June 15, 2005
In
This Issue:
1. Google Updates its Webmaster Pages
2. In the News - MyWeb, DoubleTrust
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - How long to rank?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Google Updates its Webmaster Pages
I realize there's somewhat limited value in relying
on a search engine to tell you how to rank well
in a search engine. It's like asking a magician
how he does that great trick. He may answer the
question, but he's probably not giving away any
great secrets. So it is with the Google Information
for Webmasters pages. The information is generally
good, but they're not giving you the secret sauce
to high rankings.
All of which I say as a preface to letting you
know that Google has finally updated most of that
section of Google.com. The structure has been
changed, and it appears new content has been added
in the form of updated and new answers. I was
struck by this nugget in a section discussing
why pages are dropped from Google's index:
"You might check to see if the number
of other sites that link to your URL has decreased.
This is the single biggest factor in determining
which sites are indexed by Google...."
It's not earth-shattering information; Google
is known to rely more on linking than any other
search engine. But it's interesting to see them
admit to it, and actually name the "single
biggest factor" like that.
They've also added an Advanced Questions section
with information about how often Google crawls
sites, why some sites are listed as "supplemental",
and more. And the section discussing SEO companies
appears to have been expanded with new information
and very specific examples of "things to
look out for" to determine if you're working
with a "rogue SEO."
Overall, no "secret sauce" in here,
but if you haven't checked it out in a while,
it's probably worth another look.
Google
Information for Webmasters
_________________
In The News
Yahoo expands MyWeb
Yahoo's effort at personalized, called MyWeb,
has expanded out into the main Yahoo SERPs. When
you do a search on Yahoo, you should now see two
new links near each site listed: SAVE and BLOCK.
These are two key features of MyWeb -- the ability
to save a site to your MyWeb bookmarks, and the
ability to completely remove a site from ever
appearing when you do a search. These features
were previously visible only to logged-in users
of MyWeb. Now they're visible to all, obviously
with the idea of attracting new users to the MyWeb
service.
Yahoo:
MyWeb
Compare Google and Yahoo SERPs
DoubleTrust is a new tool (or maybe "toy"
is the better word) developed as part of a class
project at Northwestern University. It's kinda
similar to the now-defunct Jux2 which was mentioned
many moons ago in this space. DoubleTrust lets
you compare Google and Yahoo results by seeing
where they intersect. And you can tell it to rely
more heavily on either search engine if you want.
Play with it a few times and you'll see how it
works; it's not quite obvious on first glance.
DoubleTrust
Articles
I highly recommend the two articles listed below....
_________________
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.
The
Principles of Design
June 14, 2005 - Digital Web
In order to start with a discussion about the
fundamentals of design as they relate to Web design
we need to understand that there is a good degree
of inheritance that design has received over the
years from other art forms.
What
search engines know and you don't
June 13, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Do we really need to know this scientific Web
mining and information retrieval stuff?
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
When a new web site is launched, how long should
it take for search engines to find and rank it?
Are we talking days, weeks, or months?
Kevin
Hi Kevin --
If it's a brand new site (as opposed to a redesign),
it can take as little as a few days for a search
engine to find it. That's the first step. Then
the site gets added to the index. Then it has
to be crawled, and that's when the algorithm kicks
in to identify what the page is about, how many
quality links it has, how old the site is, etc.
There are a lot of factors that determine how
a page ranks.
Ultimately, we tell new clients to expect it to
take several months for their pages to go through
all this, and this is important -- to settle in
the SERPs. First there's the Google "sandbox"
that has affected new sites in the past, so that
may be a problem. Beyond that, though, it's quite
normal for a newly added site to move around even
more than normal in the SERPs -- ranking well
one day, and poorly the next. Patience is very
important.
If you need immediate search engine visibility,
your best bet is to buy advertising such as Google's
AdWords program, or Yahoo Search Marketing.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Hope business online is treating you well.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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