Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The bottom line is there are no scenarios in which we would ever recommend cloaking as a good solution, although we do understand that there are some technical reasons people cloak pages that are not directly related to spam. The problem is that cloaking can set off some automatic spam detection algorithms that may result in parts of your site being penalized. As a search engine optimization practice, cloaking can actually be counter-productive.

Q: What can you do if your website does get penalized? The first thing you should do is verify that your site has in fact been penalized. To do this, log into our Webmaster Tools and go to the Site Summary page. From here, looked for the Blocked: field in the right-hand column. If your site is blocked, this will show as Yes, otherwise it will show as No. If your site is blocked, then it is time to go review our Webmaster Guidelines and check your site to see which one(s) you may have violated. If you have any questions about this step, please consult our online forums, or contact our technical support staff. Once you've identified and resolved the issue(s), it is time to request that Live Search re-include your pages back into its index. To do that, you'll need to log back into the Webmaster Tools and click on the hyperlinked Blocked: Yes in your Site Summary page. This will take you to a form whereby you can request reevaluation from our support team. Thanks for all of your questions today! If you have any more, please leave them in the comments section and we'll try and answer them as soon as possible.

Oct 14, 2008 at 2:19pm Eastern by Greg Sterling    YouTube Now Featuring “Promoted Videos” Perhaps the “third leg” of the new YouTube monetization tool, the site has introduced “promoted videos.” These ads are to YouTube video search results as Google paid search is to organic listings. AdAdge wrote about the new ads yesterday. This new ad unit joins “click to buy” and ads on full-length shows, which were also introduced within the past week. Here’s an example of the promoted videos (right column) on a search results page on YouTube: In this case the search was “puppies” and only one of the ads is relevant. This is likely a function of a limited number advertisers at this point. Because promoted videos are fairly unobtrusive and consistent with the appearance of YouTube search results, they don’t impinge on the user experience. And while they could be quite effective for Google, the challenge will be to get enough coverage so that they’re relevant to queries and users click on them accordingly.

However, when it comes to blogs, consumer information discovery trends are involving social networks and social media at an increasing rate. Recommendations are competing with search. When looking at the web analytics of our blog and client blogs, social media traffic is in the top 5 referring sources of traffic. Blogs are social and social media sources will become increasingly important for many business blogging efforts in the coming year. So, what can a company do to build upon and benefit from, the compounding equity that grows with long term blogging and SEO efforts? I’ll be answering that question specifically in tomorrow’s post on 5 Tips for Successful Blog Optimization efforts. In the meantime, have you started a blog only to lose interest or stop contributing to it? What was your reason? What would you do differently?

Oct 13, 2008 at 9:42am Eastern by Barry Schwartz Yahoo Improves Content Match Targeting The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced they have improved the targeting and relevancy of their content match product. The improvements will lead to a higher click through rate on ads and higher satisfaction. The specific improvement is that they now not only target the ads based on the content of the page, but also based on the user viewing the page. Yahoo will tailor the ad based on the “users’ geographic and behavioral profiles.”

he actual title of the file name works similarly to Title Tags for web pages. Search engine crawlers can recognize these file names and index them accordingly, so it is important to include target keyphrases within the video title. The process continues by injecting the appropriate metadata into the actual video file encoding. This should include information like the title, length, keywords, and authorship associated with a particular video clip. Another increasingly popular video optimization strategy is to include a transcript of each video. This transcript will not only provide valuable text threading, but it can also include anchor text links specific to keyphrases.

The actual title of the file name works similarly to Title Tags for web pages. Search engine crawlers can recognize these file names and index them accordingly, so it is important to include target keyphrases within the video title. The process continues by injecting the appropriate metadata into the actual video file encoding. This should include information like the title, length, keywords, and authorship associated with a particular video clip. Another increasingly popular video optimization strategy is to include a transcript of each video. This transcript will not only provide valuable text threading, but it can also include anchor text links specific to keyphrases.

Update: In the comments, Antonio of Marketing de Busca shared the following great post with data straight from the horse’s mouth: Avinash Kaushik (consultant at Google) cites 86% of clicks as going to the organic results and 14% going to the sponsored listings.

Buying Sites? Use Trusts To Avoid Google Domain Demolitions Author: Gabriel Goldenberg, May 9, 2008 submit_url = "http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/buying-sites-use-trusts-beneficial-title/"; At the Domain Roundtable, Matt Cutts said that Google will cut down any sites that get sold back to zero ranking value. So after a site has built up SEO strength for a few years, the asset could be worthless on the search market because Google - which controls the overwhelming majority of North American and most Western search - makes the rules. This is clearly unfair to webmasters. Not to mention that the Fortune 500 are again on a different playing field, because their purchases are just mergers and acquisitions, not “site purchases”… Update: Apparently this treatment is reserved for sites that also change topics. The technique thus remains useful, but obviously the problem it resolves is narrowed to particular situations. Hat tip to Gustavo Cardial for pointing out the error. Lady Justice, blindfolded with scales and sword by California Criminal Defense Lawyer Rob Miller. In an effort to balance out the scales, I’m sharing a legal technique called “the trust.” My hope is that it will enable webmasters to buy sites and sell them without fear that their hard SEO work will go to naught.

YouTube's 'Buzz Targeting' Sells Ad Space on Soon-to-Be Viral Videos What is the difference between'algorithm' and 'alchemy'? Google has introduced "Buzz Targeting" on YouTube, a new way to wring ad dollars from the video site. Buzz Targeting highlights videos that are about to go viral amongst YouTube users. The algorithm examines videos being favorited and distributed across other sites, among other criteria, then gives advertisers the opportunity to advertise around them. Ads incorporated on the ground floor can then piggy-back the video's popularity. Movie studio Lionsgate was among the first beta testers for Buzz Targeting. The studio placed ads for The Forbidden Kingdom alongside 500 entertainment-related videos. While no figures on the campaign's success were presented, Danielle DePalma of Lionsgate said the program "allowed us to reach a very large, diverse audience." It remains unclear how Buzz Targeting incorporates factors like demographic or location-based criteria. And while the notion of algorithmically gauging a video's ascension into pop culture is comforting, some skepticism is warranted. At ad:tech New York last year, video blogger Kevin Nalty admitted to being uncertain why some videos go viral and others do not. The wisest course, he told audience members of a user-generated video panel, is to keep your cost of entry down. Nalty, known as "Nalts" on YouTube, produced over 500 videos before 2008.

May 20, 2008 Yahoo Makes Minor Updates to Sponsored Search In the midst of a proxy board fight, new negotiations with Microsoft, and a possible deal with Google, Yahoo has made updates to its sponsored search listings. In an announcement on the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, Jeff Hecox said the changes wouldn't make "worldwide headlines" but they designed the changes to be more intuitive to users. Here's what to expect: • Names of objects (campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.) that are offline will be displayed with red text for easy recognition. • "Top Campaigns” and “Watched Campaigns” tables on the Dashboard page now include a “Status” column to help you identify if and why any campaigns are offline. • On the “Campaigns” page, there's a new “Status” column, the ability to filter by “Status” when using the Advanced Search function, and the “Campaign On/Off” button have been replaced with individual “Pause” and “Unpause” buttons. • On the Ads table On Ad Group pages, a “Status” column has been added and “Pause” and “Unpause” buttons have replaced “Campaign On/Off” button on the Ads table. • New status settings have been added on the Search page, under the Campaigns tab. • The ability to export (using the “Download” button) account information has been added to account-level Ad Group and Keyword pages, under the Campaigns tab. What do you think about the updates to Yahoo's Sponsored Search? Leave a comment!

Demographics now available in YouTube Insight 5/15/2008 08:05:00 AM Posted by Nick Jakobi, Product Manager, YouTubeWhen we first announced YouTube Insight, our free video analytics tool for YouTube, we were excited to see just how users, partners, and advertisers might creatively use information about the viewing trends of their videos. We've since learned that some users and partners are modifying their upload schedules based on when they know their audience is tuning in, and advertisers are studying geographic traffic patterns to assess the effectiveness of regional ad campaigns.Today we've added some new features to Insight. One is a new demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience. We show you general information about your viewers in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts. This means that individual users can't be personally identified.Insight now also displays statistics based on the combined total views of all the videos you've uploaded. Just as you can explore the view counts and popularity of individual videos, with this feature you can see your account's total number of views, and your relative popularity on YouTube compared to other users, based on geographic location.As with Insight's other features, we hope this new information helps you learn how to create more compelling content that best engages the audiences you want to reach. You can find these new metrics under the "Demographics" tab within the Insight dashboard. Click on the "Insight" button under "Account > My Videos."