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How to get indented listings for your website on Google

1. How to get indented listings for your website on Google
Wouldn't it be great if your website was listed twice in Google's top 10 results for your most important keywords? Although Google usually shows only one page from every site in the top results, it is possible to get two listings if you do the right things.
What are indented Google listings?

Indented listings on Google's search results pages can give your website additional exposure. Having an indented listing in Google's search results means that you'll have two listings for your website in the top 10 results in Google instead of one:

These indented listings are also called double listings. Google explains these listings like this:
"When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it."
It's obvious that your website will get more clicks and more visitors if it is listed twice in the top 10 results. Most webmaster don't know how to get these results. That's your chance to get a step ahead of your competition.

How to get indented listings for your keywords

To get an indented listing for one of your keywords, do the following:
You must have a web page that already has a top 10 ranking for that keyword. If you do not know how to get top 10 rankings on Google for your keywords, use this tool. Create a second web page on the same domain that links to the first web page that has the top 10 ranking. Optimize the second page for the same keyword as page one but use different content. Link from the first page to the second page with your keyword phrase in the anchor text. If possible, use a contextual link within a body of text rather than a site-wide navigational link. Get inbound links for the second page. Depending on the competition for the keyword, a few high-quality links can be enough to get the indented result.
Repeat step 1 to 4 for as many keywords as you want.

If your website has two links on Google's result page, then it will represent 20% of the organic results instead of the regular 10%.
That means that you'll get more clicks and more visitors. It would be foolish not to optimize a second page for your keywords. Start here to get top 10 Google rankings for keywords that attract buyers.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Battle of the search engines

"I decided to check in on the major search engines to see how well each one handles the question 'who won the Kentucky derby.' My list of search engines included Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, and Ask.com. [...]
The winner is Live Search from Microsoft by a nose. Ask.com was definitely #2. Not only did Live Search present me with the most recent winner of the Kentucky Derby, but the additional info presented alongside the results were spot on."

New Google patent: how to judge the value of a link

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Axandra news archive: 31 August 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Google has been granted a new patent some days ago. The patent can give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of the links to your site on your Google rankings.

In the news: Google's John Mueller talks about duplicate content and Google's terms of service, there might be another Google algorithm update and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

1. New Google patent: how to judge the value of a link

Google has been granted a new patent with the name "Determining quality of linked documents" some days ago. The patent might give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of a link on the search engine positions of a web page.

What is the patent about?

Here's the official abstract:

"A ranking component ranks documents, such as web pages or web sites, to obtain a ranking score that defines a quality judgment of the document. The ranking score of a particular document is based on the ranking score of the documents which link to it and based on affiliation among the documents."

According to the patent description, Google could rank the backlinks to a web page differently based on the relation of the pages to each other.

For example, links from pages that have the same author might have less influence on the rankings of a web page that have no affiliation with the linked site.

The patent also contains an image that illustrated how the related of web pages might be:

How does Google limit the value of a link?

According to the patent, Google might do the following:

Google assigns a maximum value to links that come from affiliated pages.Google might assign individual values to links from independent pages.

That means that three links from an affiliated website carry more value than a single link but the total value of all links from the affiliated website is limited.

How can Google recognize affiliated web pages?

The patent shows a number of methods that Google can use to determine the affiliation of web pages:

Interlinking: websites that are more closely interlinked to each other than the average pages on the websites might be considered to be affiliated. Hostnames: web pages that have the same domain name or subdomains that are on the same domain are probably affiliated. IP addresses: if the first two or three components of the IP addresses are identical, the web pages might be affiliated. Visitors: web pages that share many visitors during the same browsing session can be considered to be affiliated.

What does this mean for your website rankings?

Although Google has been granted the patent this month, they filed it a few years ago. That means that the methods described in the patent probably have been in use at Google for several years.

Basically, the patent confirms the previous recommendations in our newsletter and in our SEO software IBP:

Try to get high quality backlinks from as many different websites as possible.Do not participate in automated linking schemes.The quality of the links is more important than the quantity of the links.

If you haven't done it yet, download our SEO software tool IBP now and optimize the links to your website as well as the content of your pages. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer is based on Google's latest ranking algorithm and it tells you what is needed to get high rankings on Google with the current algorithm.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's John Mueller: how to prevent duplicate content

"Using the robots meta tag with 'noindex' ('follow' is implied, so you don't have to specify it separately) is a fairly good solution. [...]

At any rate, I would definitely not recommend using the robots.txt to disallow crawling of those print pages since that would make it impossible for us to see the meta-tag and to recognize that the content is the same as in the article pages. [...]

It probably makes sense to prevent a print-version from being indexed (as it is now), but past that I don't think it's necessary to tweak it further with a rel=canonical. It might however make sense to place the rel=canonical on the individual pages (pointing to the preferred URL for that particular page) to prevent duplicate content such as that found in the last search."

Google's John Mueller: using Google Translate can violate Google's TOS

"Just want to add a word of warning here -- using automated translation tools to directly create content for your site could be seen as creating auto-generated content, which would be against our Webmaster Guidelines.

Instead of just taking the output of a program like Google Translate, I'd strongly recommend at least having it corrected before putting it online. While Googlebot may initially fall for some Spanish keywords in your text, your users are not going to appreciate content that has been automatically translated and published without a review."

How Google cost me $4 million

"Without a bit of advertising, sales of gift baskets had grown 400 percent. [...] Then, one day, he woke up to find that Google, the source of 80 percent of the company's revenue, had banished his site from its search results. [...]

This was right before the holiday season, when we typically make 40 to 60 percent of our annual revenue. It was really, really devastating."

Editor's note: being on Google's first result page can have a major effect on your company's revenue.

Discussion: Mayday-style long-tail update happening again?

"We spotted Mayday a few days before it became widespread. I am seeing the same type of update happening again on our largest property. Another large scale whack to longtail is in the works this week. [...]

For one of our sites with millions of pages we been effected largely and in fact a lot of spam sites have taken over the 1st position. And backlink analysis show pure comment spam. I hope its just some dance because of some links that we built."

85-90% of search traffic comes from organic search

"EcoMowers has only 5% of this market, and primarily generates traffic through PPC and SEO channels. In fact, he gets 50% SEO traffic through organic search, and 50% through paid search.

Now, given that the Web's traffic is 85-90% organic search, it is clear to me that Andy has not yet leveraged SEO to its fullest potential, and doing so would give him the biggest bang for the buck at this point. To get from 5% market share to 20% market share in his market Andy clearly has a low-hanging fruit in front of him."

Editor's note: get your share by getting your website on Google's first result page.

Search engine newslets

Google Realtime Search now has its own page.Yahoo's July 2010 retail insights.What's a good way to kick off a new RSS feed? (video)Discussion: exact long tail phrases in the title are not ranking well.23 walls of Googley.Discussion: are Google AdSense ad links more powerful than other formats?Bubble blinders: the untold story of the search business model.Find out what’s hot on search with the Google Beat.Google tests centered layout.Is Google objective?Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"Our results are more consistent and higher."

"Over the years we have tried many SEO methods on our site at www.freebears.com, including high-priced US companies, low-priced companies in India, and rather random in-house methods.

While we have varying levels of success, the cost was too high. Then we decided to try IBP. Since we started using IBP our search results are more consistent and higher than with any of our previous SEO options.

We especially like the easy way we can track search engine rankings and see the effect of page changes.

The suggestions that IBP makes for improving rankings have also helped us. We recommend IBP for anyone who wants to understand SEO and wants to stop wasting money by having someone else do their SEO for them."
Gary, http://www.freebears.com/

Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

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The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?

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Axandra news archive: 12 January 2010

Welcome to latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

How important are the long tail keywords in your search marketing campaign? Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords with little search volume? A new study has the answer.

In the news: How many clicks should a web page be away from the home page, Googlebot crawling fictional URLs, what people search for on Google and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

1. Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?Last week, the Rimm-Kaufman Group published a study about long tail keywords. Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each.

Long tail keywords usually consist of several words and they have a low monthly search volume.

What did the study find out?

Google AdWords advertisers with monthly expenses ranking from $15K to $750K per month were analyzed in the study. All of these advertisers had well managed Google AdWords accounts.

Here are the key findings:

The importance of long tail keywords varies. For one company, the long tail keywords generated only 8% of the sales. Another company received 83% of its sales through long tail keywords. It depends on the product. People search differently for different types of products. For one product group people might use more long tail keywords while they use fewer for another product group. The importance of long tail keywords does not depend on the paid search budget. Long tail keywords are most important for SKU-based commodity retailers. For some Google AdWords advertisers, long tail keywords are critically important. One company in the test generated more than 71% of its revenue from long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are important to all AdWords advertisers. Even the company that received only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them.

How can you find long tail keywords?

Use IBP's keyword tool to find and create long tail keywords for paid search marketing. IBP offers a sophisticated keyword tool that gets keyword suggestions from Google, KeywordIndex and other keyword resources:

IBP's keyword manager makes it very easy to create long tail keywords. Open IBP's keyword editor, select "Expand keywords", enter supplemental keywords (or choose from the supplemental keywords that IBP offers), click the "Generate keywords combinations" button and IBP does the rest.

IBP offers supplemental keywords in these categories: cities and regions of 27 countries, colors, industries, occupations, synonyms for bargain, big, complete, fast, great and smart. Of course, you can also enter your own supplemental keywords.

Long tail keywords are an important part in any search engine marketing campaign. IBP makes it as easy as possible to create targeted long tail keywords for your website.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Is it okay if a web page is 6 clicks from the index page (discussion)?

Google's John Mueller says:

"Depending on your site's size and the business behind it, you may also want to look into the paid Google site-search solutions, which index all of your pages regardless of how they're linked (provided they're in a Sitemap file).

This does not guarantee indexing in the normal web-index, but may be a solution should you just need something to help existing users of your website find specific content. That said, personally speaking, I'd have no problem clicking through 5-6 links to get to highly specific content if I needed it and your site had it. [...]

I wouldn't worry too much about priorities in Sitemap files (I think your system would generally be fine) -- they won't make or break the crawling, indexing or ranking of your site, they're just additional hints."

Googlebot crawling fictional URLs in JavaScript

"With Google evidently trying to increase the amount of content stored in its index, the situation sounds ideal for many webmasters - however, others are not so enthusiastic.

Recently, it has been reported that Googlebot's intrusive crawling of JavaScript has resulted in the search engine creating fictional URLs - web addresses that do not exist. Analytics packages have been the single biggest contributors to this problem, including Google Analytics itself."

What boyfriends and girlfriends search for on Google

"You know how Google sometimes 'predicts' what you might be searching for by giving you a little drop down menu of suggested search queries? These suggestions, of course, are based on what other users frequently search. [...]

This shows Google’s remarkable power as a source of data on a range of human behaviors, emotions, and opinions. It gives us insights into what people might care the most about concerning a given topic."

Magazine on Google Goggle's face recognition and more

"Google has my name (their form asked for it), they got my bank account (Google Checkout), and certainly they got personal data (like my Gmail emails, which include passwords, or Google Docs texts and spreadsheets). All voluntarily, but saying it ain’t so doesn't make that data less existing. Or does Google suggest we should lie and register as Donald Duck to protect our privacy?"

Related: How Google collects data about you and the Internet

Fast Flip now available on Google News homepage

"Near the bottom, we're now displaying stories from Google Fast Flip, the article-reading service we launched in September. Fast Flip is still in Google Labs, so we'll continue to experiment with the format. But so far we've found that the speed and visual nature of the service encourages readers to look at many articles and, for the ones that catch their interest, click through to the story publishers' websites."

Search engine newslets

Bing admits that their crawler MSNbot is slow.December paid search benchmarks.Google launches "near me now" feature for smartphones.Yahoo stops its Yahoo! Shopping API.Yahoo hires more social science experts.Bing bringing basketball to you.Facebook's Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over.Google becoming "giant monopoly" - German minister.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"The small investment in IBP is now saving me more than $1500 per month."

"The best thing that I have done was to buy IBP, and only wish I had found it sooner.

I have a website for a dental clinic in Tijuana. As a short term solution, I started with pay per clicks. I have spent as much as $2000 a month, and justified it with the fact that the advertising was producing results that paid for itself.

However, there are seasons when the business drops off, and I would end up spending the same amount for fewer patients, thus eating up my profits.

I decided to start focusing on SEO. I hired a company to do the initial SEO on my home page. The cost for the optimization for that one page, plus the promise of building 100 back links per month was $4000.

The optimization immediately helped my rankings significantly. Then I found IBP. I decided to use it to optimize my other pages. Through this process, I realized that if I had had IBP in the beginning, I wouldn't have needed the SEO company.

Through IBP, I realized which keywords were truly the best ones, and started focusing on them. Now, several of my secondary pages rank higher than my home page.

As I have learned now how to build back links on my own. I believe that IBP has help me to better optimize my website, than the SEO company. I don't need them anymore, and will be cutting them loose as soon as they fulfill their contract.

Of 35 keyword phrases, I now rank on page one of Google on 24 of them. With Yahoo, I rank on page one on about 30 key word phrases. I have cut way back on my pay per clicks, to less than $500 a month, and I have doubled my business.

I can see that the small investment in IBP is now saving me more than $1500 per month, and even more in time."
Jim Crayne, www.goodsamdental.org

Tell us how IBP helped your business and 230,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

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The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?

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Axandra news archive: 10 November 2009

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we're taking a look at websites that could link to your website. Links from related websites are very important for the position of your own site in Google's search results. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to convince other people to link to your site.

In the news: Microsoft sites capture largest share of time spent online worldwide, search engine robots tips, MSN AdCenter probably also uses a Quality Score and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

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1. Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google's results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don't have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It's not necessary to get as many links as possible. It's necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

There are many things that can improve the response rate of your link request messages. Details can be found in our free SEO eBook. The eBook covers everything from finding potential link partners to optimizing response rates and it also contains a checklist that helps you to get started as quickly as possible.

If you want to speed things up, use IBP's link builder to get links from other websites to your site. IBP's link builder finds related websites, websites that link to your competitors, related blogs, websites that link to your website, etc.

In addition, IBP delivers additional information such as the text that is used for the links to your website, the IP address, the Google PageRank rank of the web pages and much more.

IBP also help you to build links through directory submission, social bookmarking services and many more tools that help you to get the best possible position in the search results of Google and other major search engines. You can download it here.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Microsoft sites capture largest share of time spent online worldwide

"Microsoft Sites held the largest share of time spent among the top worldwide properties in Europe (16.8 percent), Latin America (35.9 percent) and the Middle East – Africa (33.1 percent).

Yahoo! Sites captured the largest share of time in North America with 11.2 percent share, while also attracting a notable 7.9-percent share of time spent in the Asia Pacific region.

Google Sites commanded a strong share of time spent in Latin America (19.4 percent), Middle East – Africa (9.7 percent), Europe (9.6 percent) and North America (9.1 percent)."

Search engine robots are speaking many languages

"We've already covered [...] some of the basics about how webmasters can use a file called robots.txt to control how search engine crawlers (aka bots) crawl their websites. But there is so much more to talk about with bots. So let's take a bit of a deeper dive into the subject."

Microsoft AdCenter also uses some kind of QualityScore

"Sometimes when a campaign or ad group is not getting very much activity for a long period of time the ad will start showing less and less because it is not performing. That may be what has happened with your campaign. My suggestion is to start two brand new campaigns and copy all of the data over from your existing campaigns."

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo others sued over mapping software

"A case started in Texas against a number of defendants alleging that they had infringed a patent owned by a company called Webmap Technologies LLC. [..] All the defendants are accused of creating applications using interactive mapping that Webmap Technologies."

Search engine newslets

Warning: use Google Commerce Search at your own risk.Google adds two alerts to Google AdWords campaigns.Google improves AdWords conversion tracking.Google's new map data is really old.Microsoft Bing gives WiFi users free search.Google: Rupert Murdoch can block us if he wants to.Google acquires mobile display advertising company AdMob.In Google Book case, a request for more time.Google says won't give Clearwire more financing.Turkish government claims Google owes €32 million in taxes.Google CEO: Hopefully we won't repeat Microsoft's past mistakes.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

IBP 11 works fine with Windows 7

Do you plan to switch to Microsoft's latest operating system Windows 7? If you use IBP to promote your website, there's no reason not to update to the latest version. IBP 11 works fine with both the 32bit and the 64bit version of Windows 7.

IBP also works with Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. You can download IBP here.

Using current tools is very important for search engine optimization. Things that worked last year might not work today. IBP is always up-to-date with the latest algorithms of Google and all other major search engines.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"I'd recommend this product to anyone who is serious about promoting their SEO business."

'With IBP, I have successfully run my SEO business for the past 5 years. I have tried the other software on the market and none are as easy to use, or offer solutions as complete.

I used it to capture No 1 positions for 'Australian Search Engine Optimization', 'Australian Search Engine Marketing' etc. The Business Edition was my choice as it has unlimited projects and customized SEO reports. I'd recommend this product to anyone who is serious about promoting their SEO business."
Bruce Gow, Search Engine Guy Pty Ltd

220,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Website checklist for 2009: is your website ready for the new year?

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Axandra news archive: 6 January 2009

Welcome to the first issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter in 2009.

This week, we're helping you to get ready for 2009. Read our 5 step checklist to find out if your website succeeds in the new year.

In the news: Google's search results seem to have changed, MSN can now follow JavaScript links, Google has updated its toolbar PageRank numbers and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

1. Website checklist for 2009: is your website ready for the new year?

The new year 2009 might be a tough year for many businesses but if you do it correctly, it can be a very successful year for you.

Before you start with new things, you should make sure that your current website is up-to-date. The following checklist will help you:

Step 1: Check your company information

Does your about page draw a current picture of your company? If you have a staff listing on your website, is it up-to-date?

Check these pages as well as the copyright notice and the privacy police of your website to make sure that your web pages don't look outdated.

Step 2: Check your contact information

Does your website list your current phone and fax numbers? Are the mailing and email addresses listed on your website correct? You'll lose customers if your contact information is outdated.

You should also check the email addresses that you use on your website. Are help@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, order@yourdomain.com, etc. redirected to the correct recipient? Send test email messages to all addresses that are listed on your website.

Many businesses have so strong spam filters that many legit customer email messages don't reach them.

If you have contact forms on your website, make sure that they work and that they are easy to use. If someone doesn't enter a correct email address in your contact form, does the error message make sense?

Step 3: Check your auto-responders

Do you send automated confirmation messages when someone sends you an email message? Does your shopping cart send email messages after an order?

Check the text of your automated messages to make sure that it says what you want to say and that is contains current information.

Step 4: Check the links on your website

The older your website is and the more pages your website has, the more likely it is that it contains some broken links. For that reason, you should regularly check the links on your website.

You can find a free link checker in the free demo of IBP. Download the free IBP demo version and select the link checker under IBP > Tools > Broken Link Checker.

Step 5: Check if your web pages are ready for Google

If you want to get high rankings on Google, you must make sure that it's easy for Google to parse your web pages. Can Google easily find all of your web pages? Do you target the right keywords on your web pages? Are all elements of your web pages optimized for Google? You can check this with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.

The economic times are tough but it also depends on you whether 2009 will be a successful year for your website or not. If you do the right things, chances are that your website will help you to get more customers this year.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's search results have changed

Webmasters in several online forums noticed changes in Google's result pages. Many websites now have fewer Sitelinks in Google's search results. Websites that disable the back button in the browser seem to have better rankings now. Other webmasters have noticed that their websites lost several positions in Google search results.

Live Search begins crawling JavaScript with MSNBot-Media

"[A member of an online forum] noticed that one of Live Search's bots was crawling through his JavaScript. The bot is named MSNBOT-MEDIA and he noticed that it was accessing JavaScript files and AJAX functions."

Google updates the PageRank displayed in Google's toolbar

"Google recently did a toolbar PageRank update. It’s pretty much done now. If you want more info, I've answered questions about PageRank and the Google Toolbar in the past."

Is Google's culture grab unstoppable?

"As such a dominant player in the online world, Google will now occupy a unique gateway position that, if abused, could easily create a de facto monopoly. A situation where competition is removed from the market place by placing the keys in the hands of one company cannot, ultimately, be good for the consumer. This is a bridge too far."

Marissa Mayer on the future of Google

"We think it's really important to move beyond just keywords and allow people to ask questions, and maybe access things more easily from their mobile phone [...] We're also looking at how to weave new media into it and how we can bring books, videos and news right into the search experience. And then there are various pieces of personalisation."

Search engine newslets

How to install IBP on Linux.Google in push to gain e-mail market share.Building a bridge in Google Earth.Microsoft Live Analytics SSL expired?Google Euro logo.Google Android netbooks on their way, likely by 2010.Internet Explorer's share of the browser market fell below 70%.Google not doing so well with the Chinese New Year.China steps up internet censors' scrutiny.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

Do you want to have top 10 rankings on Google?

High rankings on Google mean more website visitors, more customers and more sales. Watch the video for further information:

The Google ranking mystery is solved: get top 10 rankings on Google! No need to speculate anymore. There is a proven solution.

IBP's Top 10 Optimizer decrypts Google's ranking algorithm and it tells you what exactly you have to do to get top 10 rankings on Google.

Get your website in front of more than 160,000 readers

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

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The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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The winner takes it all: how to survive three rounds to get the sale

1. The winner takes it all: how to survive three rounds to get the sale
One of the main problems in Internet marketing is that it is often a "the winner takes it all" game. That means that the best website will get the deal and all other websites will get nothing, no matter how good they are.
Suppose someone wants to buy a green widget. He searches Google, takes a look at the top 10 results and then decides to buy something on one of the sites. That means that one site gets the sale and the other sites get nothing.
You can dramatically increase your sales by being just slightly better

The above has an important implication: you just have to be slightly better than your competitors to get many more sales.
If you make the change from being one of the discarded sites to the site that is chosen by the searcher then your sales will increase dramatically. You'll make the change from getting nothing to getting everything.

Three rounds: how to be better than your competitors

Your website has to survive three rounds in the fight for the customer:
1. Choose the right keywords to survive the first round
Being better than your competitors starts with choosing the right keywords. If you target keywords that aren't used by the people who want to buy then you might get a lot of visitors but no sales.
Your web pages should be optimized for keywords that attract people who are looking for the products and services that you sell on your website and who are ready to buy.
IBP's keyword tool can help you to find the best keywords for your website. Further information on different keyword types can be found in the IBP manual (PDF).
2. You must be in the top 10 results to survive the second round
While it is important to target the right keywords, your website must also be found on the first result page of Google, Yahoo and Bing to attract customers.
Most people only take a look at the top 10 results on the first result page. If your website cannot be found on the first result page for your keywords then potential customers won't find your website.
Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to optimize your website so that it will be listed on Google's first result page for your keywords. This is crucial if you want to get the sale.
3. Your website must be convincing
It's not enough to be listed on the first search engine result page. Your website must also be convincing. It should give the customer what he is looking for, it should have a professional design and it should make it as easy as possible to buy.
That is why it is so important to work on improving the conversion rate of your web pages. By improving your conversion rate, you can generate more money "out of thin air" from your existing rankings.
A trustworthy and professional website with a good conversion rate also has positive side-effects. Your customers probably will stay longer with your company and people are more likely to link to your website.

The winner takes it all
It takes some time to optimize your web pages, but it is worth the effort. Even small changes can have a huge impact on the number of sales that you get. Make the change from being one of the discarded sites to the site that gets the sale and your sales will go through the roof.
Remember that your competitors are also working on their websites. Even if you are better than your competitors you have to continue with the optimization to stay ahead.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Time.com: can Microsoft's Bing, or anyone, seriously challenge Google?

"Privately, Googlers will tell you that the Bing ads rankle. They describe them as misleading and unfair, painting a picture of Google that doesn't match reality. Maybe, but Microsoft — a company not previously known for its marketing savvy — is taking a page out of a 1960s Procter & Gamble playbook: create a problem consumers don't know they have, then solve it. Bing!"

Testing a new Yahoo! Search experience

"We've been doing a lot of research such as usability experiments and eye-tracking research so that we can bring you a more personally relevant search experience that better understands what you're looking for and helps you get things done quickly on the Web."

"While Cuil has been quiet – a non-story – for months, it has now suddenly reemerged with an array of new features based on bringing real-time news and search results. Did Cuil just launch its own competitor to Twitter Search and Facebook Search?"

"The sitelinks for Wikipedia results are special because Google doesn't send you to a different page, but to a section of the article. This is especially useful for long articles that include a lot of information.
It's the first time when Google indexes URLs that include anchors and sends you directly to a section from a page. The feature has already been available at Yahoo Search and Live Search."

"After long talks, it finally struck a deal with Bing to license some of its data, according to sources close to Wolfram. If nothing else, this is yet another jab at Google, which has a geek rivalry with Wolfram over the growing area of using structured data to improve search results."

Patent analysis: how search engines treat inbound links

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Axandra news archive: 22 July 2008

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we're taking a look at the new ranking patent that has been granted to Yahoo. This patent can help you to better understand how to get higher rankings on Yahoo and Google.

In the news: Google has over 75% of the US ad market, the Google toolbar does not help you to get indexed, information about web spam and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

1. Patent analysis: how search engines deal with inbound links

This month, Yahoo was granted a patent that describes how link texts may be used to increase the relevancy ranking of a web page. Although the patent was filed in 2002, it provides interesting details about how search engines can use link texts.

Why are link texts important?

All major search engines pay close attention to the text that is used in links pointing to web pages. A web page might be considered more relevant to a search term if the search term not only appears on the web page but is also used in the text of the link that points to the page.

Web pages can even get high rankings for a search term if they don't contain that search term. It's enough that many websites link to the page with the search term in the link text. This has been demonstrated with several Google bombs.

How do search engines treat link texts?

While it is clear that link texts are very important for search engines, it's not clear how much weight search engines assign to a link text when they index a page. Are some link texts more important than others?

The patent indicates that link texts are broken into parts, called tokens:

Once an anchortext phrase is identified, it is converted into a set of tokens. For example, page 306 contains the phrase "best Louis Armstrong site" pointing to page 200. The tokenization produces the following tokens:

"Best Louis Armstrong site""Louis Armstrong""Louis""Armstrong""Best""Best Louis""Best Armstrong""Best site"

The search engine algorithm calculates a weight for each of these tokens. If the weight exceeds a threshold, the linked web page may be indexed under that token.

How do search engines calculate the weight?

Search engines consider how often each word or word sequence can be found in link texts pointing to a particular page and how often the token appears in the index.

Search engines might assign the greatest importance to words that appear the least frequently in the search index. The reason for that is that those words are often more specifically related to the searched topic.

In addition, a token that appears very often in link texts that point to a special web page could be given higher weight. Tokens that appear very frequently in the search index ("site" or "best") might be discounted because they are not relevant to the special topic.

What does this mean to your website?

All major search engines use this method to rank web pages. If you want to get high rankings on search engines, you must make sure that your web site has good inbound links with the right link texts.

Optimized web pages are important to tell search engines that your website is relevant to your keywords. Good inbound links with the right link texts will enforce the relevancy of your pages for your keywords.

What you have to do to get high rankings on Yahoo and Google

Optimize your web pages for your keywords. While it is possible to get high rankings for a keyword if you have enough inbound links that contain that keyword, it is much easier to get high rankings for a special keyword if your web page has been optimized for that keyword. Try to get as many inbound links as possible. The links to your website should use your targeted keywords in the link text. Do not use the exactly same text over and over. Vary your link texts and use related but different expressions for the links to your site.

IBP's link builder can help you to get targeted links from related websites, Internet directories and blogs.

The Yahoo patent confirms the methods that modern search engines use to rank web pages. If you follow the tips and tricks above, your website will get the best possible rankings on Yahoo, Google and other major search engines.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google has over 75% of US search ad market

"Google maintained its 77.4% share of US search marketing dollars, while Yahoo captured 17.8% of spending and Microsoft Live Search maintained its 4.8% share.

Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo Search still have good ROI in comparison to Google, which makes them essential marketplaces for advertisers that need to meet their increasingly scrutinized revenue targets."

Google's Matt Cutts: the Google toolbar does not help indexing

"Sometimes people think that the Google Toolbar led to Google indexing a page. [...] if Ken Simpson is implying that the Google Toolbar led to these urls being crawled, then he’s mistaken.

Both Philipp Lenssen and Google OS did controlled experiments by visiting unlinked deep pages with the toolbar, and both concluded that the toolbar did not lead to those urls being indexed."

Video: Google's Matt Cutts talks about web spam

"Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, speaks about Webmaster Central, his first encounter with spam, and challenges for search engines in the future."

Why Google slows down acquired companies

"Google had acquired Jotspot some 16 months earlier, during which time Jot was only available to existing customers and closed to new signups. [...] Looking through the list of companies that Google has acquired, Jotspot would be considered lucky as many others have died, stalled or lost out to competitors because of the acquisition process."

Google faces another click fraud suit

"Google has been hit with a second lawsuit for fraud stemming from its parked domains program, which serves ads on otherwise empty Web pages. [...] The company said in its lawsuit that it had been charged for clicks from parked domains 'that had little relation to its business.'"

Search engine newslets

Google study: search marketing increases brand value.Google deliberately sells fewer ads — and may have gone too far. Google to acquire Russian context ads service Begun.Yahoo announces settlement with Carl Icahn.Google 'UK's top consumer brand'.New Google search interface looks more useful - see screenshots.Search featured: Guy Kawasaki.Google anti-gravity ray is fading.AdWords Editor service release for Windows and Mac.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
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Copyright © 2008 Axandra GmbH

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First aid: how to recover lost rankings on Google

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Axandra news archive: 28 September 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

That's one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. This article will help you to get back your old search engine rankings.

In the news: Google's new keyword tool is out of beta, information about the impact of Google Insight based on statistics, there might have been a Google ranking algorithm and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

1. First aid: how to recover lost rankings on Google

It's one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. This article will help you to recover your lost rankings on Google.

Possibility 1: Your website has been penalized by Google

To check if your website has been penalized by Google, search for "site:yourdomain.com" (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name) on Google.

If Google does not display any pages of your website, then your site has been penalized.

Google only penalizes websites that use spammy search engine optimization methods. For that reason, you have to remove all issues that might have caused the problem:

1. Remove all on-page spam:

Remove hidden or nearly-hidden text on your web pages. Reconsider any use of display:none and visibility:hidden that you use in the CSS code of your website. Check your web page titles, the meta tags and even the HTML comments on your web pages and remove any elements that might be interpreted as a keyword stuffing attempt. Remove any unnecessary redirects, links to dubious websites and all duplicate pages from your website. If you use cloaking or bot blocking scripts on your server, disable these scripts. Many bot blocking scripts keep legitimate search engine spiders away. Make sure that your HTML code is clean and that your web pages look nice. Don't use any automatically created doorway pages.

2. Fix all off-site issues:

Off-site issues are often the reason for ranking penalties and they are more difficult to fix than on-page issues.

If you participated in automated link exchange systems or if you paid a cheap overseas link building service to get links to your website then it's likely that these links have been flagged as spam links by Google.

Google does not like automated link systems at all. Remove all automated link systems from your website and try to make sure that these linking systems do not link anymore to your site.

If you purchased links to improve your rankings, try to get rid of these links. Paid links do work to some extend but they can get your website in trouble when Google finds out that you use paid links.

3. File a reinclusion request

When you are sure that all spam elements have been removed, you can file a reinclusion request.

Keep your reinclusion request short and to the point. Be friendly and explain what you have done to clean up your website.

Possibility 2: This is a change in the ranking algorithm

A ranking drop does not necessarily mean that your website has been penalized.

1. You redesigned your website or your website is relatively new

Google also temporarily downranks websites after a major design change (source). In that case, you don't have to worry about the ranking drop because Google will give you your old rankings back after some time.

Of course, you must make sure that your new website design can still be parsed by Google and that your new web pages still contain the keywords for which you want to be ranked.

2. Other websites are better than yours

Search engine optimization is not a set-and-forget thing. Your competitors might have improved their websites so that they now have better content and better links than your site.

No website can keep its rankings forever. Re-analyze your web pages and optimize the content of your pages so that it is compliant to Google's latest ranking algorithm.

Also improve the backlinks that point to your website. The link builder in IBP can help you to get better links.

Losing rankings on Google is hard for any website. If you do the things described above, chances are that you will get your rankings back as quickly as possible.

If your website doesn't have top 10 rankings on Google yet, optimize it with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you what to do so that you get first page rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's updated keyword tool is out of beta

"We've combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it 'The Keyword Tool.' [...]

We've also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners."

Discussion: was there a smaller Google ranking algorithm update this month?

"I have seen a sudden drop in rankings for my most traffic generating keywords on Google UK, whereas my competitors' keywords haven't dropped. [...] I'm in the UK and I've seen some of my sites drop too today, I suspect a shake-up. In my experience it sometimes settles back to normal after a day or two."

Multiple domains vs subdomains vs folders in SEO

"Multiple domains are used when we want to be very GEO targeted and when we have enough content and resources to support all these websites. [...]

Subdomains are used when you have different products and services that you want to present by using a different website structure [...]

The folders are the most common, easy to use and all purpose solution. It is the safest method in terms of SEO and Web Development. You should use folders when you have a relatively small website and when you want to maintain the authority of the domain in the main categories."

The impact of Google Instant (based on statistics)

"Nine out of the eleven sites saw increases in 7+ word keywords. Eight out of eleven sites saw decreases in 2 and 3 word keywords. [...]

The data, so far, suggests that Google Instant might be pulling people away from 2 and 3 word keywords and towards 6 and 7+ word keywords. This shift doesn't appear dramatic, but there appears to be a slight shift toward long tail keywords."

Google uses AI to make search smarter

"Imagine a very near future when you don't forget anything because the computer remembers [...]

Artificial intelligence innovation could directly affect Google's revenue, which rose to $23.7 billion last year. Take Google Instant, a new search tool launched in early September that uses AI to guess what a person is searching for as they type keywords into the search box."

Search engine newslets

Google's own Chrome browser inflates Google Analytics data.Google turned 12 years old.French court convicts Google and boss of defamation.Social media: Digg's traffic down 26% after the redesign (Reddit is the winner).Wolfram Alpha announces an Android app.Eric Schmidt: Forget Apple, Facebook, Bing's our biggest problem.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"IBP has saved the telephone charges."

"Our small company sells craft beer in French throughout France. Most of our business goes through our website. So it was important that we get a good rank in search engines like Google.

We started groping and experiment; Internet is full of information, often contradictory, for the optimization of website. Of course, we had knowledge, like everybody.

We knew a lot about page titles, meta description, H1 tags, but what to choose? Which factors are most important? And it was unthinkable to take a phone call to our biggest competitor 'hello, we would like to know how you have optimized your site'. IBP has saved telephone charges.

With IBP, we got second place for our main keyword in Google, and the rankings for other keywords continue to grow.

We have multiplied our visitors and sales. All this would not have been possible without IBP and today we can only congratulate ourselves for having it."
Ebeer EURL, www.ebeer.fr

Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

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You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site

1. How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site
Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site.
How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.
1. Offer something in return

The easiest thing that you could offer is a link in return. However, not all webmasters want to exchange links.
There are many things that you could offer in exchange for a link. This could be a discount for your products, an ad on your website or even a simple hint.
If you find a broken link on a website, inform the webmaster about the link. Tell him that your own website might be a good replacement for the broken link (if it is).

2. Ask your current link partners

If another website already links to you then they might add another link to a different page on your website.
Getting a second link from existing link partners is much easier than getting new links because you don't have to explain yourself anymore. The other webmaster already knows you and your site.

3. Make friends with people from your industry

Networking can help you to get links to your website. This works best with blogs that are related to your website.
Contact the blog owners and compliment on their sites. Do not ask for a link in your first contact. When you've a good relationship with the blog owner, you might inform him about a new product or a new article that you've written.
Chances are that you'll get a link from the blog then. These links from related blogs have a great impact on the position of your website in Google's search results. IBP can help you to find blogs that are related to your website.

4. Show that other webmasters already linked to your website

It's easier for people to do something if they see that other people have done the same thing before. If many other websites link to your website, you could mention this in your link request.
If a well known website mentioned your site, that's even better: "As you might have seen on NYTimes.com, we've published a new product. This might be interesting to the visitors of your website."

5. Offer something that other people don't have

This is the easiest way to get links. If you have a report with ground-breaking new information or something other that's very interesting and only available on your website then it will be very easy to get links to the page that contains that information.

Getting links from other websites isn't difficult if you know how to do it. Further information about link building can be found in our free SEO book. The book explains everything you need to know to get links from related websites, Internet directories and other sources.

How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?

1. How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?Google has announced a major change in the way that they handle search results by including synonyms for some words that may be used in queries. How does this affect the position of your web pages in Google's search results?


Why is it important that Google can deal with synonyms?

Google aims to display the best results for your search. For that reason, it is important that Google's algorithm understands the words that are used in the search query. An important part of understanding the words is to understand synonyms.
Synonyms are words that can mean the same thing, for example "pictures" and "photos". People searching for "sunset pictures" are probably also interested in web pages that contain the words "sunset photos".
A problem is that words that can have different meanings. For example, the word "case" can mean "occurrence", "instance" or "example". It can also mean "box" or "container".
The word "guitar box" might be a synonym for "guitar case" but "O.J. Simpson box" is not a synonym for "O.J. Simpson case". Google's measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports.

What has changed?

According to the posting in Google's official blog, Google has improved the way that they detect synonyms. For example, the algorithm can now find 20 possible meanings of the search term "GM".
GM can mean General Motors, George Mason in [gm university], gamemaster in [gm screen star wars], Gangadhar Meher in [gm college], general manager in [nba gm] and even gunners mate in [navy gm], etc.
Google also made a change to how the synonyms are displayed. The searched words and the synonyms are now displayed in bold in the search results. Web pages that contain only synonyms of the searched word can also be displayed in the search results.

Do you have to change your web pages?

If you optimized your website as explained in previous issues of our newsletter and as explained in the IBP manual then you don't have to change anything. Here's a reminder:
1. Think out of the box.
Don't just use the technical terms that you use in your company. Think about the words that other people would use to describe your product. For example, don't just use "rhinoplasty" but also "nose job" and "nose surgery".
IBP's keyword research tool will help you to find the best keywords for your website.
2. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords.
The more pages you optimize, the better. It is much better if one web page is highly relevant to one keyphrase than somewhat relevant to many keyphrases.
Don't stuff a single page with keywords. The keywords should fit naturally in your web page content. Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to find out where on your web pages you should use your keywords.

Different people use different words to find the same things. Use different ways to talk about your website topic and optimize as many pages as possible of your website.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the weekGlobal search market grew 46 percent in 2009

"The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute. The U.S. represented the largest individual search market in the world [...]"

Google highlights answers and expands snippets for events

"Last year at our second Searchology event, we announced Google Squared and Rich Snippets [...] Today, we're kicking off the new year with two improvements based on those technologies. First, we're applying the research behind Google Squared to add a new "answer-highlighting" feature to search, and second we're expanding Rich Snippets to include events."

Friendfeed results appear in seconds on Google result pages

"I just got my phone's stop watch ready and posted the following sentence into Friendfeed [...] Refreshing web search twice in brief intervals, the sentence was already appearing, and I hadn't even pasted my explanatory comment to Friendfeed yet. The watch showed 13 seconds had passed, but it might have been appearing earlier."

Bing adds breaking news & trending queries to autosuggest

"Our research shows that approximately 45% of search queries result in either a user conducting an immediate re-query, or abandoning the page altogether. [...] we recently incorporated breaking news and hot trending queries within autosuggest. Updated every 15 minutes [...]"

Microsoft boosts Bing search privacy

"Microsoft [...] will delete the [IP] addresses logged by its servers for Bing search queries after six months [...] Google said it would start anonymizing IP addresses after nine months [...] and cookies after 18 months. However, Google's anonymization method, removing the last of the four sets of numbers in an IP address, has been criticized as insufficient."
Related: Microsoft to delete Yahoo search data after 3 months.

Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website

1. Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website
The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google's search results.
For example, if many people use the text "buy blue widgets" to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase "buy blue widgets" in Google's search results.
The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

this is the link text

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:
1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel="nofollow" attribute don't pass the link text to Google. Example:
great keyword
You can use IBP to find out if the websites that link to you use the nofollow attribute: start IBP, click the "Links" button and click "Check links".

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won't be able to index the link correctly. Example:
great keyword
In this example, there's a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.
Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google's Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won't consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:
great keyword
The web server redirects "http://www.example.com/page.htm" to "http://www.example.com" with a 301 redirect. In that case, it's likely that Google won't use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:
This is an example. The link text great keyword will be ignored by Google.
The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is "This". The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.
If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:
This is an example. The link text great keyword will be ignored by Google.

Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?

1. Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?
In an online webmaster forum, a webmaster described the link experiment that he did with his websites. He tried to find out how linking to the home page affected his rankings.


What did the webmaster test?

The webmaster tested the effect of links from sub pages of his website to his home page. He tried links to the home page of his website from the navigation and from the content and he tried links with and without keywords.
The test was done with a 4 year old domain name with a dedicated IP address. The web pages were HTML only. The website ranks top 5 in Google for its main, second and third keyword phrases and it has a total of 90 pages with unique content.

What were the results of the test?

It seems that too many links to the home page of your website can have a negative effect on your rankings:
Linking to the home page from every page in the content with the same keyword caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages). Linking to the home page from every page in the content using keyword variations caused a three pages drop in rankings (-3 pages). Linking to the home page from the navigation with "main keyword" also caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages). Linking to the home page from the first 10 pages listed on Google.com for "site:domain.com/*" increased the ranking from 5th to 3rd (+2 positions).
The webmaster also observed the following:
Linking from the content using keyword variations was effective to a point, after which the rankings dropped. There seems to be a page threshold. If the number of pages that link is even slightly above the threshold, the rankings will drop.

Does this mean that you shouldn't link to your home page?

It's hard to tell whether the results of this experiment are valid because there are too many other variables that influence the rankings of a web page.
It doesn't sound sensible that Google will downrank a web page that has a link to its home page on every page. Most users expect a link to the home page on every page of a website and even Google has a link to its home page from every page.
As Google's usual webmaster advice is to focus on the website user, it seems implausible that Google would penalize home page links.
We think that it's more likely that the ranking drops are caused by Google's change filter. If you change your web page contents, Google will temporarily downrank your web pages. This has been described in a Google patent.

High positions on Google depend on much more than the internal links on your website. If you want an analysis of all important factors that influence the position of your website on Google, analyze your site with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer

Inbound link analysis: how long should a text link be?

1. How long can a text link be if it should improve your rankings?
The words that are used in the links to your website have an effect on the search engine rankings of your website for these keywords. For example, if very many websites use the word "blue widget" to link to your website, it is likely that your website will get a high ranking on Google for the keyword "blue widget".
How many keywords does Google consider?

It's absolutely certain that Google considers the words in the links to your site. The question is, how many words or characters does Google count in a link? Is there an optimal length for text links? Blogger Shaun Anderson did a test to find the answer.

The test set-up

Shaun Anderson created a long text link with 50 nonsense words. Each of the nonsense words was 6 characters long. For example, he might have used a link like this:
wergsd woivsd mliwdc woiuby 3245sc plorxc werxcd ...
Then he added that link to the home page of a website that has good rankings on Google.
After some time, Shaun did a search for a keyword that the linked website ranked number one for and added the nonsense words to the search. By doing so, Google would only list the site in the search results if links to the site contained the nonsense word.
For example, if a website has a number one ranking for "buy used cars in dallas" then the website will only be returned by Google for "buy used cars in dallas wergsd" if Google has indexed a link with the text "wergsd" that points to the website.

The result: the perfect length seems to be 55 characters

Out of the 50 words in the link text, Google counted eight. Everything after the eighth word was ignored. Eight words that consist of six characters make 48 characters. The seven spaces between these six words add up to a total of 55 characters.

What does this mean for your website?

You should make sure that the important keywords come in the first 55 characters of the links that point to your website.
As many websites use the title of a web page to link to it, you should also consider the way you write your web page titles. If your important keywords are at the beginning of your web page titles, chances are that these keywords will also be used in the links to your site.

Google's sandbox filter is still alive

Google's sandbox is a filter that Google's search quality team created some years ago to fight spam in the search results. If you have a new website or if you made major changes on your website then Google's sandbox filter might be the reason why your website's rankings have dropped.

How does Google's sandbox filter work?

The usual process is that Google indexes a new website, lists it for some less important queries in the search results and then the web pages drop from the search engine result pages for several months.
Although other search engines work fine, Google doesn't list the web site, sometimes not even for the company name. In general, brand-new web sites with new domain names need about 6-8 months to get top rankings on Google.

Why does Google use the sandbox filter?

It's likely that Google delays the inclusion of brand-new web sites to encourage webmasters to build content instead of building mini-networks.
Some webmasters try to artificially inflate the link popularity of their web site by creating a network of small web sites with different URLs that all link to each other. Many of these web sites have no purpose other than linking to the main web site.
By delaying the ranking of new web sites, this mini-network strategy doesn't offer a quick jump to the top anymore. The delay might encourage webmasters to focus on the content of their main web site instead of building useless mini sites.

Is there proof that the sandbox exists?

Yes. Many webmasters have observed the sandbox effect on their own website and Google has been granted a patent in which the method has been described.
The patent indicates that the sandbox filter might be used for new websites and for websites on which you have made major changes. Although Google started using the sandbox filter several years ago, the filter still seems to be in place as many webmasters observe its effects.

How can you find out if your website is in Google's sandbox?

If the following criteria apply to your website, it is likely it is in Google's sandbox:
Your domain is 0-2 years old or you have made major changes on your website.The web pages of your website cannot be found if you search for the exact text of their title tag.Your website did have good rankings for some relevant queries and then it dropped off 30 to several hundred positions.Your website has good rankings in Yahoo and MSN/Live but not in Google.You don't use any spam elements on your website.

What can you do to get out of the sandbox?

Except for waiting, there is not much that you can do to get out of the sandbox.
If you have a new website, expect that it will be listed within 6-8 months in Google. In the meantime, add content to your web site, get good inbound links and make sure that your web pages are optimized for Google.
When you register a new domain name, create a temporary page and link to it from another web site to make Google aware of your web site. The 6-8 month delay seem to start with Google's first contact with your web site. The sooner Google knows about your web site, the sooner it will be listed.

New Google patent: the reasonable surfer and your links

1. New Google patent: the reasonable surfer and your links
Last month, Google was granted a patent that states that the different links on a linking page have a different effect on the linked pages. How does this affect your website and what do you have to do to secure your rankings?


What is the patent about?

The patent describes that the value of a link seems to be based on the probability that a web surfer would click on the link. Here's the summary from the patent application:
"Systems and methods consistent with the principles of the invention may provide a reasonable surfer model that indicates that when a surfer accesses a document with a set of links, the surfer will follow some of the links with higher probability than others. This reasonable surfer model reflects the fact that not all of the links associated with a document are equally likely to be followed. [...]
Examples of unlikely followed links may include 'Terms of Service' links, banner advertisements, and links unrelated to the document."
When Google finds links on a web page, it classifies the links. Some links on the indexed page have more value than others.

How does Google classify the links?

To determine the value of a link, Google analyzes several things:
Features of the link: color and size of the anchor text, link position, number of words, how commercial the text is, length of the linked URL, link type (image or text), context of words Features of the linking page: URL of the page, number of links on the page, presence of other words on the page, match between the topic of the link text and the other words on the page Features of the linked page: URL of the page, associated websites, words in the URL, length of the URL User behavior data: language and interests of the user, used search query terms, frequency of link selection, navigational actions (forms completed, links selected, etc.)

Where does Google get the user behavior data from?

To get the user behavior data, Google can use the Google toolbar. According to the patent description:
"[Google's toolbar] may record data concerning the documents accessed by the user and the links within the documents (if any) the user selected.
[...] may record data concerning the language of the user, which may be determined in a number of ways that are known in the art, such as by analyzing documents accessed by the user.
[...] may record data concerning interests of the user, which may be determined, for example, from the favorites or bookmark list of the user, topics associated with documents accessed by the user, or in other ways that are known in the art.
[...] may record data concerning query terms entered by the user. The web browser or browser assistant may send this data for storage in repository 430."
There's quite a lot of things that Google records when you surf the web with the Google's toolbar installed.

How can you improve the links that point to your website?

Of course, you cannot influence all links that point to your website. If you can, you should consider the following things:
Your link should be in the regular text of the linking page. It should not be in the footer or another navigational elements. If possible, the link should be "above the fold". The anchor text should contain words that are related to your website. Use the keywords for which you want to get high rankings. The link texts should be natural. Anything that looks like manipulation might devalue the link. Avoid commercial words in your links. Terms like "buy now" and similar commercial phrases might devalue the link. The link should be on a related page. If you sell shoes then a link from a web page that deals with shoes will have a higher impact on your search engine rankings than a link from an unrelated website that links to all kind of web pages.

The Google patent confirms that not all links are created equal. Although the patent has been granted to Google last month, they filed it several years ago. That means that the methods described in the patent might have been used by Google for years.
If you want to know which ranking algorithm Google uses today and if your website is compliant to Google's latest ranking algorithm, analyze your page with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The Top 10 Optimizer will tell you in plain English if the links to your website are okay and it will also tell you what exactly you have to change.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week
More search engine statistics

"Google accounted for 72.17 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending May 29, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.43 percent, 9.23 percent and 2.14 percent, respectively. [...]
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing April 2010 with May 2010, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines."
Editor's note: these numbers confirm that it is very important that your website can be found on search engines for the right keywords.

"Google's new Caffeine web index heralds a new age of possibilities for the search engine. [...] The fortunes of whole companies and countless careers live and die by their rankings in search results. [...]
'With Buzz, our mathematical models were awfully good, but they didn't know the nuance of human relationships,' says Singhal. 'That was a privacy mistake, which we accept. Mea culpa.'"

Google's John Mueller says the noscript tag can cause problems

Yesterday, Google's John Mueller told a webmaster in an online discussion that the noscript tag can look suspicious to Google:
"One of the problems with noscript is - as others have mentioned - that it's been abused quite a bit by spammers, so search engines might treat it with some suspicion.
So if this is really important content, then I wouldn't rely on all search engines treating your noscript elements in the same way as normal, visible, static content on your pages. If this is 'just' for comments, then that might be worth considering regardless, especially if the alternatives are much more complicated."

Google's John Mueller says that you shouldn't hide links

In another discussion, Google's John Mueller writes about hiding links from Google in JavaScript:
"You're hiding links from Googlebot. Personally, I wouldn't recommend doing that as it makes it harder to properly understand the relevance of your website. I also doubt that you'd see any kind of visible change with regards to PageRank.
Ultimately, that's your choice, just as it would be our choice to review those practices as potential attempts to hide content & links."

Google's Street View Wi-Fi data included passwords, email

"Google did indeed record email access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages [...] Google also told CNIL that the data collected by the Street View cars is also used by other services, including Google Maps and Google Latitude, which allows users automatically transmit their location to friends, and to track others who choose to share their location via the service."
Related: Connecticut to lead multistate probe of Google

Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google

1. Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google
A number 1 ranking in Google's search results for the right keyword can mean a lot of visitors and a lot of sales. That's why so many people want to be on Google's first result page.
Unfortunately, many people still don't know what it takes to convince Google that your website is more relevant than the millions of other websites on the Internet. There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google's first result page:
Rule #1: Don't try to fool Google

Google wants to return the most relevant web pages for a search query. They want to provide the best answer to a search query.
If you try to get a high ranking for a keyword for which your web page isn't really relevant then you won't get good results. Actually, you might be accused of spamming. If your website consists just of ads and affiliate links then it will be extremely difficult to get good rankings.
Make sure that your web pages will answer the questions of people who search for your keyword. The better your web pages match the interest of the web searchers the better rankings you will get. It takes some time to create good content but it will pay off in the long run.

Rule #2: Your web pages must show Google that they are relevant

A website about used car parts cannot get high rankings for a keyword such as "brain surgery". A high ranking for the keyword "used car parts" would be very beneficial to that site.
The problem is that Google must be able to find out that your web page is relevant for the keyword "used car parts". For that reason, you have to optimize your web pages. Optimizing your web pages simply means that you make it easy for Google to find out what your website is about.
When Google visits your web pages, it will analyze the following elements of your web pages:
The URL structureThe title tag and the meta tagsThe body textHeadline tagsImage alt attributesYour site architecture and the internal linking structure of your siteThe outbound linksMany other factors in the HTML code of your web pages
Each element can contain your keyword and show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. This doesn't mean that you can simply insert your keyword in these tags and that's it.
You can also over-optimize a website and that can get your website banned from Google's search results. It's important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency. Analyzing dozens of web page elements can be very time consuming. IBP's top 10 optimizer can help you to do this quickly and easily.

Rule #3: Other websites must confirm that your web pages are relevant

In addition to optimized web page content, Google heavily relies on the links from other websites to your site. Basically, the other websites have to confirm that your website is relevant for a special keyword.
The more websites link to your website, the more visible it will be to Google. The more other websites use a special keyword as the linked text in the links to your website, the more important is your website for that keyword.
A web page that has been optimized for the keyword "used cars" can also get high rankings for the keyword "pre-owned cars" if enough websites link with that text to the page.
It is also important that the other web pages are related your site. If a website that is about vintage cars links to your "used car parts" website then this will have a bigger effect on your search engine rankings than a link from a candy shop website.
A link from a web page that only links to car related web pages is also more valuable than a link from a web page that links to all kind of pages. Getting the right links is crucial if you want to get on Google's first result page. IBP's link builder helps you to get these links.

Rule #4: Your website must have a clean history

The age of your domain and its history will also be considered by Google. A domain name that has been around for a long time will get high rankings more easily.
However, if your domain name has been used by spammers before, you might still suffer from the ranking penalties that have been applied to the previous content.

If you follow the rules above and change your web pages accordingly, your website will get top rankings on Google. It cannot be done over night but it's definitely something that can be done within a few weeks if you do the right things. slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static."