Just a quickie to address the recent buzz…

Over the past few days there has been a lot of buzz about updates to PageRank.

My advice remains the same as always – don’t place too much stock in PR.  It isn’t tied to rankings – you can have top rankings without a high PageRank. 

As evidenced by the chatter about this update, Google doesn’t update the toolbar PR status very much, so can’t even be sure what you are seeing is current and reliable.  Focus on building a great site with links and content and you’ll do just fine.

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

A year after Google launched Google Website Optimizer (their free A/B split and multivariate testing platform) it has gone mainstream and is no longer in Beta.

Pervioulsy only available to AdWords users, Google Website Optimizer can now be accessed by anyone with a Google account. You can now start testing your site — for free.

To find out more about Google Website Optimizer, visit:

www.Google.com/websiteoptimizer

and their Blog http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com (for product updates, case studies and ideas worth testing).

Popularity: 1% [?]

Here are the March 2008 numbers according to 4 different sources:

Google
Hitwise - 67.25%
Compete - 69.4%
comScore - 59.2%
Nielsen – 58.7%

Yahoo
Hitwise - 20.29%
Compete – 14.8%
comScore – 21.3%
Nielsen – 18.1%

MSN
Hitwise – 6.65%
Compete – 10.2%
comScore – 9.4%
Nielsen – 12%

AOL
Hitwise – N/A
Compete – 1.5%
comScore – 4.8%
Nielsen – 4.1%

Ask
Hitwise – 4.09%
Compete – 3.7%
comScore – 4.7%
Nielsen – 2.4%

Popularity: 1% [?]

Google Provides Best Practices Advice When Moving Your Site To A New Domain
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

Source: Webmaster Google Blog: Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team
Planning on moving your site to a new domain? Lots of webmasters find this a scary process. How do you do it without hurting your site’s performance in Google search results?

Your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user, and to make sure that Google knows that your new pages should get the same quality signals as the pages on your own site. When you’re moving your site, pesky 404 (File Not Found) errors can harm the user experience and negatively impact your site’s performance in Google search results.
Let’s cover moving your site to a new domain (for instance, changing from www.example.com to www.example.org). This is different from moving to a new IP address; read this post for more information on that.
Here are the main points:
Test the move process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect those pages on your old site to your new site. This tells Google and other search engines that your site has permanently moved.
Once this is complete, check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google’s search results. When you’re satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site. Don’t do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it’s not a good user experience. A page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but gives your users a consistent and transparent experience. If there won’t be a 1:1 match between pages on your old and new site, try to make sure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

If you’re changing your domain because of site rebranding or redesign, you might want to think about doing this in two phases: first, move your site; and second, launch your redesign. This manages the amount of change your users see at any stage in the process, and can make the process seem smoother. Keeping the variables to a minimum also makes it easier to troubleshoot unexpected behavior.
Check both external and internal links to pages on your site. Ideally, you should contact the webmaster of each site that links to yours and ask them to update the links to point to the page on your new domain. If this isn’t practical, make sure that all pages with incoming links are redirected to your new site. You should also check internal links within your old site, and update them to point to your new domain. Once your content is in place on your new server, use a link checker like Xenu to make sure you don’t have broken legacy links on your site. This is especially important if your original content included absolute links (like www.example.com/cooking/recipes/chocolatecake.html) instead of relative links (like …/recipes/chocolatecake.html).
To prevent confusion, it’s best to make sure you retain control of your old site domain for at least 180 days.

Add your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verify your ownership of it. Then create and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site. This tells Google that your content is now available on your new site, and that we should go and crawl it.
Finally, keep both your new and old site verified in Webmaster Tools, and review crawl errors regularly to make sure that the 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn’t showing unwanted 404 errors.
We’ll admit it, moving is never easy - but these steps should help ensure that none of your good web reputation falls off the truck in the process.
Source: Webmaster Google Blog

Popularity: 1% [?]

I personally have been Tweeting for a few months.  But I use the term “tweeting for a few months” loosely.  I haven’t been all that consistent with it, and I definitely didn’t have a strategy.  I just thought it was kind of cool.

Recently I’ve started paying more attention to it for a few reasons; my mother-in-law was at a librarian conference recently and attended a session on Twitter.  I got into a conversation with her about it, and then the next day I saw John Reese’s email about Twitter.  It seems like there is a lot of twittering about Twitter going on.   

What is Twitter?

According to the Twitter FAQ, “Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing.”

Wikipedia says, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available”.

Basically Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” and allows you to send a short update (your tweets are limited to 140 characters) to your followers (family, friends, colleagues, customers, potential customers etc).
Twitter allows you to send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS (using your cell phone). No matter where you are, you can tweet!

I haven’t been following Twitter since day 1, so I’m not going to comment on it’s evolution but I will speculate that as its popularity grows, as more and more marketers use it, 2 things are inevitable:

1.  Rules on Twitter etiquette will continue to evolve as we learn what we like and dislike about it, and as we respond to the inevitable abuse of Twitter (don’t mean to sound negative but it happens with each exciting new opportunity – people end up abusing it).

2.  More and more companies will jump on board and try to get in on the conversation.
Start Twittering, (or is it Tweeting?)

Remember, when you first join Twitter, it can feel like a lonely place.  When you aren’t following anyone and no one is following you, you may find yourself asking “what is the point?”.  I’ve heard so many people say they just don’t get it.  In fact, I’ve said that myself.

The key is to find the Tweets you want to follow so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your niche.  The next key is to start building your followers.  More on that in a minute.

How can Twitter help your business?

The more contact you have with a potential customer, the more likely you are to get their business.  You can stay “top of mind” through Twitter.  Let them know what’s new in your industry, in your company etc.  You become a source of quick news flashes for them.

Here are just a few of the benefits of Twitter:
• It reminds people that you exist
• It shows people you have something to say
• It shows them that you are human
• It allows you to mention new offers, sales and breaking news immediately
• It allows you to form a more casual relationship
• You can use Twitter to promote your social bookmarking submissions.
• You can ask for referrals, suggestions, feedback and help, and people will respond.

Twitter is also fun and is contributing to the new language we are constantly developing.  For example “Twitterference” – the intrusion of twitter updates on your phone making it hard to have a conversation on your phone. 

Finding Followers:

Start by reaching out to your friends, family, mailing list etc.  You can also add your Twitter link to your email signature line; add links to your website and Blog. Mention your Twitter account in your newsletter.

Twitter Rules

One cardinal rule (that is in your best interest to follow): if you use Twitter as a pure sales tool, you will lose followers quickly.  As with all forms of social media, it is about creating a conversation and sharing news – it’s not all about you shoving your sales message down their throats.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters. This is to allow them to be easily sent over mobile SMS systems.

You aren’t able to embed HTML with the exception of hyperlinks.  (But they are no-follow links, so they won’t help you in your SEO quest for backlinks) Bonus: Twitter automatically uses the TinyURL service to shorten links.

Don’t tweet too much, or too little.  There is no magic number and it varies according to your audience. Some people say don’t update more than once per hour.  Others say not more than once or twice a day.  I tend to be in the once or twice a day camp.  If there is breaking news and some days you just have to update more often then it’s OK. If your tweets are valuable information people will be more tolerant of frequent updates.

On the other hand if you are too quiet, people have nothing to follow so make sure you find that balance and tweet just enough to keep people informed but not annoyed.

Don’t forget that your profile shows a history of all your tweets, so if a new person comes along and sees that you don’t have many tweets they may decide you aren’t worthy of following.  Also if your past tweets aren’t informative or interesting, you lose some potential followers.

You’ll find that sometimes you get involved in personal conversation with someone.  Try to avoid doing too much of this.  Not everyone will be interested in your personal communications.  If you do need to do this, put the @ symbol in front of somebody’s name – this indicates that this message is for them.

One thing to keep in mind about personal conversation tweets -  some people who are following you may not be following the person you are talking to. This means they get only one half of the conversation.  One suggestion is to word your tweet so that spectators have an idea of what you are talking about. That way, they can feel more included in the conversation.

Trust and Twitter

With so much hype in marketing, people are really looking for a company that can trust.  You can build trust with prospects by allowing them to get to know you, and by providing them with information.  Twitter allows you to do just that.

A great tip: look at your own Tweet history – is the information valuable, does it build trust?  Would you want to follow yourself?

Get tweeting!

It may take some trial and error, and you probably want to check out what others are tweeting about to get a feel for the style.  But don’t spend too long lurking – check it out and then jump on in.

About the Author:

Don’t forget to follow me and stay current on SEO, online marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of www.EcomBuffet.com.  Jennifer’s vision and concepts are behind all in-house marketing campaigns.  Additionally, over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications.  Jennifer can be reached at Jennifer@ecombuffet.com.

Popularity: 2% [?]

(CNN) — Facebook fans are getting a new toy this week. With the launch of Facebook Chat, users will be able to communicate in real time with friends on the site.

The new Facebook Chat interface allows users to see which friends are online.

1 of 2 The social networking giant, which boasts more than 69 million active users, has always had a built-in message system that resembles e-mail.

But for the first time, the site will release a chat system so friends can type back and forth instantly.

Because Facebook users already have lists of friends, they won’t need to build buddy lists. At the bottom right of any Facebook page, users can click an “Online Friends” button that will indicate which friends are available to chat.

Facebook Chat only allows for one-to-one conversations. Users will be able to view recent conversations, but the chats won’t be logged permanently, and users will be able to clear that chat history any time.

Facebook users will also have the option of keeping the conversation on the bottom of the screen or creating a pop-up window they can move. A chat window will also display Mini-Feed stories, which are notices concerning other friends’ Facebook activities.

Facebook Chat could mean big competition for America Online’s instant message client AIM, which is the No. 1 instant message service in the United States. (Time Warner is the parent company of AOL and CNN.)

“[Facebook Chat] looks like it’s going to be an interesting and useful feature,” said Josh Pasek, a graduate student in political communication at Stanford University. “My bet is that this will surpass [Google’s] GChat as No. 2 behind AIM, because it’s so universally used and logged into.”

Patrick Thornton, who runs the blog “The Journalism Iconoclast,” said since he can chat with his Gmail contacts in Gmail and Facebook friends on Facebook, he will have little need for AIM.

“Facebook is a platform that allows people to connect in much deeper and more visceral ways than a standalone IM client ever could,” he said. “Why just talk to someone when you can experience them? That’s what Facebook allows people to do.”

While AOL was “the original social network,” as a standalone instant message client it will become less popular, he said. AIM only allows for message exchange and file exchange, while services like Facebook combine instant messaging with other features.

But AOL spokesperson Erin Gifford pointed out that Facebook users have been able to incorporate their AIM accounts in their Facebook profiles since autumn, and millions have already done so. With this feature, a user can click on a friend’s screen name from within a Facebook profile to open up an instant message window in AIM, and also see a user’s AIM online status in the Facebook profile.

“We believe that AIM users will continue to use AIM within Facebook and from wherever they are on the Web and on the go,” Gifford said.

Facebook Chat’s release comes just weeks after AOL acquired Bebo, a social media network that boosts AOL’s total network to 80 million unique users worldwide, the company said last month.

“Big companies see a lot of value in a social networking site for the ability to tap into a group of users where, like on Facebook profiles, people are putting their interests,” said Corey Hulse, a technology consultant in Philadelphia. “It’s a trend of Web sites wanting to continue to find the next big thing.”

A spokesperson at Facebook declined a request for comment.

Facebook’s rival MySpace, purported to have about 110 million users, already has an instant message system called MySpaceIM.

While third-party applications have emerged to enable chat between Facebook users, Facebook Chat is the first official, Facebook-wide chat system that will automatically appear on all profiles.

As with any new online feature, privacy concerns will abound with Facebook Chat, users said. While a user can elect to appear offline, there is no way to block another user from chat.

Hulse, who uses Facebook once a day, noted Facebook has been generally responsive to criticisms and concerns from users.

One Facebook user, Russell Beaumont-Ede of Exeter, England, said there will always be privacy concerns with any Web site. But he added, “I believe that this feature has been developed over a long period of time, which to me would ease any concerns I have.”

Facebook Chat adds to a plethora of instant messaging services, which means if a user’s friends chat on different clients, it gets messy to see everyone online at once. An Internet user may get bogged down trying to juggle conversations on AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Gmail and Facebook.

“Not only do I need to keep each of the IM programs open now, but I also need to keep a copy of Gmail open in my browser, and now a copy of Facebook open in my browser,” said Gil Varod, a computer programmer based in New York. “It’s not like I need five different e-mail programs open to e-mail five different people.”

Varod’s solution is to use programs like Digsby or Pidgin, which consolidate buddy lists from multiple instant messaging services and enable communication with anyone in any of those services. He said he hopes someone gets Facebook Chat working on one of those programs because instant message client companies “haven’t figured out how to play nicely” and make their services more interoperable.

Facebook began rolling out the chat system Sunday, and only some networks have been added so far. Pasek said he could chat with friends in the Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale and Brown networks as of Monday.

 Source: CNN.com

Popularity: 2% [?]

Google to cut DoubleClick jobs, sell Performics piece
The layoffs and business unit shuffling are significant but expected

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service April 02, 2008

Less than a month after closing its DoubleClick acquisition, Google announced on Wednesday significant but expected changes in the ad services company that include reducing its staff and selling part of its Performics division.
 
Google will lay off or offer “transitional roles” to about 25 percent of DoubleClick’s U.S. workforce, a source familiar with the plan said. The person, who asked not to be named, said that staffers offered a transitional role would be employed in a contract position for a certain period of time

Google acknowledged that DoubleClick’s staff will be cut without offering details about the number of positions eliminated. “Since our acquisition of DoubleClick closed on March 11, we have been working to match and align DoubleClick employees in the U.S. with our organizational plan for the business. As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company. Today, we are laying off some DoubleClick employees in the U.S. and placing others in transitional roles,” Google said in a statement.

Prior to the layoffs announced Wednesday, DoubleClick had 1,500 employees worldwide, including 1,200 in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Google has decided to divest itself of the SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) group within Performics, a move that had also been anticipated. Providing SEO and SEM services puts Google in some potential conflict of interest situations that could damage its relationship with independent SEO and SEM firms and with Performics clients.

“It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users,” wrote Tom Phillips, director of the DoubleClick integration process, in an official blog posting .

Google doesn’t yet have a buyer for the Performics business, but it has “received preliminary interest” from some current partners, according to Phillips. “Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold,” he wrote.

Google will retain Performics’ affiliate marketing business and integrate it into existing Google operations, Phillips wrote.

SEO and SEM firms, which provide services for improving Web sites’ search-engine rankings and running effective search-engine ad campaigns, had been vocal about their displeasure at having Google, until now a partner, turned into a competitor via Performics.

A key concern in the SEO area was that Performics would get special access to inside information about Google’s search-engine algorithms, putting independent SEO firms at a disadvantage. Meanwhile, there was concern that Google would push its in-house Performics SEM services at highly discounted prices, or maybe even for free, in competition with SEM service providers.

A potential conflict of interest situation involved the conceptually divergent missions of Performics and Google’s ad sales business. Performics is supposed to get its clients the highest return on investment from their paid search campaigns — spending as little as necessary to achieve their goals. But Google’s business is to sell as much advertising as possible. This, critics pointed out, could lead Performics to put Google’s interests above those of its clients.

The Performics SEO services also put Google in the business of taking money from clients in exchange for helping them rank better in search-engine results, something Google has always vowed not to do. Moreover, Performics provides paid inclusion services into search engines that engage in this practice, in which a company pays a search engine to include its Web site in its index. Google has always been highly critical of paid inclusion services, and doesn’t offer them.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Signals that Google uses to rank web pages

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO posted his April Fool’s I am sorry post to everyone today. Below is from his post: 

To make up for playing pranks today, I recorded a brief movie about some of the signals that Google uses to rank web pages. We publicly say that Google uses over 200 different signals in our ranking algorithms, but we don’t always talk about them much. If you’re interested to hear more about the signals that Google uses, here’s the recording.

Matt Cutts Said,

April 1, 2008 @ 10:32 pm

Oh, I think I got the wrong url for the video. Let me find the right one..

Added: this is the right video.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Matt Cutts Transfers to Performics – Will Assume Lead SEO Role

Source: SEO Roundtable

In a move that comes as a surprise to many, Google has decided to reinforce Performics, a company that came with the Doubleclick Acquisition, by transferring long time search quality lead Matt Cutts into a role with the search engine optimization firm. This immediately strengthens the perceived value of working with Performics, since Matt is obviously very familiar with the Google algorithm, and has had insight into the Yahoo system during his brief stint with Yahoo last year.

Matt will head up the SEO team at Performics, which will undoubtedly operate strictly within the search engine-approved guidelines for ethical optimization tactics. In December of 2007, Matt Cutts and his team changed the Google Help Document about SEO slightly. This caused some including Tamar “Scoop” Weinberg at Search Engine Roundtable to openly wonder if these changes had anything to do with the Performics Acquisition. Apparently, this transfer may have been in planning for some time.

As of press time, Mr. Cutts was unavailable for comment. His personal press attaché, Ozzie Houndslayer, did confirm that Matt would be moving over to Performics, but would not comment on the allegation that Performics would be listed as a primary recommended SEO in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Fact: Google is now selling SEO services through Performics. An investigative team recently contacted Performics directly and was told that Performics was unable to offer SEO services to anyone not spending over $1Million U.S. per year with Google AdSense. This seems to be strong evidence that there is in fact a correlation between Paid Search spending and organic rankings, as long suspected . Search Engine maven Danny Sullivan is one of many who have officially suggested that Google should divest itself from Performics. The transfer of Matt Cutts is obviously a sign that this discussion is far from being over.

PS: APRIL FOOL

Popularity: 2% [?]

Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit!

Google Calendar, offers users a “Free Wake Up Kit” to help users get out of bed in the morning.

“The ‘wake up’ notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used,” the fake announcement from Google read. “The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters.”An ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button on Google Calendar schedules random dates.

(Credit: Google)Google Calendar also added one of Google’s famous “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons to its scheduling tool, creating random events on calendars that inevitably involved dates with celebrities. (Except I didn’t really feel lucky. I was only offered “dates” with Tom Cruise, George W. Bush, and South Park’s Eric Cartman. None of them are really my type.)

Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit!
Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? We do, too. In fact this problem became so serious at times that it sometimes resulted in lacklustre attendance at team meetings. To help solve the problem we’ve created an innovative solution called the Google Wake Up Kit.

“I could never wake up on time to get to our team meetings. But thanks to the new Google Wake Up Kit, I’m always on time now!”
Pedro C. In combination with the kit, you can receive a new type of notification from Google Calendar, called the “wake up” notification. This notification is relentless in ensuring your timely awakening from restful slumber.

The “wake up” notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters.

By the way: APRIL FOOL!

Popularity: 2% [?]