What NOT to Do:

The most common mistake I see with multiple phrase targeting is to use a strategy like this:

Title:

Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men"s Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com

 Meta Description:

Ted Baker On Sale. Ted Baker Men"s, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Collection, Ted Baker Online.

Honestly, searchers have gotten very savvy, and even if this strategy temporarily works to get you rankings (which is usually not the case at Google, though Yahoo! and MSN can be more forgiving), the expectation when you see a listing like this in the SERPs is to instantly distrust the website. Even if you get the click (this strategy can lower CTR, too), conversion rates will suffer, and 9 times out of 10, the site turns out to be a crappy, low quality affiliate site or a site whose design is so lost in the 90"s that finding the checkout is like digging through the trash bin outside the Qwik-E-Mart for a lost retainer.

One last note - getting links to pages with titles/descriptions like these is pulling teeth, too. Linkers are even pickier than buyers, so make sure you run a top-of-the-line site and reflect it in your visible SERP listings or suffer the consequences - a competitor who starts to outearn you on the link graph.

So How Many Terms/Phrases on a Page?

As many as makes sense for a visitor, a potential buyer, and those who will link. Now it"s off to bed - crossing my fingers all goes smoothly tomorrow. :-)

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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire