Six Miva PPC ads will be displayed across every page of the 12 sites through ad units at the bottom of the page, according to
Miva. The implementations will include advertisers' logos, and the ads
will be targeted using both the content of the page they appear on and
the demographic of the site users. All implementations will be
un-branded and designed to mirror the design style of the individual
Conde Nast properties.
In addition to
ads on Conde Nast's U.K. websites, Miva's ads will be embedded in
500,000 opt-in emails sent daily, weekly or every two weeks, depending
on the newsletters' publication schedule, to Conde Nast Interactive's
email subscribers.
Google Whispers More Details About PPA by David A. Utter
The pay per action beta test for Google AdWords recently debuted, and spurred plenty of advertiser interest.
Since last week's announcement that Google would start offering AdWords PPA ads, where the advertiser pays only when a predetermined conversion has taken place, plenty of buzz has swirled around the plan.
A lot of that buzz has focused on a few distinct questions about PPA on AdWords. The Inside AdWords team at Google posted answers to some of the more frequently asked questions they have received about the plan.
International advertisers will have to wait to participate, as Google has opened this limited test only to US-based clients. Advertisers must have a billing address in the United States, so even if an international business focuses on US customers, that isn't enough to be eligible yet.
PPA ads only show up through being displayed on sites that participate in Google's content network. They won't appear on Google or in its search network.
Sat Mar 31st: Backlink Functionality Pulled at MSN for "mass automated usage for data mining..." as it was put.
Remember Google restricted the link: operator to show only a very small
part of the complete data, which more or less made it useless. It
seems MSN now has went a step further, by disabling the link: operator completely. Gregg Thorpe.
The notice follows:
We are flattered, but...
For
those of you who use some of the advanced query syntax in our search
engine such as link:, linkdomain: and inurl:, you may have noticed that
this functionality has been recently turned off. We have been seeing
broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also
what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we
have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.
We
are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a
manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries.
We have a few good ideas up our sleeve on how to enable this, but want
to make sure we are making the right changes that will give you the
functionality you want and all of our customers the experience they
deserve. Our apologies and thank you for being patient. Keep an eye on
our blog for updates.
Eytan Seidman
Lead Program Manager, Live Search
NEW Sunday April 1st Update
Eytan Seidman of Live Search has announced that the link command operator was recently offline due to “mass automated usage for data mining.” He goes on to say that:
So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.
The
move has received flak from webmasters. When Google and Yahoo! can
handle such queries, what makes Live so handicapped? However, Eytan
Seidman hinted that Live Search is working on “a few good ides up our
sleeve” to offer better functionality for such queries.
Barry Schwartz has stated
that this might be the indications that Microsoft is launching a
webmaster tools section similar to Google’s Webmaster Central. Is there
a upside to this seeming handicap of Live Search?
Almost half of all Internet users in Ireland use search engine web sites such as Google and Yahoo every day,
according to new research from Amárach Consulting. The research was
presented today at the inaugural Search Marketing World 2007
conference, organised by Dublin-based search specialist Interactive Return in
the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. The one-day conference was attended by
over 300 people and featured speakers from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and
leading Search Engine Marketing agencies including search expert Danny Sullivan.
Among younger users (18-24-year-olds) the use of search engines is even
higher, with over two thirds searching online on a daily basis.
The survey also found that over half - 53% - of all adults now use the internet in Ireland, rising to 74% of those aged 18-34. "The internet is now a dominant communications and entertainment channel for 1.7 million Irish consumers,
and looks set to match TV and radio for reach by the end of the decade"
commented Gerard O'Neill, Chief Executive of Amárach Consulting who
spoke at the event.
South Korea's LG Electronics said Wednesday it has reached a deal with the world's leading search engine
Google to pre-install its services on millions of mobile phones.
Mobile users worldwide will be able easily to search for information,
find locations, update blogs and manage e-mail while on the move, LG
said in a statement.SEOUL – Agence France-Presse
Topix CEO Rich Skrenta thinks someone out there can compete with
Google, and he offered suggestions on how that might happen (hint:
think vertically).
Choose your poison: Google in search or Google in advertising. If you've ever heard of the phrase "Hobson's choice", picking a competitive ground with Google looks more like no choice at all.
Skrenta thinks differently, even though it was he who suggested Google is the environment a couple of months back. His most recent thoughts on beating Google read more like a primer of why it can't be done head to head.
"A conventional attack against Google's search product will fail," Skrenta said. "They are unassailable in their core domain."
Kind of tosses the 'how to beat Google' theme out the window straightaway.
"You need both a great product and a strong new brand," he writes. "Both are hard problems."
The shoemaker Nike demonstrated this. Over the years as Phil Knight and
company built the brand, it took quite a while before they were
confident enough to put the swoosh on their products like hats and
shirts without the word 'Nike'.
So you can't beat Google on
search. You can't beat them on brand; Google is a dictionary word that
to Internet users means search. It's like traveling in the South and
ordering a soda at lunchtime. Everything is a Coke, even if it's a
Sprite or a Mr. Pibb.
Where next? Skrenta suggested the vertical approach without coming out and calling it that:
You
need to position your product to sub-segment the market and carve out a
new niche. Or better, define an entirely new category. See Ries
on how to launch a new brand into a market owned by a competitor. If it
can be done in Ketchup or Shampoo, it can be done in search.
Google
came about as many people sought to solve a great problem of the
rapidly growing Internet with search. Once Google emerged by doing what
people wanted - giving them a quality result immediately - most
competitors fell by the wayside. Yahoo is the closest and they still
trail Google by roughly 20 percent in the US search market.
That's general web search. Vertical search has become a rising field;
witness the heated competition and product launches in the local search
segment alone. Healthcare stands out with sites like Kosmix and
Healthline delving into quality resources for their search results.
That's sub-segmenting the market. Skrenta nails the wisdom needed here
by observing "The editorial value of search is in the index, not the
interface." Google has proven that less is more with a minimalist
approach.
Keeping that approach in mind goes along with
Skrenta's later points: users tend to want to type two words in a box,
and they aren't interested in fancy-schmancy "clusters, or tags, or
categories, or directory tabs, or pulldowns. Ever."
Beating
Google? Probably not going to happen right away. The winners in search
will probably be the hyper-focused verticals, which makes sense. When
creating an online business, entrepreneurs try to fill a niche. Search
should work out the same way. Thurs Mar 22: Google Pulls A PPA Fast One by Jason MIller
What's
been called an assault on click-fraud, or affiliate networks, or both,
could also carry with it a little controversy. Google's recent beta
launch of pay-per-action AdSense, available only to US advertisers, was
released overtop another new product: the text link format ad unit.
See, according to the conspiratorially minded, while everybody buzzed about PPA,
they'd be less apt to notice the Snap-like or Intellitext-like
advertising platform that allows publishers to embed ads in hyperlinks
appearing within content.
Before, AdSense ads were confined to certain spaces, transparently. But there in Google's PPA FAQ is this:
Text
links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the
characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in
line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.
For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a
publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my
friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link
will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).
"They’ve crossed a hazy ethical line here," writes TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington.
"If this product was announced on its own, it would be heavily debated
by the blogs and press. But by burying it in other, bigger news,
they’ve mostly avoided the critical analysis that this actually
deserves."
What's the big deal? Well, for the Google purists
out there, sneaking in an advertisement rather than there being a clear
demarcation between ads and content, is somewhat of a sin. Google seems
to have realized this, but perhaps was hoping it was a small sin.
As for what the new model could do to affiliate networks, most outlooks are bleak.
"Commission Junction and LinkShare are screwed," comments Arrington.
"I think that we’ll have to see how widely embraced Google’s program is
and what the empirical fallout is accordingly. I’m not ready to
proclaim the death of these networks. I think that marketers want
alternatives to Google and I’m sure some of these programs are working
quite well for them." Tue Mar 20th: SEO Tips on How to Write a Press Release by Giselle Abramovich
Enhanced Online News
released a search engine optimization tip sheet for writing for
reporters that said choosing keywords is just part of the process. It
is important to think like your reader and figure out what words are
most likely to be searched for by people looking for what you want them
to find in your press release.
Writing for
reporters and writing for robots entail different things. Marketers
seem to be more informed about writing for robots than for humans,
according to EON.
“Using bold, italics,
headlines and subheads makes key phrases and keywords more visible.
Emphasized text may help your release stand out and can positively
impact search engine results,” the tip sheet said.
Keep
it readable, the tip sheet said. Writing copy that’s overly repetitive,
spammy or unreadable may cause you to fall lower in the search results.
Puns, innuendo and double meanings could be dangerous because search engines, spiders and robots have no sense of humor.
Press release content must be timely, while at the same time providing useful information to readers.
“Provide
tips, advice, or analysis in your press release that is relevant to
your industry or your customers' interests. Search engines are more
likely to include releases that are honestly useful in their results,”
the tip sheet said. “Utilize hyperlinks and anchor text, but don’t
overdo it. Too many links can flag your release as spam and get you
kicked out.”
Publishing press releases on your own Web site has also proved helpful for reporters looking for your information.
Once the releases are up on your site, work with your Web team to ensure you site is properly optimized. [end]
Google has done a software acquisition: it has bought data visualization software Trendalyzer from its parent company Gapminder. It is now making the tool available for free here.
From Gapminder’s blog: “Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software unveils the
beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable
interactive animations. We believe that Google’s acquisition of
Trendalyzer will speed up the achievement of this noble goal.
Trendalyzer’s developers have left Gapminder to join Google in Mountain
View, where Google intends to improve and scale up Trendalyzer, and
make it freely available to those who seek access to statistics.” The Stockholm-based Gapminder Foundation will continue to develop new technologies for data animations. Update: Also, Friday afternoon, Google finally made its long-reported acquisition of in-game advertising company Adscape Media official. No terms disclosed for the deal, which has closed; the Adscape team has joined Google. Google has a FAQ
about the acquisition. The answer to why did Google acquire Adscape
Media? “In-game advertising is an area where we believe Google could
add a lot of value to users, advertisers and publishers. Adscape
Media’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s
current advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers.”
-- Adscape will pay current partners and honor open contracts. -- No “news to share” about integration plans. -- Google is in discussions about in-game advertising with small and large game publishing companies. -- Google isn’t talking market-share specifics—that’s a shock.
Update 2: Adscape’s Bernie Stolar is now Google’s Dean of Games. He writes about the sale on Google’s official blog.
I
was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in
management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press
Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real
value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while
certainly apart of his company's communication strategy seemed to have
little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely
picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press
release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic
call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or
even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter!
However,
this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for
one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong
placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and
a significant íncrease in our overall web visibility. The campaign
proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traffíc and gaining
great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all
of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it?
Before
I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let's
first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign:
• High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website
A well-constructed Press Release campaign can result in multiple
in-bound links from various sources such as industry-related websites,
news and media sites, many of which have a decent Google Page Rank.
Given that our business was launching a new website, we literally went
from zero exposure to hundreds of one-way links and listings within a
couple days.
• Top Listings in the News Search Engines
An optimized press release may see top placement in many key news
engines such as Google News, MSN News and Yahoo News potentially
resulting in a steady stream of traffíc for up to a period of 30 days.
To put it into perspective, Google and Yahoo News have the largest
Internet News Audience in the world, even bígger than CNN or the BBC.
• Improved Natural Search Results for Particular Keywords
As mentioned earlier, a recent Press Release Campaign of ours resulted
in a top 5 listing for one of our keywords in Google as well as
multiple top 20 listings all in matter of a two week period.
• Increased Web Visibility
For new web companies, Press Releases can be a very effective and low
cost means of increasing the sheer number of web listings and overall
exposure.
• Enhanced Brand Awareness
Optimized Press Releases through useful media portals like Prweb.com
and Pr.com can significantly íncrease the brand awareness and
recognition for both new and existing web businesses.
• Promotion in a Rapidly Growing Medium
Statistics have revealed that more than 70% of Americans actually read
their news online, so press releases are certainly a part of an
increasingly popular news medium.
• Low Cost Means for Increasing Exposure and Web Visibility
As mentioned, there are a number of key PR distribution portals such as
Prweb.com that provide a great vehicle for syndicating your releases to
thousands of news outlets as well as optimizing it for the Search
Engines. I would highly recommend spending at least a couple hundred
dollars to take advantage of a few SEO tools offered there.
• Quality Exposure to Industry Specific Editors
I include this last benefit as an added bonus since your press release
might be deemed very newsworthy and subsequently picked up by multiple
editors and news channels. However, I must emphasize the number of
editor calls or inquiries certainly should not be the primary measure
of success for your Online Press Release campaigns.
So,
the big question here is how do you actually optimize the Press Release
in order to achieve some of the results we experienced in previous
campaigns. Let me roll back the curtain and show you the basic formula
we employed.
1. Targeted Keyword Research and Selection
Before even commencing with drafting your online Press Release, it is
imperative to conduct some thorough keyword research for your targeted
audience and subject matter through such tools as wordtracker.com and
keyworddiscovery.com. It is ideal to select targeted keywords that have
the greatest degree of volume with the fewest competitors that will
also make the most sense in the context of your Press Release. Again,
it is important to marry relevant and newsworthy content with good SEO
practices.
I
would recommend narrowing your keyword selection to approximately two
to three words for your Press Release with a primary keyword and a
couple secondary words. You will löse SEO potency by trying to
incorporate too many keywords into one 500-800 word Press Release.
2. Strategic Keyword Placement in the Press Release
It is essential to include your main keyword(s) in the title of the
Press Release as well as in the first or second paragraphs of the body.
I would recommend optimizing the first 250 words of your press release
and then include the keywords in strategic and relevant spots
throughout the remainder of the body.
It
is also recommended to maintain a keyword density of approximately 3-5%
for the main keyword and 1-2% for secondary keywords. (Keyword Density
refers to the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified
set of keywords) I must emphasize here though that while it is
important to be aware of your keyword density, it should not come at
the expense of relevant and high quality content. That will ultimately
defeat the purpose and desired result of your PR campaign.
3. The Effective Use of Anchor Text
Creating Anchor Text (keyword-rich links) with your targeted keyword(s)
will provide valuable optimization and relevant back-links to your
respective landing page.
4. Relevant and Optimized Website Content
The use of targeted keywords in your Press Release will only have real
value if you also include those same words with reasonable keyword
density on your landing page. Make sure to include the keywords in the
H1 Header Tag as well as strategically placed in the first 250 words or
so of the landing page.
5. Tagging Strategies
Finally I have experienced great value in incorporating Technorati
Keyword Tags as well as popular Social Bookmark tags such as
Del.icio.us and Digg at the end of the Press Release. Those visitors
that like the Press Release and choose to clíck on a technorati tag or
a social bookmark tag provide high quality trackbacks or back links
that will ultimately enhance your site's link popularity.
In
summary, I believe an optimized Press Release using some of the above
strategies can be an excellent marketing channel with a good viral
effect and great SEO potential long-term. I would highly recommend
making the small ínvestment through popular PR distribution sites such
as Prweb.com, Prleap.com and Pr.com in order to maximize the potential
for yielding top keyword listings, high quality back links and great
long-term exposure for your business.
I
should note that while the optimization of your Press Release is
paramount, it is essential to provide a newsworthy and journalistic
feel to the release as well. Great content combined with skillful
optimization will yield the best results for your PR campaigns.
About The Author
Craig
Cannings is the owner and managing director of ESalesGuru.com, an
innovative outsourcing portal connecting ebusinesses with niche
Internet Marketing Specialists and Firms worldwide. Visit www.esalesguru.com or contact Craig for more information at craig@esalesguru.com.
This
is a service that we here at First Place Positioning provide,
optimizing press releases then sending them out to over 25,000 possible
media outlets that fit. Our fees are generally included so Call
Gregg for more info at (800) 430-0205 or Contact here.
Microsoft on Tuesday launches a fierce attack on Google
over its “cavalier” approach to copyright, accusing the internet
company of exploiting books, music, films and television programmes
without permission.
Tom Rubin, associate general counsel for
Microsoft, will say in a speech in New York that while authors and
publishers find it hard to cover costs, “companies that create no
content of their own, and make money solely on the back of other
people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising and
initial public offerings”.
Mr Rubin’s remarks, presaged in an article in Tuesday’s Financial Times,
come as Google faces criticism and legal pressure from media companies
over services allowing users to search online for books, films,
television programmes and news. Viacom, the US media group, instructed
YouTube, which Google owns, to remove 100,000 clips of copyright
material.
The Authors Guild and a group of publishers backed by
the Association of American Publishers have separately sued Google for
making digital copies of copyrighted books from libraries without
permission.
Mr Rubin will tell the AAP’s annual meeting that
Google’s decision to take digital copies of all books in various
library collections, unless publishers tell it not to, “systematically
violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important
avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines
incentives to create”.
He will say Google is breaching copyright
law because it has “bestowed upon itself the unilateral right to make
entire copies of copyrighted books”. Google thinks it is acting legally
because it publishes only “snippets” of copyrighted works unless it has
the publisher’s permission.
But Mr Rubin will say in Tuesday’s
speech: “Google is saying to you and other copyright owners: ‘Trust us,
you’re protected. We’ll keep the digital copies secure. We’ll only show
snippets. We won’t harm you, we’ll promote you’.
“But . . . anyone who visits YouTube . . . will immediately recognise that it follows a similar cavalier approach to copyright.”
Microsoft
is trying to differentiate itself from Google by portraying itself as
more sympathetic to copyright holders than Google, and has sent a
letter to executives of big media conglomerates, offering to work with
them to eliminate piracy from Soapbox, a new video service on MSN.
Patricia
Schroeder, AAP president, said it had agreed to work with Microsoft and
others to develop principles on responsible book search.
Google
said it believed it was acting legally and ethically in providing
snippets of in-copyright books and added that it removed books promptly
when contacted by publishers. It said it generated more than $3.3bn of
advertising revenues for other internet sites last year, which showed
that it did not simply exploit the content of others.
Spending on search engine marketing last year totaled $9.40 billion, up 62%
from $5.80 billion in 2005, according to the Search Engine Marketing
Professional Organization's annual State of Search Engine Marketing
report, released last week.
Microsoft plans to move majority of ad budget to digital!
Microsoft plans to move the bulk of its ad spending to digital media
over the next three years, according to a Microsoft executive who spoke
at the American Association of Advertising Agencies media conference
here.
Mich Mathews, senior VP-central marketing group at
Microsoft Corp., said that by 2010, the majority of Microsoft’s media
budget is expected to shift to digital. According to Advertising Age, a
sibling publication of BtoB, Microsoft spent $945 million on U.S.
advertising in 2005. Monday Feb 26:
I love my job. I love building search-friendly Web sites. I love implementing SEO (define) on client Web sites. And I certainly love the research and development necessary to understand searcher behavior. To me, SEO is a giant moving puzzle just waiting to be solved.
A
puzzle comprises many pieces. All too often, SEO professionals become
consumed with finding the one puzzle piece that fits perfectly. Result?
They lose focus on the entire puzzle. The obsession with eye-tracking
data is no exception, which is why I want to revisit this important
topic in this week's column.
SEO Niches
All search engine advertising and optimization firms should have unique selling propositions (USPs). Some SEM (define)
firms specialize in search engine advertising. Their USP might be to
create software to monitor click fraud. Other SEM firm USPs might
include link development, keyword research,
and copywriting, usability, and design. These SEO niches are necessary
not only from a sales perspective but also from an R & D
perspective.
SEO
is constantly evolving, so the people who dedicate their time and
expertise to an SEO niche are certainly worth watching. Nonetheless,
there's a problem with SEO niche specialists. They become so obsessed
with that one area, they lose sight of the big picture.
This
situation occurs regularly with the Google Toolbar and PageRank.
Link-development SEO professionals sometimes drive me insane. PageRank
takes on more importance than actual search behavior. I've removed the
Google Toolbar from my browser so it doesn't distract me.
I've
even made a rule that no one's allowed to say the word "PageRank" or
its abbreviation in my office. I have a mondo squirt gun. Say
"PageRank" in my office? You'll leave soaking wet. I have a smaller
squirt gun for those who use the term "link bait" and its derivatives,
and I have a special squirt gun saved for my fellow Search Engine Strategies speaker and colleague, Rand Fishkin.
I
understand link development is part of SEO's fundamental core. I
implement link development on every Web site I optimize. Nonetheless, I
don't obsess over a number from 1 to 10. Plenty of Web sites generate
thousands or millions of dollars in qualified leads and closed sales
with a low PageRank, and plenty of Web sites generate little or no
income with a high PageRank.
Web positioning metrics
present the same scenario. Plenty of Web sites generate millions of
dollars in sales with no top search engine positions, and plenty of Web
sites generate no income with top search engine positions.
That
brings me to my favorite group of SEO specialists: search usability
professionals. As much as I read and admire their research, they, too,
often don't focus on the big picture.
Eye-Tracking Data and SEO
User-centered design
(UCD) is a core component of any SEO strategy, and a search usability
professional is certainly worth her weight in gold. Personally, I tend
to learn the most about search behavior from usability testing and
analysis.
Eye-tracking data is always fascinating to observe on a wide variety of Web pages, including SERPs (define).
As a Web developer, I love eye-tracking data to let me know how well
I'm drawing visitors' attention to the appropriate calls to action for
each page type.
Nonetheless,
eye-tracking data can be deceiving. Most search marketers understand
the SERP's prime viewing area, which is in the shape of an "F." Organic
or natural search results are viewed far more often than search engine
ads are, and (as expected) top, above-the-fold results are viewed more
often than the lower, below-the-fold results. Viewing a top listing in
a SERP isn't the same as clicking that link and taking the Web site
owner's desired call to action.
Remember,
usability testing isn't the same as focus groups and eye tracking.
Focus groups measure peoples' opinions about a product or service.
Eye-tracking data provide information about where people focus their
visual attention. Usability testing is task-oriented. It measures
whether participants complete a desired task. If the desired task isn't
completed, the tests often reveal the many roadblocks to task
completion.
Eye-tracking tests used in conjunction with usability tests and Web analytics analysis
can reveal a plethora of accurate information about search behavior.
But eye-tracking tests used in isolation yield limited information,
just as Web analytics and Web positioning data yield limited (and often
erroneous) information.
Conclusion
Moral
of the story? Look at the big picture. Take a holistic view of the
entire search optimization process. An SEO niche is a great USP, but
that one piece won't solve the entire puzzle.
Chennai Feb. 25 "Why do I write so little (on my blog)? Because... I am intimidated by it."
Project details
The Wikipedia project only uses two programmers and donations provide sustenance. It has 31 employees, including 25 programmers. The search engine would use algorithms that would be published for view by all.
Ironical,
coming from a man whose initiative has spawned an entire community of
voluntary writers and moderators of content, which has contributed over
5.3 million articles in more than 100 languages, in about six years.
Meet
Mr Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.org, which describes itself as a
Web-based, free-content encyclopaedia. Mr Wales was in Chennai today to
participate in a Wiki Camp, an `Unconference' where everyone runs
everything and there are no set schedules.
He
explains, if what he says on his blog is misunderstood or misreported
in the media, "I end up wasting two days setting that right. May be I
should write everyday for two weeks on mundane topics," in the hope
that he might not be taken so seriously every time he writes.
Mr
Wales also said that the Wiki Search engine, part of Wikia, a
commercial venture that he floated in 2004, is due for launch before
the end of this year. The search engine would use algorithms that would
be published for view by all.
Isn't that dangerous, given search engine automisers and spammers who could tweak it to their benefit?
Sure,
says Mr Wales, "But security through obscurity is a bad idea." If you
have published algorithms, then everyone, including scientists can see
it. Then those illuminated minds could contribute to the improvement of
the product, is the inference. "But if it is kept secret, then the bad
guys, who have all the time in the world and are dedicated to gaining
access to your algorithm, will somehow find a way."
For profit project
The Wikia initiative, targeted at specialised communities, is for profit.
"The
Wikipedia project only uses two programmers and donations provide
sustenance. Contrast that with Wikia, which has 31 employees, including
25 programmers. The search project alone would need hundreds of
servers. We would need investments to push forward software."
He says that even if he garners 3 per cent of the search engine market, it would be a sustainable model.
All
the software written by Wikia would be in the open source domain,
meaning, it would be available for viewing and improving to the public.
Currently, advertisements form a bulk of its revenue.
Some income
One
of the minor by-products of Wikia would be a salary for Mr Wales.
"Wikipedia is now the 10th largest site in the world, but I haven't
made a penny from it. I would like to make some money."
For
Wikipedia, though, is the donation model sustainable? "A vast majority
of money to Wikipedia comes in the form of small amounts. Last year,
donations through PayPal came from 50 different countries. This is
adequate to buy and maintain servers but not to hire programmers.
Recently though, we have seen large sized donations from wealthy
supporters whom we approached. A major Internet company actually
offered to host and run our servers for free but we turned down that
offer. We did not want to be known as Googlepedia or Yahoopedia, or
whatever." In the long run, Mr Wales says, Wikia could cross-subsidise
Wikipedia.
Bandwidth costs, currently
at $25,000 a month, are actually going down. "In December last, our
traffic went up 3-4 times compared to the previous year, but our
bandwidth costs were down."
Sharing of
computer resources across users could well lessen costs for Wikipedia,
but says Mr Wales, "It would be very, very difficult to do peer-to-peer
computing. However, it would be useful in China, where we are
completely blocked out."
He did not
seem too perturbed by `vandalism' on Wikipedia. "It is a small problem
in the grand scheme of things. It's just a noise in the background. We
now have vandal bots that monitor changes and look for tell-tale signs,
such as URL changes or use of swear words."
Wouldn't
login ids and passwords help keep vandalism down? "It might, but
persistent vandals anyway get in. And if you want the good guys to spot
and eradicate vandalism, they wouldn't take the trouble to edit if they
first had to login."
He also
emphasised, at a media gathering later, that the community approach
helped keep away plagiarism as well as overt public relations exercises
in the guise of objective articles.
Indian contributors
Mr
Wales also introduced a few Indian contributors at the gathering. Of
note were Mr Badani, Mr Ganesh and Mr Sundar whose last names were not
immediately known.
Mr Ganesh wrote a
Wikibot that, with the help of the Indian Census data, generated basic
articles on 5,000 towns, including information on demographics, places
of interest, maps, and the like.
Mr Sundar, helped initiate the Tamil language Wikipedia, which now has 50 editors and 7200 articles published to date.
Mr
Badani, easily aged over 50, showed an enthusiasm that matched the
young crowd at the Wiki Camp. What started off as `mere browsing' while
he was ill and holed up at home in 2004 is now a passion. He has, so
far, contributed 500 articles to Wikipedia and is an administrator for
three communities in Wikia.
Submitted by Doug Caverly on Mon, 02/19/2007 - 16:33.
Larry
Page spoke before the Annual American Association for the Advancement
of Science conference on Friday, and he made some fairly standard
remarks about working harder to solve humanity’s problems. One mildly
interesting thing popped up, though: Page mentioned that Google is
developing artificial intelligence.
All
right, so that’s more than a little bit interesting. “We have some
people at Google [who] are really trying to build artificial
intelligence and to do it on a large scale,” the Google co-founder
declared. “It’s not as far off as people think.”
What
kind of product does that comment foreshadow, and what kind of
timeframe does it imply? Well, nobody knows, but there are a lot of
Terminator references floating around the Web, balanced out by numerous
repetitions of the “do no evil” mantra. Some people have already picked
out a name for the AI; Data seems to be a popular choice.
Google
is known for its search engine, of course, and not for its androids,
but Page led listeners in that direction. According to CNET’s Stefanie Olsen,
the Google co-founder explained that “[t]he programming language of
humans . . . would include the workings of your brain.” Page also
guessed “that the brain’s algorithms weren’t all that complicated and
could be approximated, eventually, with a lot of computational power.”
It
sounds as if Page is anticipating a walking, talking Googlebot, or at
least some sort of disconnected head. Given that there’s already a
life-size spaceship model at the Googleplex, it doesn’t seem like a huge leap.
Submitted by Manoj Jasra on Fri, 02/16/2007 - 12:16.
On Wednesday the SE Round Table Blog noticed a thread on WebMasterWorld regarding a potential Google Update. Matt Cutts did comment saying he was sure that an update was not happening.
I've noticed my blog hit with a few changes in Google over this last week. I say hit because the changes were not positive. Here are my symptoms:
-
Pages Indexed down on a few data centers from well over a hundred to
7-9. These data centers also reported that my home page was not indexed.
-
Organic Search Referrals down considerably. They usually account for
50% of my traffic and have lately been accounting for less than 20%
- My blog is not indexed in the Google Blog Search anymore (and I have tried re-submitting)
Has anyone else noticed considerable changes for their website in Google?
GreggResponds:
Some, but these changes are for the better. We have
been weeks in to this non-update elongated event... So ...Know
that.. It was here, came, left (but never really), collected
links and text and who knows what else . . . and now the SERPs
seemingly should returning less spam and better pages. Contact SEO Gregg: Now, for the rest of the answers so you can be better off tomorrrow :-) Thurs Feb 15: Hello PaIR . . . LSI, What is Going On?
Posted by Gypsy:
OK Gang.. Got yer thinking Caps on??? Good, cause yer gonna need them…
I have been a fan of relevance for some time as far as SEO activities
go (on page and off page). A year ago it was Latent Semantic Analysis
and Google's LSI. Then a strange thing happened. I started seeing
more and more Google Patents on ‘Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval’ ( I lovingly call PaIR). The more they put out, the more I paid attention.
Good bye LSI and Hello PaIR!
You see, the LSI
model is quite limited and so it makes complete sense to move to the
PaIR model which is far more comprehensive and flexible than what LSA
can accomplish.
ENTER PaIR -
is
to identify valid (actual/real) phrases in a given document collection
(or web pages in our case). The goal being to classifying each
potential phrase as either “a good phrase or a bad phrase” depending on
it’s usage and frequency; then using those ‘good’ phrases in predicting
the usage of other ‘good phrases’ in the collection of web pages.
An
information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize
and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the
presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are then indexed
according to their included phrases. A spam document is identified
based on the number of related phrases included in a document.
or even better it is used -- To
identify phrases that have sufficiently frequent and/or distinguished
usage in the document collection to indicate that they are "valid" or
"good" phrases
Not only should it lead to better results, but the added layer of Spam detection should make life much harder on Spammers.
What
in the WORLD is going on at Google? Since early last year, there have
been widespread reports of Google dropping caching on current pages but
keeping pages two or more years old that don't even exist on the site
any longer. There have also been widespread reports of Google indexing
some pages on a site, but ignoring others, with no clear reason why the
spider is doing what it is. What's the deal?
In
this article I'll shed some light on what happened, why it happened,
what you can do about it … and take a look at what I believe will
be the most significant update in Google history coming up early this
year.
In January of last year (2006) Google went through "The Big Daddy" update.
Unfortunately,
since then things at Google have been … unstable, for lack of a better
way of putting it. The reason for this is simple. Google servers ran out of space.
I
know that sounds crazy, even bizarre, but it's true, and it was
admitted by none other than Google's CEO in April (the full story is here). His exact words were, "Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis."
For
the CEO of a search engine company to admit that his servers are so
full that they've got a crisis is huge. If history is any
indicator at all, he was probably UNDERSTATING the true extent of the
problem.
This then
begs the question, what did Google do about it? Obviously they
didn't just let their servers fill up until they crashed; we know that
didn't happen. So what did they do to at least hide the problem
from search users?
They
started by making changes to the spider. The spider would no
longer even attempt to index every page of a site. Instead, it
would index only "entry pages," or those pages that could be gotten to
from another source (links from other sites) or had a "high likelihood"
of being clicked on if the page came up in a search (how that was
determined I don't know).
By
drastically reducing the number of pages that the spider would send
indexing data back to the Google servers, they drastically cut the rate
of growth of their index database.
The
problem however is that I have reason to believe that those changes had
some rather significant bugs. This was then compounded by an
application that the Google engineers wrote to go through the database
of cached pages to remove "no longer needed cached images."
Unfortunately,
it would appear that the application had some rather severe bugs that
caused current and useful pages to be dropped from the cache while some
older and non-useful pages were kept.
Craziness at the Googleplex - Google in Disarray
This put Google into a state of disarray from which they really have not yet recovered (at least in my opinion).
You
may have even noticed that Google is not indexing many of your pages
and that the caching of your pages seems just a bit "off." This
is the fallout from the server problem (and the attempted fixes) that I just spoke about.
Now,
combine the state of disarray with what's coming down the pipe. (I call
it "The New Rules"). Google is all set to completely alter the way it
determines page relevance all the way down to how it determines "link
strength."
You see,
Google is still working under a method of determining link strength
based on the linking page's PageRank. That is about to undergo a huge
change. Google is now going to determine "link strength" by the
unique number of clickthroughs of the link REGARDLESS of the PageRank
of the site.
In other
words, if you get a link from what is currently a PR 3 site that gets
huge clickthroughs, that will be more valuable than a link from a
current PR 7 site that nobody even looks at.
Essentially,
Google is going to consider the strength of your site based not only on
the link you get and its link text, but also by the "votes" that link
gets based on usage from Internet surfers (and it'll be calculated
uniquely to cut down on shenanigans).
Further,
the "votes" will be regionally based. So if you get a lot of
clickthroughs from surfers in India (but none from surfers here in the
U.S.), then your site will appear near the top of searches performed in
India, but will be non-existent for searches here in the United
States. This move too will cut down on shenanigans (hiring folks
to simply find your links and click through them).
What
it means is that all those sites relying on rankings by using companies
like TextLinkAds are about to get a POUNDING … unless they are using in
context links (such as the way that SEO Chat does things), which are a
bit more pricey.
In
my opinion, this change in the way that Google calculates link strength
is going to cause the biggest upheaval in Google's SERPs over any other
update in Google's history … and that update is coming, in my opinion,
early 2007 (certainly by March).
Are you ready for it?
Craziness at the Googleplex - What to Do Now to Get Ready for the Change
So
the question then becomes what can you do about it? What can you
do BEFORE the update hits, to either preserve your rankings or to
improve them?
First
and foremost on the list of things to do is to make sure that you have
a blog on your site and you are adding new KEYWORD RICH content to that
blog at least a couple of times a week. For this I typically
recommend using Wordpress.
Your blog posts should be "Technorati tagged" (you can get more info on tagging by going here: http://www.technorati.com/tools/#tagging) AND you should have a Technorati account for your blog.
After you post an article, you use PinGoat (http://www.pingoat.com/)
and plug your blog into it. With this, you are "pinging"
(basically this is the "blog and ping" thing you may have heard about)
your blog to multiple blog "search engines." You'll also want to
use the Technorati ping at: http://www.technorati.com/ping.html.
What these services will do is potentially get you a number of backlinks that are MUCH more likely to be used/clicked through.
Next, at least a couple of times a month you'll want to put out a press release via PR Web (I cover this in much more detail in my "New Rules For Google SEO" at http://www.dannywall.com/newrules). The release should be keyword rich.
One
thing I want to point out about news releases … you want to write them
in the third person as if a reporter was writing about you.
Secondly, you want to FOCUS YOUR RELEASE on a fairly small topic
area/keyword. You don't want to write a release that is all
things to all people. Instead, your release should narrowly
target a single key phrase.
News releases like that have a MUCH greater chance of getting clicked through.
At
this point, notice what I'm saying here. The focus IS NO LONGER
on simply getting a link, but getting a link that people will actually
USE.
This has a
double benefit for you. First of all, links that get used will
dramatically improve your Google rankings ... BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY,
links that get used give you traffic right then!
I
know that sounded obvious, but I find that often my clients are so
focused on improving their Google rankings, and therefore the traffic
they get from Google, that they completely miss out on sources of
traffic RIGHT NOW (instead of however long it takes to improve your
rankings).
Craziness at the Googleplex - And Don't Forget This Tried and True Technique
Additionally, in the past I've written about the power of writing and distributing articles (you can read one of them here: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Website-Promotion-Help/Insider-Secret-To-Killer-PR/).
I've talked about the traffic that you can get and the benefit to your
search rankings. That strategy is going to be more powerful now than
ever before!
I can't
stress that enough. Now that Google is going to count the number
of unique clickthroughs of a link, getting your articles published to
authority sites will be more valuable to your rankings than ever; and
that benefit doesn't even count all of the benefit you get from the
traffic you get as a result of the article in the first place.
My
point here is that finding relevant authority sites, and giving them
the content they need is going to be one of those competition killing
strategies in very short order. This means that you do need to
begin asking yourself, "what are the authority sites in my niche?"
Find
out what those sites are, find out what kinds of content they are
looking for, what their guidelines are for articles, and write some
good, strong, no nonsense articles for them (some authority sites will
even PAY YOU to do it … SEO Chat is a good example of this). The
authority site benefits by getting the content they need. You
benefit by getting the traffic. The customer benefits by easily
finding the information they need.
In
fact, you'll notice that by focusing on getting the customer the
information they need FIRST (through the various techniques discussed
in this article), you benefit with more traffic and better search
rankings, PARTICULARLY once Google changes its algorithm.
Simply
by focusing on creating good, key word rich, highly targeted content
that your potential customers might want, and then using a variety of
approaches to get that content into the customer's hands, the customer
wins and you win.
DISCLAIMER:
The content provided in this article is not warrantied or guaranteed by
Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment
and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key
ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon
the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation
best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that
may result by implementing any information covered in our articles or
tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open
and/or modify your hardware.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The investors and founders of online video Web site YouTube received hundreds of millions of dollars in Google shares as a result of the deal between the two companies late last year, according to new documents.
The
big payout was revealed Wednesday in a regulatory filing Google made
with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The paperwork offered a
more detailed account than previously disclosed of the sale's
beneficiaries.
The $1.65 billion acquisition announced
in October was the biggest in Google's history, and took place less
than two years after YouTube was founded. The start-up had about 70
employees at the time.
In total, online
search leader Google Inc. registered about 3.23 million Class A shares
to issue to former YouTube stockholders, according to the filing.
YouTube's three founders and Sequoia Capital, its main financial backer, received the biggest windfalls.
Chad Hurley, YouTube's chief executive, was paid in Google shares with a current indicated value of more than $345 million. He received 694,087 shares and an additional 41,232 in a trust.
Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and another 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million. Jarwed Karim, the third co-founder, received 137,443 Google shares, with an indicated value of $64.6 million.
Sequoia Capital, the sole venture capital backer of YouTube, received 941,027, valued at about $442 million.
At least two dozen YouTube employees received lesser share amounts. Shares were also divided up among dozens of limited partner investors in Sequoia Capital.
Since
its Web site first began to catch on about a year ago, YouTube has
relied on a mix of homemade and pirated videos to expand its audience.
Although
YouTube has promptly removed pirated videos whenever copyright owners
complained about violations, questions have continued to linger about
the site's vulnerability to legal claims for distributing content owned
by other media.
Google executives also have repeatedly vowed to protect the rights of copyright holders.
Mobile VoIP provider Truphone has teamed up with the Google Talk network to offer customers free calls.
Truphone,
which works on Symbian handsets (including the E60, E61, E70, and
N80ie), offers VoIP calls to other Truphone customers, as well as cheap
calls everywhere else, by routing the majority of the call over the
internet. By connecting to Google Talk it gains a desktop user-base
without risking its business model
Google Talk is a free service
which connects users together but has no capability to route voice
calls outside that network, so no billing relationship with users. The
two services should complement each other nicely.
Google Talk is
already available to users of the Nokia N800, and accessible on Symbian
handsets with Fring's free client, but this is the first software
formally approved by Google and bearing its logo.
Users still
have to pay for data traffic, depending on their tariff, but this is
another example of VoIP services coming of age and becoming a real
challenge to traditional network operators.
No,
it's not the end of SEO, but I'm sure at least a few folks will begin
shouting that message from the blogtops this week. What am I talking
about? Google's decision to force personalized search results
on anyone that searches while logged in to their Google account. While
some may be happy about this, most of the folks that I've read are not.
In fact, I've now logged myself out of my Google account for everyday
searching.
From the Google announcement:
We
have two main ways of personalizing your Google experience. First, you
can customize products and services like the Google Personalized
Homepage. Personalizing your homepage gives you the at-a-glance
information that you care about—such as your latest Gmail messages,
news headlines, or to-do list—right at your fingertips, just the way
you want it.
Second, we offer automatic personalization through
things like personalized search and recommendations. Our goal with
these types of technologies is to make your Google search experience
better based on what we know about your preferences, without you having
to do any extra work.
Today, we're taking another step toward
making personalization more available to you by combining these two
into a single signed-in experience. Now, when you're signed in, you'll
have access to a personalized Google—one that combines personalized
search results and a personalized homepage.
I'm
not opposed to the idea of personalized search, I think it has quite a
bit of potential. The problem I see is that I use this laptop for both
work and personal time. My husband uses it as well. Unless I want to
use three different Google accounts (and who wants to log in and out
all day?) then Google really isn't going to get a clear picture of what
I want. The things that I research for work or for my hobby sites are
not going to be representative of what I want when I'm searching for
fun.
That
said, this movement toward personalized search will make search engine
marketing more interesting. We've quickly moving away from standard
search results that are the same for everyone and that's not a bad
thing. Businesses will be forced to look beyond magical SEO formulas
and will have to focus on good content offered up on a search friendly
site.
We're excited to announce that the new ranking model has launched
today, February 5, 2007, in our U.S. market. The new ranking model is
designed to improve user results through higher quality search ads.
When users engage with these higher quality search ads, advertisers
will receive more interested, valuable potential customers, helping to
drive better results for your business.
As we previously announced, both bid amount and ad quality now determine an ad's rank in search results.
Your bid is the maximum amount that you're willing to pay when your ad is clicked. You will never be charged more than this amount.
Your ad's quality is determined by:
The ad's historical performance—determined by its click-through rate relative to its position on the page.
The
ad's expected performance, relative to competing ads displayed at the
same time—determined by various relevance factors considered by
Yahoo!'s ranking algorithms.
You can gain an understanding of an ad's quality by looking at its quality index, which will be available to you once you've upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system.
Example of How Ads may be Ranked The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from this change:
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - Viacom Inc. on Friday demanded that Google Inc.'s
online video service YouTube remove more than 100,000 video clips after
they failed to reach a distribution agreement.
Viacom
said it sent a notice to YouTube on Friday morning asking the popular
video-sharing site to remove clips from Viacom-owned properties
including MTV Networks and BET.
The
media company controlled by Sumner Redstone said its pirated programs
on YouTube have generated about 1.2 billion video streams, based on a
study by an outside consultant.
A
YouTube spokeswoman said it would comply with the request and added,
"It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from
YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of
Viacom's shows." The company has historically removed clips at the
request of copyright owners within hours.
"Filtering
tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in
place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of
unauthorized video," Viacom said in a statement.
The
company is taking a hard stance against the Internet's most popular
video service, which is renowned for its quirky, viewer-contributed
video clips as much as for being a repository for unauthorized
television shows.
"This is a
negotiating tactic," UBS analyst Ben Schachter said. "We think a deal
gets done ... The terms have major implications for the value of
content online."
Viacom's move also
runs counter to the strategies employed by other media companies, such
as the Warner Music Group, Vivendi-owned Universal Music Group, and
General Electric controlled NBC Universal, which have all landed deals
with YouTube to test the service.
CBS Corp, which was spun off from Viacom, also has a deal with YouTube.
CBS,
which last year said YouTube viewership of its clips contributed to
traditional TV viewing, held a contest in which YouTube users submitted
videos they created. The winners will have their videos aired on CBS
television.
Hours after Viacom made its announcement, CBS said it would show the first winning video on Sunday.
Universal
Music threatened to sue YouTube last year, but reached a partnership
with them. Its deal included taking a small stake in the company,
according to several published reports.
Even
as some media companies have decided to experiment with YouTube, other
companies including News Corp., NBC and Viacom have held discussions to
create its own online video business, sources have said.
Last
October, Viacom asked YouTube to take down some of its video clips
including those from hit shows from cable network Comedy Central, whose
on-air talent joked about the site's popularity during the shows. But
thousands of clips remained on the service.
"YouTube
and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice,
without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all
of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said. "The recent addition
of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this
issue."
It was not immediately clear what percentage of YouTube's estimated 100 million views per day Viacom clips represent.
Google
Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told analysts on Wednesday YouTube was in
"various stages" of introducing technology, such a digital
"fingerprinting", to identify copyrighted material.
"That
is an area of big research in the computer science community and also a
significant investment here at Google," Schmidt said after Google's
quarterly results.
A
Click Forensics report found 2006 click fraud numbers reached 14.2%
overall and 19.2 for clicks from search engine content networks.
While high spend terms (clicks of $2 or more) averaged 20.9% click fraud.
“The
industry average click fraud rate climbed to its highest level in 2006
and ... the click fraud rate for affiliate sites was significantly
higher than the overall industry average,” said Tom Cuthbert, president
and CEO of Click Forensics, LLC. “The data confirms what other recent
independent investigations have uncovered about click fraud. Click
fraud remains a concern for online advertisers and affiliate sites
represent a large and growing source of click fraud traffic. These are
areas we and advertisers will continue to monitor closely in 2007.”
In an effort to catch up to Google in the search engine ad market,
Yahoo overhauled its ad system. Does the new system, named Panama, get
the job done? We take a look at reviewers' opinions, and form a few of
our own.
"We Try Harder."
-- Avis, number two car rental company
On
October 17, 2006, Yahoo formally gave details of their Panama ad
system, their next generation advertising platform. I have watched for
months alongside other advertisers as Yahoo gave tantalizing tidbits
about the benefits of the Panama ad system. I have always been a
proponent of low cost (or unpaid) alternatives to pay per click
systems; mostly I try to "behave organic, act paid."
And
I always recommend AdSense (it works if done well) to any client that
asks for a paid advertising package. I always view SEO first from the
perspective of a user, then from the perspective of a publisher,
and finally from the perspective of a marketer. This fits, since I am
basically a copywriter/designer first, and offer SEO for clients who
ask for it. But the Yahoo Panama package is quite interesting (and
quite historic also). It and may actually be the model for all
successful advertising platforms (PPC) since it targets ads on a
geographic basis (local search), and incorporates behavioral data into
the ads it returns.
By December 14, Yahoo let
bloggers test the system; we will take a look at what they
said shortly. A week later the search engine rolled it out for
voluntary migration. Yahoo is switching its users over in phases,
starting with present subscribers to their current ad system moving
voluntarily to the Panama platform. The first wave of these were
supposed to begin switching in late 2006; by mid or late
2007, switching will be mandatory for all (including new users, who can
still subscribe to the Data Traffic Center platform).
Switching from DTC to Panama cannot be reversed.
I
have had the opportunity to peek at some notes of some of the reviewers
Yahoo invited to test the platform as "external testers,"
namely bloggers Brian Schwartz (marketer and writer) over at
Search Engine Watch, Andy Beal (Ask Proponent, Google Basher),
and Andrew Goodman and Mona Elesseily over at Traffick. [Must click this link to go on reading page 2]
Microsoft landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to
pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced
Web encyclopedia site.
While
Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder
Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators
have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else
perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or
slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite
no-no.
"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wales said.
Microsoft
acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for
the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were
inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard
and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.
Spokeswoman
Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written
by people at IBM, which is a big supporter of the open-source standard.
IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brooker
said Microsoft had gotten nowhere in trying to flag the purported
mistakes to Wikipedia's volunteer editors, so it sought an independent
expert who could determine whether changes were necessary and enter
them on Wikipedia. Brooker said Microsoft believed that having an
independent source would be key in getting the changes to stick — that
is, to not have them just overruled by other Wikipedia writers.
Brooker said Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe,
had not determined a price and no money had changed hands — but they
had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing
before submission. Brooker said Microsoft had never previously hired
someone to influence a Wikipedia article.
Jelliffe, who is chief technical officer of a computing company based in Australia, did not return an e-mail seeking comment.
In
a blog posting Monday, he described himself as a technical standards
aficionado and not a Microsoft partisan. He said he was surprised to be
approached by Microsoft but figured he'd accept the offer to review the
Wikipedia articles because he considered it important to make sure
technical standards processes were accurately described.
Wales
said the proper course would have been for Microsoft to write or
commission a "white paper" on the subject with its interpretation of
the facts, post it to an outside website and then link to it in the
Wikipedia articles' discussion forums.
"It seems like a much better, transparent, straightforward way," Wales said. {end}
John Battelle reports that YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has confirmed for the BBC
after a session on social networking at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland that YouTube expects to roll out an ad model that
includes revenue-sharing for video creators who upload their content to
YouTube.
The advertising may include
short clips inserted ahead of the video content. The revenue sharing
offer will only be applicable to video content where the copyright is
fully owned by the individual uploading the content. YouTube is still
working out details of how the technology and the revenue-sharing model
will work. Rollout is expected over the next couple of months. A
similar revenue sharing advertising model is already available with Revver
without the reach or popularity of YouTube. Similar to the advertising
program proposed for YouTube, Revver only provides revenues to
copyright owners and will not reward infringers.
After just over two years, Google has finally defused the "Google Bomb"
that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results
in a search on miserable failure.
The move wasn't a post-State Of The Union Address gift for Bush.
Instead, it's part of an overall algorithm change designed to stop such
mass link pranks from working.
A
search today now shows the US White House page carrying Bush's name is
no longer top listed. Also gone are pages about Michael Moore and
former US president Jimmy Carter that were on the first page of results
due to Google bombing actions.
What's not missing are articles about the Google bombing incident itself, including my own article I wrote back in January 2004 from when I worked at Search Engine Watch. The algorithm change hasn't impacted these.
This
is because the change is designed to stop the pranks from happening
rather than legitimate commentary about such activities. Google isn't
saying exactly how this is being done. But Google says it's done
automatically, without any human intervention.
"It's
completely algorithmic," said Google spam fighting czar Matt Cutts,
adding "we're not going to claim it's 100 percent perfect."
Why
the change? Too many people are misunderstanding that Google itself is
not somehow endorsing the particular views of these bombs. From
Google's statement on the Google Webmaster Central blog about today's change:
People have asked about how we feel about Googlebombs, and we have talked about them in the past.
Because these pranks are normally for phrases that are well off the
beaten path, they haven't been a very high priority for us. But over
time, we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or
that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries.
That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that
misperception. So a few of us who work here got together and came up
with an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many Googlebombs.
There have been a variety of Google bombs over the years (such as on this list),
but the Bush bomb is most famous. It came to light in December 2003,
after a grassroots campaign started two months earlier by George
Johnston of the Old Fashion Patriot blog began to work. From Johnston's instructions:
It's fun, it's easy just <a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html" >Miserable
Failure</a> in your favorite web page will look like Miserable Failure
When the campaign succeeded, Google came under fire but argued no one was "hurt" by the activity. From a New York Time article in December 2003:
Craig
Silverstein, Google's director for technology, says the company sees
nothing wrong with the public using its search engine this way. No user
is hurt, he said, because there is no clearly legitimate site for
"miserable failure" being pushed aside.
Moreover, he said,
Google's results were taking stock of the range of opinions that are
expressed online. "We just reflect the opinion on the Web,'' he said,
"for better or worse."
I took some issue with that statement:
Unlike what Google claims
in this latest incident, the results that currently come up for
miserable failure do not "reflect the opinion on the web," nor is it
true that "no user is hurt" or that there is no "clearly legitimate
site for 'miserable failure' being pushed aside."
This Google
Bombing was done by at most a few hundred links pointing at the
biography, if that many. Google annoyingly makes it impossible to tell
exactly how many links are involved using the term, but to say that
this particular campaign is the same as the "opinion on the web" is
absurd. So only a few hundred people are able to speak for millions of
web users? This isn't the web's opinion -- it's a particular opinion on
the web.
Users are also hurt, because there are indeed "legitimate" sites for this query that get knocked down in the results.
What's a legitimate site? Seems like the Dick Gephardt For President site
deserves top ranking, since he appears to have christened Bush's
administration a "miserable failure" as part of his campaign slogan. In
short, Gephardt's site is an originating source for this term and
actually provides much more useful information for those wondering how
it relates to Bush than the biography prank.
Rather than be
first, Gephardt is ranked eighth. Only two weeks ago, he was ranked
third. At this rate, the game Google's happy for people to play (see
new entries of Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore) will
have pushed Gephardt's site out of the top results and into oblivion
altogether.
Another good listing is an article
from the Atlantic Monthly that explores how Gephardt is using
"miserable failure" as part of his campaign to attack Bush. Again, this
is a far more useful site for users than ranking the Bush biography
first. Only two weeks ago, this was ranked second. Now the gaming has
pushed it to fifth.
After
the initial fallout, Google went through the bomb having another round
of publicity when it was noticed in September 2005 to be working for
just the word failure.
The renewed attention caused Google to create a special ad explaining
that the listing was not the result of some type of Google bias against
Bush. The ad linked to a statement on the official Google Blog:
If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure],
the top result is currently the White House’s official biographical
page for President Bush. We've received some complaints recently from
users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I'd
like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these
concerns.
Google's search results are generated by computer
programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and
relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice
called googlebombing,
however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In
this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and
[miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website,
thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't
condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks
to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant
to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from
showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't
affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as
always, remains the core of our mission.
What
in 2003 was deemed the web's opinion now was viewed as a prank. I
didn't disagree with that view. Such bombings have been prank-like. But
if so, it was odd that Google was tolerating them, as I wrote after the statement went up:
Pranks,
when not involving paid links or for some commercial gain, are
apparently tolerated. Pranks involving commercial gain may be deemed
spam and so threatening to the purity of the index that sites might be banned, be prevented from passing link reputation or other actions.
As
it turned out, plenty of people were not only seeing the bio ranking
tops for failure but actually visiting the White House via that link.
In November 2005, a glitch with a new Google service made it possible
for me to discover that "failure" was the most popular term sending
traffic to the White House web site. As I wrote:
Not
only is the White House ranking well for that word, but it's also the
biggest driver of traffic to the web site. Lots of people are clicking
after searching on the term.
Specifically, here are the "Top Search Query Clicks" for the site, as reported by the Google sitemaps system:
These
show the five most popular queries that are sending the site traffic.
In other words, of all the ways the White House web site might be
searched for and rank well on Google, these are the terms sending the
most visitors "downstream" to the White House.
Nope, I have no
idea why failure appears twice. But it might be related to something
that can at least sooth President Bush's feelings a bit. In the past, a
search for [miserable failure] would bring up Bush's bio first, then
bring up President Jimmy Carter's bio second. So some of this traffic
might be related to Carter clicks.
The
Bush Administration almost certainly tried to alter Google results
itself through a change it made to the White House web site in
September 2006. It redirected the Bush bio page to a general page about
all US presidents. As I wrote, that move would likely have condemned
future US presidents to also be ranked for the term:
Why
the change? My money is on the Bush Administration finally getting
someone smart about search engines in to "solve" the miserable failure
problem. The new page is a common page that potentially may be used by
all US Presidents, rather than one specifically about George W. Bush.
All those links making the old page come up will now make the overall
page for ALL US Presidents rank well for that term.
Interestingly, this "overall" page seems to have existed nearly as long as the dedicated page to Bush, according to the Internet Archive. In January 2001, it hosted his bio. By September 13, 2001, it became an overview page, with his bio moved to that dedicated URL above.
Eventually, Bush will leave office, and so a dedicated page to him will return. This will likely be something like this:
That follows the naming convention of pages for other US Presidents, as you'll find here.
It also begs the question of why it wasn't created, if the Bush
Administration suddenly felt the White House pages about US presidents
needed a shake up.
Interestingly again, if you visit that page, you'll see that Bush still has a dedicated page listed here:
Since that's actually his bio, the old bio more appropriately should point to that location.
Political
games aside, Bush should have a unique page dedicated to himself,
rather than making use of a generic page any US President might later
encounter. The reason is simple. There are actually plenty of educators
and other with no political gripe against Bush that might need to link
to his bio or already have done so. This change fails to defuse the
link bomb but certainly messes up many pages pointing at his bio with
good intentions in the years to come.
Fortunately,
Google has now solved the problem both for Bush and his eventual
successors. Overall, I'm happy with the change. Though Google bombs
worked for a small number of terms, it just didn't feel right that
Google effectively allowed "cyber-graffiti" of this nature, as the New
York Times called it, to happen.
Of
course, I've long preferred the term "link bomb" because as I've
written, these bombs go off at more than Google itself. Indeed, while
Bush may be off the top spot at Google, he remains top ranked for both
miserable failure at Yahoo and Microsoft Live.com and in second place at Ask.
For the record, here's Google from last September:
And here it is today:
Cutts said that the new analysis technique works for bombs in other languages (jämmerlicher waschlappen
is apparently one non-English bomb that's been defused). It is also
designed only to stop bombs where the "victim" themselves isn't trying
to rank for a term. For example, french military victories still brings up this parody page which wants to rank for that term.
As
I said, Google's not explaining how the new system is working. Looking
at the words people use when they link to a web site is a key component
on how Google determines relevancy. For example, thousands of quality
links to Amazon using the word books within the link text itself helps
that site come up in the top results for the word books in a search.
To
defuse Googlebombs, Google can't simple disregard link text overall.
Otherwise, the entire ranking system might suffer. Nor can it try to
discount sites that don't use the terms contained in the links (IE, not
rank the Bush page because the page didn't say the words "miserable
failure" on it). This is because many times, pages fail to use the
terms they are relevant for. Link text can help save them from being
overlooked, in these situations.
Google
can track when links first appear pointing to particular sites. It may
be that the new system looks to see if there's a sudden spike of links
all using the same words, which might indicate a Google bomb going off.
This would be especially so in cases where it also determines are no
"authority" sites really ranking
