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Message Center warnings for hackable sites Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 8:28 AM Recently we've seen more websites get hacked because of various security holes. In order to help webmasters with this issue, we plan to run a test that will alert some webmasters if their content management system (CMS) or publishing platform looks like it might have a security hole or be hackable. This is a test, so we're starting out by alerting five to six thousand webmasters. We will be leaving messages for owners of potentially vulnerable sites in the Google Message Center that we provide as a free service as part of Webmaster Tools. If you manage a website but haven't signed up for Webmaster Tools, don't worry. The messages will be saved and if you sign up later on, you'll still be able to access any messages that Google has left for your site.One of the most popular pieces of software on the web is WordPress, so we're starting our test with a specific version (2.1.1) that is known to be vulnerable to exploits. If the test goes well, we may expand these messages to include other types of software on the web. The message that a webmaster will see in their Message Center if they run WordPress 2.1.1 will look like this:

Report: Verizon May Opt For Google To Provide Mobile Search Front Verizon, Google Close To Mobile Search Deal from the Wall Street Journal reports that Google and Verzion are close on a deal. The deal would make Google the default search provided for Verizon mobile devices. In the past, Verizon and other mobile carriers were reluctant to let Google or other search companies invade this space, but that might be over with. The Wall Street Journal says Verizon wants Google to create a new search platform that would be a one-stop shop. In exchange, Google would share the ad revenue with Verizon under this platform. The details of the deal are not complete yet and as soon as we have more information, we will update you. Click to continue reading...

Enter Siloing and PageRank Sculpting This is simply the activity of controlling what pages of your site share their link love. You do this by adding a "nofollow" attribute to any link that you don't want the search engines to give credit to. Take the example Matt Cutts gives. Maybe you have a friend who is a total underground, blackhat, do-no-good, evil-empire, anarchist spammer. You know he's bad to the bone. But you have a soft place in your heart for him and you want others to check out his site. All you have to do is add a nofollow attribute to the link. It would look like this: <a href="http://www.total-underground-blackhat-do-no-good-evil-empire-anarchist-spammer.com/" rel="nofollow">a blackhat spammer</a>. In this article, Joost de Valk, a Dutch SEO and Web developer, quotes Matt Cutts as saying, "There's no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollowed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery." Joost's article explains PageRank sculpting in more detail if you find this topic fascinating. His article also talks about "siloing." He points to an article on BruceClay.com that discussed this concept in a great amount of detail. Siloing is the idea of only linking out to other pages on your site and other outside resources that relate to that specific category or topic. So, if you had a cherry ice cream cone page, you would only link to resources discussing cherry ice cream cones. Information about chocolate ice cream cones and ice cream sundaes would either not be linked to or would be linked to using the nofollow tag like I showed you above. Controlling Link Flow Using Robots.txt Finally, there's more than one way to block link love. You can also add this information to your robots.txt file. This handy file goes in the root folder of your Web server and tells the search engines how to not spider and index all sorts of things.

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."

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!

May 20, 2008 Nielsen Online Releases April 2008 U.S. Search Rankings Nielsen Online has announced its April 2008 search share data for the U.S. Let's dive right into the numbers: Google - 62% market share, up 35.4% year-over-year Yahoo - 17.5% market share, down 3.4% year-over-year MSN/Live Search - 9.7% market share, up 30% year-over-year AOL - 4.3% market share, down 5.1% year-over-year Ask - 2.1 % market share, up 35.8% year-over-year Google saw an estimated 5.1 billion searches, while Yahoo saw 1.4 billion and MSN saw nearly 800 million.

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.

Online Video Views Up 13% in March, Google Extends Market-Share Lead Is Lost ever gettingoff the island? In March, Google Sites were again ranked top US video property, with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points form the previous month, according to comScore's Video Metrix service, MarketingCharts reports. Other data issued: US internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during March - a 13 percent increase from February and a 64 percent gain versus March 2007 YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 477 million videos (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo Sites with 328 million (2.9 percent) and Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2 percent). Nearly 139 million US internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March. Number of Viewers Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (85.7 million), where they watched an average of 51 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.3 million), followed by Yahoo Sites (37.5 million) and Viacom Digital (26.6 million). Other notable findings from March 2008: 73.7 percent of the total US internet audience viewed online video. 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer). 47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer). The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes. The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Oops, Google Analytics Lost Your Data Went Hot: May 21, 2008 - 3:07 am Posted By: Drupal 18 hours ago Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.getelastic.com) my network Category: Google Google sent a notice to Analytics users this morning that a data processing error from April 30th to May 5th has occurred. They're working on reprocessing the data which should be ready in a few days, but some data cannot be recovered.

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.

Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title : What’s the Difference? May 19th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 5 Comments search_engine399:http://www.searchenginejournal.com/image-alt-text-vs-image-title-whats-the-difference/6930/Buzz up! submit_url = "http://www.searchenginejournal.com/image-alt-text-vs-image-title-whats-the-difference/6930/"; Most webmasters don’t see any difference between image alt text and title mostly keeping them the same. A great discussion over at Google Webmaster Groups provides an exhaustive information on the differences between an image Alt attribute and an image title and standard recommendations of how to use them. Alt text is meant to be an alternative information source for those people who have chosen to disable images in their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “see” the images. It should describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested to see it. Without an alt text an image will be displayed as an empty icon: In Internet Explorer Alt text also pops up when you hover over an image. Last year Google officially confirmed that it mainly focuses on an alt text when trying to understand what an image is about. Image title (and the element name speaks for itself) should provide additional information and follow the rules of the regular title: it should be relevant, short, catchy and concise (a title “offers advisory information about the element for which it is set“). In FireFox and Opera it pops up when you hover over an image: So based on the above, we can discuss how to properly handle them: the both tags are primarily meant for visitors (though alt text seems more important for crawlers) - so provide explicit information on an image to encourage them to view it or get them interested. include your main keywords in both of them but keep them different. Keyword stuffing in Alt text and Title is still keyword stuffing, so keep them relevant and meaningful. Another good point to take into consideration: According to Aaron Wall, alt text is crucially important when used for a sitewide header banner.

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.

It’s important that when Search Engine’s spider your site when it’s down, that they don’t pick up textual cues that will negatively impact indexing. Site going offline for 10 Hours? Google recommends returning a 503 Service Unavailable Response.

In depth: the ultimate search marketing optimization guide, part 1: the basics In last week's article, I mentioned a post called the AdCenter Optimization Quick Reference Guide on the adCenter Community Site by Shefali Singla. It has some basic tips and tricks (albeit Microsoft specific) for optimizing accounts. I remember having something similar when I worked at a search agency some years ago, so I thought I'd expand upon that listing, make it more platform generic, and hopefully create a good checklist of things to think about when doing your daily optimizing.

"As part of Google's recent acquisition of DoubleClick, the Performics affiliate network is now a part of Google. To consolidate our offerings, we will be phasing out the AdWords pay-per-action beta, and the product will be retired on during the last week of August. Pay-per-action campaigns and all related data will be removed from all AdWords accounts the last week of October." So, if you have any CPA business in AdWords right now, it would seem that you should make sure to back up all of your data immediately... A follow-up announcement on the AdWords blog unveils the next step: "The Google Affiliate Network, previously known as DoubleClick Performics Affiliate, has been in operation since 1998. Through the network, advertisers can open their ads to all publishers in the network, or select specific publishers that match their criteria. You can set a CPA for your entire campaign or establish custom payment schedules for specific publishers -- such as a higher CPA for a particularly optimal placement. The Google Affiliate Network is currently a separate product from AdWords and AdSense. As with AdSense, publishers must apply and be accepted into the network." You can check out the home page for the new Google Affiliate Network here. I think this will be a very smart media channel and I've already signed up to learn more and get started.