All Over World 25 iGoogle Themes

One way we love to help you make iGoogle your own is with our artist and designer themes — ranging from food and fashion to games and comics. Today, we’re excited to announce a set of new themes, tailored to the world traveler in all of us. These new themes, focused on destinations all over the globe, allow you to experience beautiful landscapes, historic monuments, stunning beaches, iconic cities and other picturesque sites — right from your homepage.

To bring you this imagery, we've partnered with a few leading organizations including National Geographic Society and LIFE, who photograph some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth. Lonely Planet, UNESCO and visiteurope.com have also shared a selection of incredible images.



Here’s a quick preview of some of what you’ll find:

* The World Passport Sampler theme, which brings together many of the great destinations.
* India, Greece and Egypt, all captured spectacularly by National Geographic.
* Classic beach destinations from LIFE.com, including Monte Carlo, Waikiki Beach, and the French Riviera.
* Incredible vistas from Spain, Italy, Thailand and Japan, captured by Lonely Planet.
* The opportunity to view World Heritage sites, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Old City of Dubrovnik in Croatia, provided by UNESCO.

Have a Look At NASA’s Social Media

Whenever I talk with new clients about social media initiatives, one of the key points is having a social media plan or strategy. Social media is a time and resource intensive effort, and if you spend the time up front developing a plan, you can distribute the work and make the overall project more effective in the long run. In this column, I’d like to take a look at how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (aka NASA) tackles social media.

Everyone has social media channels that they prefer to use, and by creating a social media hub with links to all of the social media areas they participate in, it makes it easy for end users, and search engines to discover them. Another interesting and noteworthy point, is that NASA has chosen to divide content into different channels, by mission. For example, there is a Facebook Channel for the Ares I-X program, a Flickr channel , a Twitter channel, and a YouTube channel. What this does is give them the flexibility to cross-post the best content. The best photos from Flickr and videos from YouTube were cross-posted into the Facebook account. But the Facebook account has other pictures that aren’t in the Flickr account. There’s overlap, but each channel has unique content or value add.

Another sticking point that many organizations face when engaging in social media is controlling the message. Many organizations favor a top down, tightly controlled, output of information. In fact, the NFL and Dreamworks Animation are inserting clauses and restrictions on Twitter usage for employees. In a recent interview about how NASA uses Twitter, it was revealed there are over 100 NASA employees using Twitter. While there isn’t an official policy in place, they do ask everyone to abide by their “release of government information guidelines” when using social media.

To get the most out of social media, it’s important for information be released in a timely fashion. Creating bottlenecks of very small groups of people who are allowed to publish/approve will limit your success. Instead, set up some ground rules, and let everyone who agrees to abide by them to publish freely. When you do, you end up with interesting and unexpected results, like this TwitPic of a spent rocket booster from the Ares X-1 launch bobbing in the ocean waiting to be recovered.

A New Search Options in Google: Page Preview Option

Google Operating System noticed Google has added a new search option named “page preview.” If you go to Google, search on something and click on “show options,” you can then look towards the button on the left hand side and click on “page previews.” For example, here is a view of a search for apple with page preview selected.

New look and feel for the MSN portal - Drives Nearly 50% Of Bing Queries

Billed as the first major redesign in a decade, Microsoft has introduced a dramatic new look and feel for the MSN portal. The redesign simplifies and cleans up most elements on the site. Among other things, it makes video more central, incorporates Facebook and Twitter, creates a dedicated new local area and emphasizes search.

MSN, which Microsoft says now has 600 million users globally (which would make it larger than Yahoo), is a huge asset for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it drives roughly 45% of Bing’s queries. Even a cursory look at the old and new MSN homepages reveals the superiority of the new design:

ocean

SMO Ranking Factor:

Intro to Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a new term that was recently coined in Search Industry and has since been taking on life of its own. In his introduction to SMO, similar comparisons to SEO. SMO tactics can drive huge amounts of people to a website and can also determine whether a startup, website or idea will make it or not. It involves driving traffic to a website through new channels because search engines aren't the only sites that drive big traffic anymore. While it's not taking over SEO yet, it has the potential to someday soon.

First of all "social media" is a buzzword that has been thrown around a lot lately. But what exactly does it really mean? Wikipedia describes social media as...

the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.


Also, social media can be considered anything that can help build a community to rally around. Companies/websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, and Revver all fit the bill. These are all websites that can now be used as places to put out your marketing message. Spreading messages through blog posts and blog search engines also fits the bill. It is all about making something easy to spread, which, by the way, used to be called word-of-mouth. Buyer beware though, you can't force SMO. This is pull marketing; it is not "push your message onto someone marketing".

With SEO the goals are clearly defined, you're trying to make a website visible in the search engines. Is SMO really as simple to define as making your site visible in the social media? Does that entail anyway possible and include buying banner ads on MySpace?

the main goals of...

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.


... and then he lays out 5 rules for SMO...

1. Increase Your Linkability
2. Make Tagging and Bookmarking easy
3. Reward Inbound Links
4. Help Your Content Travel
5. Encourage the Mashup

...Jeremiah Owyang gives us a couple more rules...

1. Be a User Resource, Even if it Doesn't Help You
2. Reward Helpful and Valuable Users

In way it sounds a whole lot like Marketing 2.0. It is pretty much includes all the new marketing techniques that are becoming popular rolled into one, techniques such as; Linkbaiting, Usability Design, Buzz Marketing, Community Building, and anything that can be considered "pull marketing".

Here's a few more possible rules...

8. Participate - Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster.

9. Know how to target your audience - If you don't even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to.

10. Create content - There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a whitepaper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it.

11. Be real - The community does not reward fakers.

While social media optimization is becoming very important you can't forget about good old SEO either. Google and Yahoo still drive mass amounts of traffic and you ca not ignore them. It is all about leveraging new mediums and riding these waves. Even though you might be getting dirt on the white glove you still have to take advantage of these powerful channels.

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

The number of social bookmarking sites has exploded in the last year, leaving someone new the space probably a bit overwhelmed at where to start. If you are new to social networking understand that each social networking site is different, it attracts a different audience with different interests. Thus what interests someone on Reddit might not appeal to anyone on Digg.

So who are the main players in the social bookmaking space? And what is the profile of the typical user of these social bookmarking sites? The answers below might surprise you!

Digg.com

Digg is the most popular and notable of the social bookmarking sites. Quantcast estimates that that Digg has about 25 million unique visitors a month. The audience is predominantly male (65%), between 25-34 years of age, with a household income between 30k and 100k. Digg’s demographics have changed as it has become more popular (mainstream). Not to long ago the Digg profile was male, under 25 who made less than 30k a year. Social media topics that do well on Digg include interesting photos, anything anti-Microsoft and lists (top 10, etc).

Propeller.com

Propeller (formely Netscape) is comfortable the second biggest social bookmarking site behind Digg with over 5.8 million monthly uniques, of which 3.6 million (62%) are in the U.S. Netscape also attracts a male biased audience (54) , that is slightly older (45-54 is biggest age group), and 55% of Propeller.com visitors have an household income over $60k.

StumbleUpon

Stumbleupon.com reports over 4.5 million members and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that has about 1.5 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male biased (56%) and between the ages of 45-54 (22% of visitors). The older demographic also skews the household income with 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.

Reddit.com

Reddit is becoming a very popular social bookmarking site with about 1.2 million unique visitors in the U.S., making it slightly larger than Del.icio.us. Reddit attracts a predominantly male (57%) audience that is between the ages of 35-44 (25%). With 65% of the audience having a household income of between $30 and $100k, Reddit is a mainstream social networking site. As a result, political, environmental, business and entertainment news does well with this audience.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is the oldest social bookmarking site and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that gets about 1.1 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male (53%) and about 47% of them are over 45. Similar to StumbleUpon, 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.

Newsvine.com

Newsvine is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 362K U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a slightly male slanted audience (54%) and 51% of the users have a household income under $60k.

Fark.com

Fark.com is a much more trafficked site than people expect. With 1,972,698 monthly unique visitors in the U.S., it is bigger than StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Reddit. The Fark audience is heavily male (69%), between the ages of 25-34 and a household income under $60k (52%). The Fark audience likes interesting, bizarre and amusing news stories, along with regular photo manipulation contests.

Blinklist.com

Blinklist.com is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 353K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male group (59%) who are between the age of 25 and 54. About 54% of the audience earns over $60k a year.

Clipmarks.com

Clipmarks reaches over 205K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a male biased audience (58%) with a household income of $30-60k. The site attracts almost equal amounts of people between 25 and 54.

Shoutwire.com

This site reaches approximately 70,742 U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male (60%), younger audience (38% are under 24).

So what does the demographic data tells us? One is that the typical social bookmarking site user is male, between the ages of 35-54 with a household income of $60k or more a year. Is this your target audience? If it is not, then these are probable not the main social networking sites that you should be focusing on.

Yahoo SEO

See More SearchMonkey in Your Search Results:

Want a little more SearchMonkey in your Yahoo! search results? Starting today, more enhanced results for product, local, entertainment, reference, social, and tech sites will appear automatically in your results, putting more information and answers right at your fingertips.

First, we’d like to thank everyone who deployed microformats, RDFa, and feeds in response to our blog post in May. Thanks to your efforts, we’ve finished user testing for the new enhanced results templates and have deployed these templates in production. This means that in addition to Video, Documents, and Games, you can now add Products, Local Businesses, Event, Discussions, or News items to your pages. Anyone who provides structured data according to the specified format will automatically gain SearchMonkey default-on status, as long as it adheres to our terms of use...More

Google Adds Books to Search Options Panel

Google Adds Books to Search Options Panel:

Earlier this year, Google introduced the Search Options panel to its main search. The options allow search results to be filtered by things like time or content type.

Now, Google is adding Books as a filter on the Search Options panel. Take a look and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

comScore and Omniture Partner Up for Digital Audience Measurement Service

ComScore and Omniture Partner Up for Digital Audience Measurement Service

Less than a week after being acquired by Adobe, Omniture is partnering with comScore to provide a digital audience measurement service. Specifically, Omniture's Web analytics will be paired up with comScore's new Media Metrix 360 hybrid audience measurement to provide intelligence for media planning.

"Since the rise of digital advertising, advertisers and publishers alike have sought ways to reconcile their Web analytics and panel-based measurement data to establish a unified measure of online audiences," said Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder.

The new partnership aims to be that long sought-after reconciliation. It also aims to spur the progress of digital advertising.

"This relationship will deliver to our customers the solution that they have been seeking, thus helping to promote and accelerate the usage of digital marketing intelligence for delivering actionable business results and competitive advantage. We believe it will also help the industry overcome concerns of inconsistent measurement of digital audiences and promote further adoption of digital media advertising,"said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore President & CEO.

Google Launches the DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Google Launches the DoubleClick Ad Exchange:

Finally after acquiring Double Click for a whooping $3.1 billion, Google will now try to regain what they’ve invested in the company. The Official Google Blog has just announced the launch of the Double Click Ad Exchange – a real-time marketplace to buy and sell display advertising.

The DoubleClick Ad Exchange hopes to achieve what Google AdWords and Google AdSense have achieved so far. With it, Google hopes to create more open display ad ecosystem for everyone. The ecosystem we’re talking about here consists of Ad Exchange Sellers and Buyers, Google AdWords Advertisers and Google AdSense Publishers.

The DoubleClick Ad Exchange would benefit these four players, and so Google said. For Ad Exchange Buyers, the display ad marketplace will give them access to more websites and ad spaces, as well as bid for ad space in real-time. For Ad Exchange Sellers this program would mean more advertisers and more revenues for their ad spaces. Google AdWords advertisers are also to benefit from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange through easy access to the many websites in the Ad Exchange in addition to the websites in Google’s Content Network. While Google AdSense publishers will have their ad spaces exposed to more certified ad networks in the Ad Exchange. Both AdWords and AdSense members can enjoy the DoubleClick Ad Exchange through their respective interfaces and don’t need them to get through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

So, if you’re a Google AdSense publisher you can check out how the DoubleClick Ad Exchange will affect you at the Inside AdSense blog. If you’re a Google AdWords advertiser, this is the link that you would want to check out.

Other details about the DoubleClick Ad Exchange are enumerated on this PDF file and also at the Double Click Blog.

SEO Automatic Tool: Now for the iPhone

SEO Automatic Tool: Now for the iPhone:

I’ve had the opportunity to check out by SEO Automatic’s iPhone app by Scott Hendison of Search Commander, Inc. The app is the full version of SEO Automatic, an SEO site audit tool, just made for the iPhone. The only difference is the descriptions and recommendations is slightly less verbose to fit it on a mobile window.



The app is lightning fast and analyzes your site in just a few seconds, despite it’s screen that says “This may take a minute or two.” It immediately gives you an overview of notable issues, issues worth reviewing, and stuff you are doing correctly. SEO Automatic gives great advice.

Despite being less verbose than the Website version, it is still highly text-heavy for an iPhone. It’d also be nice to see a feature that allows you to email yourself the results so you can read the results on your computer too. I guess that’d defeat the purpose of buying the Web version though!?

Big Brands & Social Media Part 3 – Putting The Plan Into Action

Big Brands & Social Media Part 3 – Putting The Plan Into Action

After my last column on how big brands should organize around social media marketing, I thought it might be useful to get tactical and look at some specific ways that big brands can begin to move the needle on social media. Again, I’m crediting Bill Hunt with inspiring some of these thoughts in a great presentation he gave here at Yahoo! last month, as well as Laura Lippay for leading the charge internally at Yahoo!.

Get the basics right

Like most things I experience here at Yahoo! that hold true for large companies, I find that we need to focus on doing some very basic things across a vast scope and scale. The same holds true for social media marketing. Focusing on a very few, important efforts and doing them well across the company represents success for us and all big brands. So let’s isolate a couple topics and make sure we get them right.

Push all the right buttons

First, enable your site to support social media. Enable your users to join your network and promote your content. Your site needs links or buttons to follow the brand or product on Twitter and Facebook at the very least. Of course, if you have many products, like most big brands, you’ll need to point to different Twitter streams or Facebook pages that are appropriate to the respective product or service. As well, if you produce content on your site, at the end of your articles you’ll want buttons that promote your content to sites like Digg, Reddit, and Yahoo! Buzz. Getting these buttons on your site will take some time and effort, not because the work is difficult, but because the folks who do the work will have many other priorities in their queue. At this point, you will need to rely on your previous work in creating a center of excellence (CoE), working with an executive sponsor to get the work prioritized.

A cast of thousands

Once your site is enabled for social media, you will want to rely on your company’s biggest asset: your employees. One of the nice things about big brands is that we employ large numbers of people who are brand evangelists. That means that at Yahoo! and other companies, there are thousands of potential marketers for our products and services. If we all spend just a few minutes a day talking up our products and services to our respective social communities, the effect will be significant.

With social media, however, we need to be careful how we behave. Social media networks are fragile when it comes to commercial promotion. If your network thinks you are spamming them with commercial messages, they will likely ignore you and you will lose credibility within your network. Right now, the conventional wisdom is that it’s OK to talk about your products within your social network, but this should generally be done in the spirit of conversation. That is, when Yahoo! launches its new homepage, it’s acceptable to post a link to it on my Facebook page and say “Hey everybody, what do you think about the new Yahoo! homepage?” In contradistinction to this, it is generally frowned upon to promote your own products and services through some of the main social channels such as Digg, Reddit, and Yahoo! Buzz. For example, if Yahoo! sports just broke a story about Shawne Merriman and Tila Tequila, I shouldn’t Digg it through my own account. However, it’s OK to share the story with my social network and invite others to “buzz it up.” You can imagine that if all my fellow Yahoos worked in this way we could really start to move the needle on our social media efforts.

Get your social social on

Another great way to increase awareness and share best practices internally is to schedule small, informal meetings with the folks in your organization who are really interested in social media. We came up with some interesting ideas around this in our SEO and Social Media Conference in Santa Monica last month. Having lunch, brainstorming with other Yahoos, we developed a formula for putting this into practice. We’re calling it a “Social Social” and we’re scheduling our first one next month, thanks to Laura Lippay. The idea is that we can have a small, targeted gathering where we can swap war stories and share strategies around social media. The goal is to make sure we’re executing in effective ways around the organization. The recipe is simple: Invite a small number of social media types. Pick a topic. Open with a Pecha Kucha. Add beer. Rinse and repeat.

Microsoft Bing Search Ads To Test Favicons:

Microsoft Bing Search Ads To Test Favicons

MediaPost reports Microsoft adCenter, Bing’s search ads, will be testing placing favicons and logos in the search ads. I have conducted about 20 queries to try to bring up such an ad, but I personally do not see them myself.

MediaPost wrote, “James Colborn, director at Microsoft Advertising and long-time adCenter veteran, believes the market is ready to experiment with more creative options. These options stray from standard text ads in search. Consumers next year will start to see a richer ad experience in search results, he says.”

Yahoo has tested favicons in search ads in the past, as did Google with favicons in AdWords and favicons in organic results.

These days, you often don’t see favicons in the Google results, but you do occasionally see them in the Yahoo search ads.

If you do see them in adCenter (Bing Search Ads) do let us know.

Google: Stop Suing Over The Meta Keywords Tag, We Don’t Use It:

Google Stop Suing Over The Meta Keywords Tag, We Don’t Use It:

Google is telling the world what every seasoned webmaster and search marketer should already know: The keywords meta tag has no impact whatsoever on how Google’s search engine ranks pages. None. Zilch. Nada. And while Google often needs to be somewhat ambiguous when talking about how it ranks pages, the message in today’s blog post is perfectly clear:

“Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.”

Google’s blog post also talks about an imagined clash between two web site owners, Bob and Alice, over Bob’s use of Alice’s business name in his keywords tag and copying of other words from her keywords tag. Although Google doesn’t mention actual companies and doesn’t reference a specific lawsuit, the video that accompanies the blog post does mention lawsuits that involve the keywords tag and Google’s search rankings. About the keywords meta tag, Matt Cutts says:

“It’s really not worth suing someone over because, at least for Google, we don’t use that information in our rankings even the least little bit.”

If this is a case of Google offering information in relation to a legal case, it’s not the first time. Back in 2006, Matt Cutts wrote a post on his blog confirming that an SEO company and its clients had been banned from Google’s index. At the time, well-known SEO Aaron Wall was being sued by the SEO company that had been banned, and Matt’s blog post refuted some of the SEO company’s claims.

Back to the keywords tag: It’s worth mentioning that Google’s webmaster help has an entire page about meta tags and the word “keyword” doesn’t appear on it once. And as long as we’re clearing up some SEO basics, I’ll also note that Google’s blog post confirms that the meta description tag is also not used for ranking pages. If you want even more, see our in-depth post, Meta Keywords Tag 101: How To “Legally” Hide Words On Your Pages For Search Engines (which among other things documented how Google does NOT use the meta keywords tag).

Google’s Indexer

Google’s Indexer:

Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.

To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

Google’s Query Processor

The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.

Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.

Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).

Googlebot, Crawler

Googlebot, Crawler:

Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.

Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.

Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.

When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.

Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.

To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

Google Works - Infrastructure

Google Works - Infrastructure:

Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:

* Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
* The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
* The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

Google Wants To Hire You : Yahoo Search Engineers

Matt Cutts of Google has blogged that Google is willing to hire Yahoo Search engineers. Matt said, “if you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in search, Google is hiring.”

Clearly, since the Microsoft & Yahoo deal, engineers at Yahoo might be a bit concerned about their job stability. Ask.com ran a funny poaching campaign recently to pick up Yahoo engineers. Microsoft said many Yahoo engineers will move over to Microsoft if the deal is approved. And now Google is hiring Yahoo engineers.

So if you are a Yahoo engineer and you want to apply for a job at Google, use this page to get started.

Why You Can’t Dismiss All Directory Links

If you follow me here or on the Link Spiel, you know I am a loyal fan and staunch supporter of using directories to secure links. After reading last week’s Elephant in the Link Building Living Room, I wanted to present a different point-of-view as I don’t feel the directory industry or the link builders using them were presented in a positive light. To suggest all link builders sell useless submission services or the directories are white elephants is inaccurate and insulting. I have a much different view and would like to show how using the directories can be a smart part of your link building mix.

Before I begin…

If you’ve spent any time in/around the SEO industry, you know there are hundreds, if not thousands of small directories online; most of these sites lack editorial guidelines, were created to host AdSense and network links. I think it’s important to draw a distinction between these sites and the responsible, well run directories that I and most link builders I know, use.

What is a directory?

In short, a directory is a collection of websites categorized by subject and/or geographic location. Human reviewers determine what source will be added and also maintain the directory and it’s structure. While there are hundreds if not thousands of general directories online, only four stand out as heavy hitters:

* The World Wide Web Virtual Library (VLIB created in 1991)
* The Yahoo! Directory (1994)
* Best of the Web (BOTW 1994) and the
* Open Directory Project (ODP/DMOZ 1998)

If we check their PageRank scores, we’ll see each of these directories sports a greater than average meter of green. Even if it’s only half right, the toolbar tells us Google thinks well of these pages.

It is difficult to get a site listed with the DMOZ and VLIB, but it’s not impossible if you have an authority resource and follow their guidelines. Even if you’re unsuccessful in getting in, these directories are excellent research sources and can be mined for link partners. For example, when I look at the links on this page of the VLIB and click on the Gardening category, I can find no less than five niche directories listed in the first 20 links shown. If I owned a gardening site, these would be great directories to be listed in from an algorithmic and traffic standpoint.

Yahoo! and BOTW are both paid inclusion with expensive review fees, but that cost is part of what keeps the junk sites out of their indexes. Each employs human reviewers to look at the sites submitted and determine which category they should be placed in. This process of being scrutinized to determine acceptance is known as editorial review, and is why these and other directories are respected algorithmically by the search engines.

Are directories white elephants?

In my opinion, there are 15 good general directories (includes the big four) worth submitting to, and those include sites such as JoeAnt, Business, Dirjournal, MassiveLinks, RubberStamped, Illumirate, among others. Here’s what I use to qualify a directory as “good”:

* minimal/no AdSense on category pages
* no site wide links
* has full contact information available
* internal pages indexed and cached frequently

If you argue most directories display low to mid-range PageRank scores I’ll agree, but also point out while their meter of green may be low, it is more a result of their function, not their quality. Directories are hubs and hubs are one-half of the authority equation, a factor incorporated in both the PageRank and TrustRank algorithms. Keep in mind how PageRank scores are determined and the fact directories are designed to link out, not in.

Directory submission tactics as a business model

If you owned a business on Main Street and wanted to promote it to the community, it’s doubtful you’d use just one advertising method to get your message across. You’d probably begin with the basic, less expensive options such as buying ads in the Yellow Pages, your local newspaper and ValuPak mailers. Eventually you’ll move up and buy radio, television and sponsorship opportunities which will help make you a dominant presence in your community.

This scatter gun approach to building a credible reputation can be done online as well. I advocate using directory links in the first wave of linking as a way to jump start your linking program. Granted, they’re not algorithmic giants, but directory links will pass link popularity and add to your overall back link profile.

Bottom line? If you understand the editorial significance of directory links and the role they can play as part of your link building mix, you’ll see the positives outweigh the negatives. For as long as Google hosts DMOZ, for as long as Yahoo! and VLIB survive, for as long as BOTW provides a solid search vehicle and supports IM charities, and especially for as long as the directories don’t contribute to the pinking of the Web, I will support them and recommend you do the same.


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Google Gets Crop Circles Logo

Currently, most Google search properties that are currently in a time zone that is September 15th, such as Google UK, are sporting a special Google Doodle that links to a search result for crop circles. It seems likely this logo will appear in the US soon.

The logo shows a flying saucer above a series of crop circles that spell Google. Well, almost — the L has been abducted. That similar to the last Google flying saucer logo from ten days ago, where an O was taken.

If you look at today’s logo’s file name, it’s goog_e.gif — reflecting the missing L. The last logo was go_gle.gif – reflecting the missing O. So that’s O, then L — what are they going to spell?