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April 26, 2007

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal

An interesting thing happened on Rosie's way out of the door of The View; her sudden, earth-shattering departure caused a quake of an anomaly in the Google result for her name -- namely, the exact same URL appearing twice as a result, both #1 and #2:

What gives? SEO purists might argue that as result #1 is in the Sitelinks formation and Rosie’s site itself links out in the main navigation to her blog, the URL highlighted above exists as both a shortcut that will save users time, per Google’s explanation of the criterion for URLs selected for the formation--

Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

--and also exists on its own, as a blog, and thus merits a listing apart from one tied to Rosie's site, ergo the Value Meal Result.

But surely this rare achievement cannot be helped by the fact that Rosie's site itself argues against that very justification with its Title Tag. Aren't those supposed to be quite important, and importantly unique?

Does Rosie's massive influence extend even into the algorithmic sphere?

Posted by john at 03:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2007

MSN Link Search Still Not Working

For weeks now, I've noticed that MSN's [link:www.domain.com] search operator hasn't been working. Not only does it not pull up a list of results for links, but the stupid thing isn't even set up as a custom 404 page!!! Did you get that? MSN doesn't have custom 404's!!!!

I don't know about y'all, but I think MSN REALLY needs to get their act together with items such as the ones listed above if they're ever looking to grab at market share the likes of Yahoo! and Google. But for some reason, I'm doubting MSN is going to take away any competitors user base if their search engine continues to disappoint.

Happy hump day, my fellow SEO geeks!!!

Posted by sean at 02:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 23, 2007

Wikipedia Traffic Since Adding Nofollow

Many have wondered what effect it might have on your site's search traffic to tag nearly every outbound link with the "nofollow" attribute. According to Alexa, Wikipedia hasn't suffered. Looking at the following graph, with the red vertical line showing the rough date on which Wikipedia added "nofollow" attributes to its outbound links, one could draw the superficial conclusion that a global "nofollow" addition has had neither particularly positive effects (i.e., the "PageRank hoarding" theory) nor negative effects (i.e., the "if Wikipedia doesn't trust its links then Google won't trust Wikipedia's pages" theory):

While this graph supposedly reflects all traffic, Hitwise suggests that Wikipedia gets over 50% of its traffic from Google. So theoretically, a large hit in Google traffic would appear on this chart.

It might be more accurate to look at Wikipedia traffic from the source itself. Pulled from this page (a very cool resource), we see a traffic graph (measured in bits/sec -- not visits or pageviews) that similarly confirms no traffic loss following the "nofollow" implementation:

An interesting footnote: This graph shows incoming traffic (e.g., new articles, picture uploads, comments, etc.) below the X-axis (the red horizontal line near the bottom), while outgoing traffic (typical file requests, etc.) are above the X-axis. It's very cool that they show this.

Posted by erik at 02:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 19, 2007

Friends Don't Let Friends 302

Our 300 Series expert James sent out an important warning earlier in the year about 302's that aren't really temporary coming back to bite hard, and here at The Wagon we're starting to believe this may be a new Google theme for Spring.

The gist is there is a ticking clock on temporary, in that, we surmise, Google can tell when a 302 started, and it can certainly tell if it has yet to end. This makes sense. The unknown is what period between is given Google's blessing as truly "temporary" in temporal terms, and what then falls outside that window.

In 2007 so far, though, we are definitely seeing instances of the window slamming shut, loudly. And these are not spammers, no -- just, as can often be the case with a 302, used in a pinch with all intentions to return and fix, then forgotten. A promise written in the sand.

Please make sure any 302 you are using does indeed end, ultimately. If not, it likely will be ended for you.

Posted by john at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mobile Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Coming Soon

It's been a long time coming, but Intrapromote is finally making its segue into the Mobile SEO market.

Starting this year, Intrapromote will start offering Mobile Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for existing clients as well as new prospects looking to tap in to this incredibly emerging maket known as mobile search. The actual date of offering is TBD, but we're not too far away from an official launch.

Mobile search isn't slowing down and is an obvious progression for Intrapromote to tie into traditional SEO efforts.

Posted by sean at 04:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 17, 2007

Putting SEO into Perspective

In random fits of uncontrollable self-importance, SEOs (myself included) sometimes get quite a rush when they consider the power they believe they wield over SERPs. But in a recent conversation, I had a chance to put that power into perspective.

A few months ago, I was talking with a VP at a large agency who handles PPC (along with having a hand in offline media) for a large organic client of ours. We were lamenting that despite the strongest rankings ever, along with really current keyword research and a constantly fine-tuned PPC campaign, traffic was lower than expected.

And it wasn't just us. He had some nice, subscription-only Yahoo Buzz Index charts showing that industry-wide, there was less demand than usual for the important terms we targeted, even after adjusting for seasonality.

Finally, he shrugged it off. "Well," he said, "I guess what I need to do is to get more people searching for this stuff."

And he did.

SEO capitalizes on what people search for. This guy dictates it. Now THAT'S power.

Posted by erik at 11:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 13, 2007

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor

If you've had a backstage pass to the SEO Speedwagon for the last few months, you should know by now that we are official groupies for the Sitemaps Protocol. In fact, if we ever take SEO Speedwagon on tour, Sitemaps Protocol would open up for us.

There actually was some interesting news this week re: the Sitemap Protocol.

1. Ask.com has drank the kool-aid so you can now share your sitemap with them.

2. Although MSN isn't "...ready to consume sitemaps just yet", all three major engines announced the sitemap protocol will now include Autodiscovery.

Autodiscovery allows site owners to add a link to their sitemap within their robots.txt file. Here is what it should look like:

Sitemap: [sitemap URL here]

We highly recommend that you add this line to your robots.txt, especially since you will not have to resubmit your sitemap file when it is updated (which should be often if your site content is dynamic).

If you are a fan of the statistics, etc. provided by Google Webmaster Tools, then also be sure to submit your sitemap there. Along with statistics, you will also be able to see if there are any errors in your sitemap which can be very important, especially for large web sites (trust me.....been there).

SEO Humor:

An SEO guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Can you submit a sitemap to MSN?" The bartender looks at him, scratches his head, and asks, "Why?"

Posted by doug at 09:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 10, 2007

Del.icio.us Cloaking Update, More on Google Link Data

Last August, I wrote about how Del.icio.us was cloaking its robots.txt file, showing engines one version (which gave them full access) and showing users another (which appeared to restrict crawling and indexing). In addition, it was showing a set of robots meta tags to users, but not showing them to regular users.

Here's an example of what Del.icio.us was doing back then, at the page meta tag level:

Following is the famous meta tag from the Del.icio.us "SEO" tag page - the meta tag that makes everyone think the page won't be crawled:

But if you set your user-agent to Googlebot, here's what you see:

Since then, Del.icio.us has stopped one of these two techniques. The site still cloaks at the page level -- showing the robots meta tags above to users, but not to engines. But the robots.txt issue (discussed in the first paragraph above) has been changed. Now everyone sees the same version, with all major engines given these crawling parameters:

Allow: /
Disallow: /inbox
Disallow: /subscriptions
Disallow: /network
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /post
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /rss

The /subscriptions and /rss lines above, for those keeping score, are new since August.

Also note that Del.icio.us has used the "nofollow" link attribute for quite a while -- possibly since its inception. As a result, the cloaking matter is moot to many people, because to them, who cares if a page is crawled or indexed if the OBL aren't given any weight anyway?

The other reason I'm writing about Del.icio.us today is due to a comment on a recent post about Google Webmaster linking data. Offhandedly, I mentioned to "remember that Google reports nofollowed links" in its reports of incoming links to specific URLs, and I'm not sure a lot of people realize this.

(Important: Now, the "nofollow" I'm talking about is the link attribute, not the robots meta tag.)

So let me rephrase:

Just because Google sees and reports a link coming into your site does not mean that link does you any good.

As an example, I've looked through many Google link reports and gone to the specific page linking in to our site or our clients' sites. Links such as the following will show up in Google link reports, but according to everything Google has said over the past two years, the links aren't helping you:

• Del.icio.us
• Stumbleupon
• Links from comments and signatures from any blog/forum site that utilizes "nofollow"
• etc.

So again, don't take those linking reports at face value, at least to the point of making an assumption that all links are beneficial, even when the site they come from is highly respected and authoritative. Certainly, they're important for the potential traffic, but not for building your site's link popularity.

Posted by erik at 10:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 06, 2007

Wikipedia Guest Stars in Office Episode

In what is being called its breakout performance, Wikipedia guest starred in last night's super-sized episode of The Office. Michael turns to this Wiki article for negotiation tactics in preparation for battle against an employee asking for a raise. His description of Wiki perfectly captures the perceptional enigma.

Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.

Michael practiced and used tactics from the article, such as time manipulation, dominant physical position, and walking out. Perhaps Michael's best wiki tactic would have been declining to speak first, were it not for his breaking the long, awkward silence by whispering across the table that he is, in fact, declining to speak first.

How did Wiki respond to inclusion in TV known formerly as Must See?

Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled until April 7, 2007

Even under Martial Law, more than 60 edits slipped through the cracks, including a one-minute interval that saw the entire page replaced with the following statement.

HOLY FARK, THE OFFICE RULES!

Indeed. Holy Fark.

Posted by tom at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 05, 2007

Google's AdWords New Color

Hey, am I the only one who noticed Google switched it's top-listed AdWords ads to a yellow color today???

Personally, I think the yellow is a little much for my eyes and don't really care for it. I like the old blue coloring better; it's much easier on the eyes!!!

Do I need corrective lenses or what?

Posted by sean at 05:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Rudy Giuliani Finally Winning the Race to be Himself

We said we'd keep an eye on Rudy's race against himself, and almost a Month to the day after we noted he was losing, he's now finally pulled into the lead, at last vanquishing Wikipedia as the most relevant Rudy Giuliani on the web.

It is appropriate now, literally, to say the candidate is coming into his own.

Posted by john at 04:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 04, 2007

If I Could Just Insert Something Here...

...certainly you will no longer realize you have just been interrupted. That's the latest note in the bittersweet Old Media symphony of interruption marketing rationalizing away the fact that their advertising vehicles, those dinosaurs eying the glaciers in sight, are -- well -- interruptions:

Fox, in a bid to keep viewers watching during commercial breaks, will begin running short, animated snippets of programming between ads.

The tiny bits of programming will be about a taxi driver called Oleg, who will share words of wisdom and will chat with spoof versions of celebrities like Tom Cruise and Donald Trump, writes The Wall Street Journal. Two eight-second clips will begin airing on Monday.
The other broadcast networks are working on similar initiatives. At its development meetings with advertisers, for example, ABC showed off an idea that it hopes would make the break between programming and commercials seamless. The idea involves having characters watching an ad on TV. The ad would then expand to fill the whole screen.

Good golly if the characters are watching the ad, shouldn't I?

Allow me to insert here my growing belief that a key distinction between Old Media and New -- with each new brand of trick pulled on customers assumed prima facia breathtakingly dumb and devoid of any critical thinking skills whatsoever, collectively -- appears rather unfortunately to be disdain for the customer.

When an audience is telling you they would rather not be interrupted and rather than alter your vehicle you instead devise schemes to either strap them in or trick them out of realizing the route they choose has suddenly changed, what other could that strategy been born of than contempt?

New Media has a word for these tactics: Spam.

Posted by john at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack