The Future without Links
Let me take you forward to a 20 AG (2018 AD) - a world without links governing search engine position.
Search Engine Optimisation
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Previous Query Refinement starting to hit Google Natural Search Results
It seems that Google may be starting to roll out "Previous Query Refinement" to their natural listings as reported by Danny Sullivan earlier this month after his interview with Google Vice President of search products & user experience, Marissa Mayer....
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
The Implications to Google Indexing Forms
Google recently made a post on their official blog regarding them beginning to crawl HTML forms this is interesting, not just because it could lead to the discovery of far more pages which is a good thing, or due to...
Monday, 31 March 2008
Universal/Blended search results in 17% of Google search queries
Comscore stats show Universal/Blended search results in 17% of Google search queries, according to Compete.com that is more than MSN's total search marketshare and almost as much as Yahoo!'s. Certainly a justifiable business case for taking Universal/Blended search more seriously....
Tuesday, 06 November 2007
Google's PageRank crackdown - A slapping tale
As is now commonly reported a huge number of large and reputable websites have been hit by a serious PageRank reduction. Here are some notable penalties for trusted sources of good content http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4 http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5 http://www.problogger.net/ PR6...
Friday, 19 October 2007
Google and Buying/Selling Links
This is obviously against Google’s guidelines and they will more than likely penalise you if they find out you are buying/selling text links. Google say they have an algorithm for detecting sites selling/buying backlinks and adjust there rankings respectively and...
Google - Country Specific Ranking on "the web" Search.
Not too long ago the general web search even on country specific domain names would display broad results with all sorts of country specific sites listed. Nowadays though the serps are different, doing a search for "washing machine" at www.google.co.uk...
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
What's Happened to Golexa
Golexa the 'Awesome Search Tool' hasn't been working for over a week. Golexa is powered by Google API, Alexa Thumbnails & Yahoo Y!Q, it produces some of the most useful at-a-glance information to search engine optimisers on the web, it...
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what Google says it is.
I was just discussing the various benefits of different search marketing tactics with one of the worlds biggest food brands and one of my team reminded me of this sage like wisdom from the long tail. Your brand isn’t what...
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Does having duplicate content cause sites to be placed in the supplemental index?
A minor yet useful footnote from a Vanessa Fox (current but soon to be x-Google Webmaster Central) post about buffy: http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2007/06/06/buffy-in-duplicate/ The question I got most often after the session was about the supplemental index. Does having duplicate content cause...
Wednesday, 06 June 2007
Where Have All the UK Websites Gone?
Checking the UK indexing of a website on Tuesday 6th June I discovered the site, to my shock, had no pages indexed in: pages from the UK. So a little investigating was called for, and woe and behold my site...
Saturday, 19 May 2007
Google Universe - opportunity not enemy
You'd have had to have your head truly stuck in the sand not to notice the news about Google Universal Search, the new multiple content search engine results page from Google, where news, video and just about anything get factored...
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Synonyms and Polysemes
New search technologies could see common problems consigned to the past, according to Business Standard. Synonymy - using different words for the same object, in addition to Polysemy - when a word has multiple meanings, cause many problems for search...
Friday, 27 April 2007
Why is Martin looking so happy?
We just won "Best Search Engine Optimisation" at the Travolution Awards 2007, the UK travel industry’s most prestigious award for top innovators in online travel.
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Loving Google Webmaster Central - it is out of BETA
As a Valentines treat Google Webmaster Central is now out of Beta. I got the announcement live at SES London. Recently they added the 'links' feature which is really cool, it crashes on big sites though, so maybe some sort...
Tuesday, 06 February 2007
Awesome New Link Reporting Tool From Google
Yesss....Thankyou....Google have released an awesome new link reporting tool, for ages webmasters and fellow link specialists have requested more data than we get back when using the Google link: command, and finally we can do it for sites we can...
Monday, 29 January 2007
What do DirectGov and Wikipedia have in common? - outbound links
What do DirectGov and Wikipedia have in common? Outbound Links - each website is an authorative hub and represents different sides of the same coin in regards to the theory of how outbound links from authorative hubs should be handled....
Friday, 26 January 2007
The non-existence of search in the public sector & the joys of eGMS & IPSV
Thanks to Ian Dunmore and Dan Champion for inviting me to speak at their Public Sector Forums event in Birmingham. I was given the task of explaining how the Internet really works, and what the public sector could be doing...
Thursday, 25 January 2007
The difference between accessibility and search engine optimisation
Firstly there's the issue of semantics - accessibility vs accessibility, I think if you leave basic optimisation out of your strategy you shouldn't be able say your websites accessible, becuase most people wont know it is there. Next while there...
Wednesday, 22 November 2006
Google indexes it's own duplicate content.
Google has a massive flaw in its own robots.txt and domains set-up which allows the Google directory and other content to be crawled at a variety of other Google subdomains and domains creating a vast array of permutations of duplicate...
Friday, 17 November 2006
Google, Yahoo! & MSN all to support the Sitemaps protocol
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional...
Monday, 25 September 2006
How to authenticate Googlebot
Matt from Google has posted the 'official' way to spot if the spider hitting your website is actually Googlebot. The technique involves an IP lookup to check the crawl host domain contains googlebot.com: > host 66.249.66.1 1.66.249.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer...
Wednesday, 20 September 2006
Best search campaign in this years Netimperative Awards.
Neutralize (*\*) are finalists in the Netimperative Awards for "Best Search Campaign" and you lucky readers get the chance to vote on the winner so guess who we'd like you to vote for ;-) We have the only organic search...
Monday, 07 August 2006
ebookers PageJack themselves in Google SERP
Search for 'ebookers' on Google, and you'll see something has gone really awry with Googles interpretation of which is the primary domain. It looks a like a traditional PageJack caused by a fault with their website and multiple domains. Chris...
Search engines and copyright infringement
Copyright theft is a problem, not only can it cause issues for someone's algorithmic search listings, it's a pretty spineless thing to do skimming off other peoples intellectual property and effort. I was reading Google news and spotted what looked...
Tuesday, 01 August 2006
Matt Cutts, Google SEO Tips Videos
Matt Cutts head of the Google anti-spam team, has put together a great set of videos answering questions asked by his loyal army of blog readers. Worth checking out for a quick grounding in points to consider. Access them on...
Friday, 28 April 2006
SEO Penalty Alerts in Google Sitemaps
Matt Cutts says Google is selectively notifying some webmasters of penalties via their Sitemaps accounts - this is huge news, even if it isn't a fully fledged feature yet. We asked for this multiple times in Matts blog and Sitemaps...
Tuesday, 18 April 2006
e-consultancy SEO Best Practice Guide
Finally the e-consultancy SEO Best Practice Guide is publicly available. I got a copy the other month when I'll helped Dave Chaffey with proofing and updates, and have to say this is by far the most detailed guide to SEO...
Friday, 07 April 2006
Yahoo!, MSN & Ebay recruiting - SEO hits the big time...
You know something has changed in the perception enterprise search engine optimisation (SEO) when you see three of the very biggest names MSN, Ebay and Yahoo! taking it seriously enough to independently recruit SEO Managers. http://members.microsoft.com/careers/international/default.asp?lang=EN&loc=UKD&job=90295896&jobslist= http://pages.ebay.co.uk/community/aboutebay/jobs/Natural_Search_Manager.html http://gs.globalsuccessor.com/fe/tpl_yahoo01.asp?newms=jj&id=30180 Darn, it...
Wednesday, 05 April 2006
Google Related Links
Google snuck out a nice little tool yesterday called 'Related Links', I think from an SEO perspective it is quite interesting in terms of assessing what else Google thinks is similar to your website. http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/ Here's what they think is...
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
Cutting off the long tail of search
What a great reception at the e-consultancy SEO Supplier showcase in London last Thursday. For anyone who couldn't attend it was Neutralize (*\*) and the other 'usual suspects' from the UK search marketing scene presenting our wares regarding search engine...
Tuesday, 21 March 2006
Understanding Google snippets - SERP result descriptions
I have just been asked how snippets (result descriptions) in the Google SERP work, so here is the answer. Google tries to decide what text is best to display as a snippet based on the text of the search phrase....
Tuesday, 07 March 2006
Yahoo! and Google the same on relevancy
A study carried out by Jean Véronis and his students at the University of Aix into the relevance of search engine results shows there is very little difference between Yahoo! and Google . Google, Yahoo and MSN, Exalead, Voilà and...
Friday, 03 March 2006
Let the link love flow
I had to do a presentation to a couple of hundred business owners the other day, of which only a handful knew much about search and I wanted to explain the complexity of search engine algorithms and the importance of...
Wednesday, 08 February 2006
BMW.de back in the Google index
After the online equivalent of being placed in the stocks for a few days, and after removing the offending content, BMW.de and also RICOH.de have been allowed back into the index. I appreciate BMW’s quick response on removing JavaScript-redirecting pages...
Tuesday, 07 February 2006
BBC.co.uk - SEO not banned by Google
British Broadcasting at its best. After swift note from Martin and I the BBC have graciously updated their BMW.de article to correctly reflect that search engine optimisation is not in fact banned by Google. I take on board your comments...
Monday, 06 February 2006
BMW.de banned from Google - highlights media ignorance
Why, why, why PART 2. Yesterday when I blogged that BMW.de had been penalised in Google it was in the mindset of O'h well there's another big brand that either got convinced by another search marketer or talked themselves into...
Sunday, 05 February 2006
Why, why, why? BMW.de
BMW Germany demonstrates why an enterprise approach to corporate optimisation (SEO) is the only one that makes any sense. I wont even go into the details, Matt Cutts just says it all too well. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/ If you want to know...
Tuesday, 17 January 2006
Google endorsed search engine position checker?
Not yet, but in what looks like a Red flag to us SEO bulls it apppears the challenge has been set by Google to create one. Spotted about a third of the way from the bottom of the Personalized Homepage...
Wednesday, 26 October 2005
Update Jagger
Jagger is going to be one of the “longer” updates, or set of cumulative updates we have seen in a while, with up to 3 stages predicted by some. Updates happened last week, including PageRank updates. Reports over at Webmaster...
Friday, 23 September 2005
Google warning letters to webmasters
In a turn of face by Google regarding handling of optimisation issues, Matt Cutts has confirmed that a number of webmasters have received letters from Google notifying them of penalisation problems with their websites, the first of which focuses on...
Thursday, 25 August 2005
O'Reilly Text Link Search Engine Spam?
Another debate around whole text link issue has started up, this time involving O’Reilly the highly respected publisher of IT books. To catch up on the in-depth debate visit Tim O’Reilly’s own blog at: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/search_engine_s_2.html What I really like about...
Google showing website menus in the serp?
Back on the topic of new and unusual Google search engine results pages after the 5,3,2 dissatisfied layout , I just came across this permutation that I've never seen before. The top organic listing is showing a selection of additional...
Friday, 12 August 2005
New Google 'Dual Results' Dissatisfied SERP
The team were just running a search against Telemedia the European Internet event and spotted something interesting on the Google SERP. A new 'Dual Results' SERP, possibly a Google test of some kind. The SERP shows the top 5 results...
Wednesday, 10 August 2005
Yahoo! bigger than Google
They're at it again, this time over the size of their search indexes. With Google currently claiming around 8 Billion indexed pages according to its homepage, Yahoo! has, rather unusually, announced that its search results are based on an index...
Monday, 08 August 2005
Where does all this 'white hat' 'black hat' come from?
I was having a chat with Andy Atkins-Kruger the current president of the Search Marketing Association UK and founder of Webcertain, and he put forward a really interesting 'thought for the weekend'. Edward de Bono invented the thinking hats in...
Friday, 22 July 2005
Woks going on? Google now sues Microsoft
Turning up the heat in a retaliatory effort against Redmonds suit over the implied poaching of Dr Kai Fu-Lee, Google has now sued Microsoft claiming 'intimidation'. Google is claiming that Microsofts original suit against it is illegal because it is...
Thursday, 21 July 2005
Google and Microsoft play sweet and sour
Microsoft sues Google over 'tapping up' of Dr Kai-Fu Lee ex-corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Services Division, someone considered privy to top level insider information at the company. Dr Kai-Fu Lee is one of the worlds top researchers in...
Monday, 13 June 2005
Hidden Links on Financial Times website
Using 'hidden links' is one of the oldest methods of search engine spam so you wouldn't expect to see them on a respected news site like the Financial Times online, (FT.com). FT.com describes itself as "the world's leading audited business...
Friday, 03 June 2005
SMA UK Launched
The launch of SMA UK http://www.sma-uk.org in Room E at Search Engine Strategies went extremely well. The room was packed and some of the other major UK SEM's signed up for full corporate membership on the night, with many more...
Wednesday, 25 May 2005
Google Adsense PageJacked
A search for the term "google adsense" on Google shows the following results. Note the top one...it evidently isn't from Googles website (Look at the website address). This is the most profound demonstration of a technique named PageJacking, where one...
Friday, 06 May 2005
Does your websites location effect your search engine listings?
Does your websites location effect your search engine listings? Yes it does, and it is very pertinent question given the rapid expansion of localised services on the major search engines, Google in particular. However the physical location of a website...
Monday, 18 April 2005
Why bridging pages are fundamentally flawed.
Got a highly dynamic website? Thousands and thousands of products? Template driven architecture? Less than friendly IT department? Bridging pages seem like your only option? Think again. Here are ten good reasons for an enterprise SEO approach and why bridging...
Friday, 15 April 2005
Google's turning Japanese
Google.com is showing a preference to Japanese and Chinese sites for the search term 'seo'. Results are varying, but I've seen the first 4 pages come back with virtually all Asian domains. The results are intermittent and some searches are...
Monday, 11 April 2005
Google behind the scenes - essential viewing.
I recently came across this essential viewing, a 55min recruitment style presentation by Jeff Dean of Google, at the University of Washington. http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.asp?rid=2459 Those of you into security and redundancy will be very interested in the GFS (Google File System)...
Friday, 01 April 2005
SME / SMB search engine optimisation strategies
Early in 2003 Neutralize (*\*) published a report about SME/SMB internet strategies. It came out of our work on the Web Review Initiative (WRI) and the E-Commerce Review Grant, consulting exercises conducted by Neutralize (*\*) on behalf of Business Link...
Optimising your website for Local Search
If I want an electrician, a plumber or even a pizza, isn’t it much more likely I am going to want one in my area than on the other side of the country? ‘local search’ is the solution and in...
Algorithmic search engine optimisation - change is the only constant
Why are my search engine rankings and traffic consistently changing? This is one of the most common questions I am asked as an algorithmic search specialist at Neutralize (*\*). The straight answer “change is the only constant in the world...
