January 5,
2005
In
This Issue:
1. Welcome to Net Gains
2. In the News - 2004's Top Searches / Search AdWords / Answers.com
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Backlinks not showing in Google
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Welcome to Net Gains
Happy new year to you! We're back after a break last week for
the holidays, and as promised we've renamed the weekly newsletter.
Nothing against the company name, but "OWT Newsletter" just
wasn't cutting it in terms of being an attention-grabbing, easy-to-remember
and easy-to-speak newsletter name. So, after a very brief round
of research and deliberation, we've decided on "Net Gains" as
the new name for what you're reading right now. If we had a PR
/ Marketing guru here, she'd tell us to say "New name ...
same great service!" or something like that. We're not planning
any major changes to the goals, content, or format of the newsletter.
The goal will continue to be sharing news and information that
helps you do business online better. That may take the form of
web development, marketing, search engine optimization, or some
other discussion. In the end, if it gives you a better chance of
doing business on the web, it fits this space.
With all of us still in the process of getting back on our feet
after the holiday break, and with web industry news still regaining
speed, this week's newsletter will be a bit shorter than normal.
I expect next week we'll all be back to normal speed!
_________________
In The News
2004's Top Searches
As they've been doing for some time now, both Google and Yahoo
have posted recaps of the top search queries they received during
the past calendar year. No one will be surprised to see that "Britney
Spears" and "Eminem" were among the most-searched
terms. But Google's annual "zeitgeist" offers some new
information that may be interesting from a business perspective.
They show six categories under "Top Froogle Queries," for
example, and with the popularity of TV poker last year, there's
proof that it was a good year to be selling poker accessories: "poker
chips" was the No. 1 search in the Sports and Hobbies category.
Google also offers seven categories under "Top Local Search
Queries," which may be of interest to those of you who will
be paying attention to local search as it grows this year and beyond.
2004 Google Zeitgeist
Top Yahoo Searches 2004
Who's Buying AdWords?
If you're an advertiser using Google's AdWords program, this
tool should be of interest:
Google: Search Sponsored Links
It's a way to search Google's sponsored links, i.e. -- only
the AdWords advertisers. If you sponsor the word "widget" and
want to see who else is sponsoring that term, this link will show
you. And, of course, you'll want to try different queries that
match the words and phrases you sponsor. It seems to be something
that a few Google users just stumbled on, and no one is sure if
it will be available permanently or not. So use it while you can!
Answers.com Launches
I think this is a sign of things to come: GuruNet this
week launched Answers.com, a search engine that offers
information
about your
query instead of links to web sites. GuruNet says they're
not competing with SEs like Google, but if you do a
lot of encyclopedia-style
searches, you may find yourself using a site like Answers.com
rather
than Google.
http://www.answers.com/
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Why there's no escaping the blog
January 04, 2005 - Fortune
Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product -- or destroy it.
Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.
Blog readership surged 58 percent in 2004
January 03, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Local advertisers lack search zeitgeist
December 29, 2004 - ClickZ.com
Of Google's top local search queries, only 1 in 20 generates
ads from local, as opposed to national, advertisers.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Matt,
We have worked pretty hard at getting other sites to link to
us, and we saw our rankings improve a bit, especially in Google.
We don't have a ton of incoming links, but recently Google
seems
to be showing even fewer links than we thought. I've used Google's
link:oursite.com tool to keep an eye on who's linking to us,
and they're showing fewer incoming links than the last time
I checked. Yet I've checked and some sites no longer appearing
in Google's link checker are actually still linking to us.
Is Google not counting those links anymore?
Jill
Hi Jill --
If the sites are still linking to you, that's what matters
most. You can and should ignore anything you see when
using Google to
check backlinks to your site. About a year or two ago that
ceased being at all reliable. Google simply doesn't show
all the links
to your site that it knows about. A better place way to
do this is to use the link popularity tool from MarketLeap that
we have
on owtweb.com. Here's a link:
http://www.owtweb.com/resources/linkcheck.html
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
The January rush is on. I don't know how your business goes,
but ours always ramps up dramatically at the start of the new year.
Businesses have new marketing budgets to spend, new ideas to implement,
etc., and the web seems to be the way they want to go. And as busy
as we were in November and December, at this point it's just piling
on. But who's complaining?
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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