Hey guys! How are you all doing? It's pouring here, but on a happier note, I have noticed that more and more trees are blooming, which means that spring is now in full force on this side of the globe. Awesome! This is perfect timing, too:
Earth Day
The search engine Earth Day logos should have indicated that something was up on Sunday. Ah, yes, it was that day that we honor and respect our habitat. Yahoo! had a pretty neat logo done in Flash with a windmill. Ask displayed a logo indicating a sunshiney day. Google's logo is most like the weather today: a blue blur where the sky meets the sea. Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization
There was an interesting discussion about whether too much content is bad for search engine optimization. I don't think it is. If you start ranking better just because you remove old content, there are generally outside factors to consider. In the particular case, other people had improved rankings at the same time as the member who asked this question, which leads me to believe that it was really all divine intervention an algorithmic shift of some sort.
Do keywords in the URL boost rankings? We still really don't know. Some people are actually seeing a boost in rankings due to the keywords in the URL, but not everyone is so lucky...
Sorry guys, I really don't agree. The greatest living American is not Stephen Colbert. In fact, I'm not alone; should SEOs really be doing this? Muhammad Saleem at Pronet Advertising doesn't think so. Therefore, I have issues with Google Bombs. I think that Google is way too opinionated. Should Google handle them differently? I think so for Colbert, but not necessarily for George Bush.
Weirdness Abounds
Someone found that his robots.txt file is in Google's supplemental results. Odd. But hey, there's nothing to gain or to lose from it, really, so no sweat.
This was an algorithmic mistake, but people were disgusted. After last week's unfortunate Virginia Tech tragedy, Google News categorized it as entertainment. Yeah, I know it's a glitch, and I know that Google looks to improve user experience by getting feedback about these mistakes. They reported to thank users for their contributions and the problem was fixed.
Google ads were infected with malware earlier this month and may be related to a similar AdWords exploit. One of our keen readers noticed that Google ads hide a lot more than just malware and I also decided to blog about the story requesting more of a human element in the screening process.
In other weirdness, some people are seeing way too personalized Google ads. This week, Matt writes about web history. I can't help but wonder if the two are related.
Google Power
Google is seriously rich. They were voted #1 in the top brands of 2007 and they also have a revenue share of 83.7%. Give me some of that loving, guys. Barry will give you my snail mail address.
Small Legal Battles to be Won
American Blind & Wallpaper is still suing Google and the lawsuit about its trademark is being pursued. It would be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts.
The Daily Telegraph is still clueless about the correct implementation of a robots.txt file, and they want to sue spiders for crawling its news. That's almost like having your door wide open and getting mad at a stray dog for coming inside. Fine guys. I'm going to try that tonight.
Layouts
Google is testing layout changes and has updated its news results. I still don't see any of this fun stuff.
New in Search
Google has filed four new document scoring patents based on query analysis, traffic associated with a document, link analysis, and age of the document.
Ask has introduced ASL contextual advertising and has provided us so kindly with screenshots. It's looking good. Maybe we can revisit the question of if Ask.com is a better search engine than Google in a short amount of time.
90% of Statistics are False
Remember when we said that 75% of Blogspot blogs are spam? This week, found that 80% of blogs contain offensive content. I'm really not that surprised, but for the record, I don't read those blogs.
Upcoming Conferences
Danny Sullivan's first Search Marketing Expo is coming to Seattle. In just 38 days, we'll be experiencing the newest series of conferences. I'll be there, and Barry will be there as well. Who else is in?
On another note, Pubcon is going against SES Chicago this year. Both are scheduled at the same time! Which one will you be going to? Barry posted a poll on Wednesday, and Pubcon was winning by far until someone tampered with the results. (Now really, was that necessary?) So, the true winner is Pubcon, and that's where I'll likely be headed, especially because the person who skewed the results has made me a little sad.
Last but not least
Yesterday, Danny wrote an awesome article explaining PageRank. Barry considers it the most authoritative article on PageRank thus far. I agree. The article hit the front page of Digg because it was oh-so-good. I highly recommend it, and if you can't read all of it in one sweep, bookmark it.
And -- just because Barry just posted about it, we collected data about Google's link analysis tool. It's great information but Barry leaves us with a few questions. Here's what I'd like as this tool evolves (and I hope it does): a more comprehensive report with columns that show the number of links as recorded daily (or if not daily, pretty regularly). Now that would be cool.
That wraps up another week in search. We'll see you next week!
