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Three major events took place on, at, or around Google last week any one of which could radically change the company and its relationships with its users, advertisers, and ad delivery partners. Two of the events will have long lasting effects Google’s look and operation while the other has a direct effect on the public’s perception of Google as a trustworthy company.

Chronologically, the events started last Monday with the introduction of the new-look and feel of Google Universal. The same day, Google began the process of cleaning up its paid advertising program AdWords by terminating thousands of poorly performing “Made For AdSense” sites, a process that seemed to pick up speed as the week progressed. The week closed with the premature leak of information from the Fair Isaac Corporation’s ongoing study of billable click-fraud rates.

The last event, the leak of preliminary information from Fair Isaac, is likely the best place to begin an explanation because it (the tone of the report) is arguably the primary causal reason for the other two. It is as if Google suddenly understands the depth of the public relations problems it is going to be facing going into the second half of 2007 and is making very public moves to deal with the root causes of those problems.

Google’s Greatest Problem

Early last Friday morning a press release left the offices of the Fair Isaac Corporation. The press release stated that Fair Isaac had been conducting a study on billable click fraud rates at Google and had found 10 – 15 % of all billed clicks to a small sampling of accounts had stemmed from invalid activity. Naturally both the tech and mainstream media made an enormous issue of the news with virtually every important business or tech section mentioning the story.

By Saturday, the dust had settled and writers began taking a second, less euphoric look at the story. As Kevin Newcomb in Search Engine Watch wrote,

“Media reports (including Search Engine Watch’s) saying Fair Isaac Corp. (FIC) reported industry-wide click fraud at 10 to 15 percent are not accurate. FIC decided to put out a press release and speak at its user conference about data that was extremely preliminary, based on a small sample size, and not statistically significant.”

What happened and why was it an important event? 

The significance of the media’s reaction to the Fair Isaac report is the media’s reaction itself. Within minutes of the release being issued, stories began appearing in Associated Press, Information Week, the Wall St. Journal and in other major publications. Though Kevin is correct in chastising himself and his colleagues (including me) for jumping the gun on the story, that so many of us feel there is a story about click fraud is in itself the story.

Readers have to understand how difficult it is for reporters to write about click fraud as there is very little corroborating evidence outside the information we ferret out of advertisers who complain to us about their experiences. Google and Yahoo are not known to be forthcoming with information surrounding their pay-per-click programs. Journalists rely on third-parties such as Click Forensics, ClickFacts  other analytic companies (in this case, Fair Isaac) to supply us with information which in turn we supply to you the readers.

The numbers that came out of the Fair Isaac press release generally jive with those of Click Forensics and the index maintained by the Click Fraud Network which estimated a 14.8% click fraud rate at the end of the first quarter of 2007. Hundreds of other writers simultaneously experienced the same low-watt light-bulb moment I did hoping that Fair Isaac had provided a solid set of numbers to speculate from.

Unfortunately, as Kevin wrote, it was simply speculation but, the event did point out a gaping hole in Google’s corporate awning. The press is clearly prepared to expect a 10 – 15% click fraud rate, as evidenced by the breakneck speed the story made from wire to writing to print. Perhaps that is the biggest reason for the second important event from last week.

Google to Close Low-Yield MFA Accounts

Google is sending closure notices to owners of low conversion “Made For AdSense” (MFA) sites. On Friday afternoon, reports that Google issued polite emails informing several owners of MFA type sites that their AdSense accounts are going to be terminated on June 1 began surfacing at WebmasterWorld.

Google is targeting a large group of people who use the AdSense system to scam money from advertisers. Some reports have suggested Google is going after the paid-search arbitrage community though others point out that though many (if not most) arbitragers are going to be affected they themselves were not the actual issue Google is dealing with.

Google is moving to close what are called “MFA” sites. Examples of MFA sites include parked domains, misspellings and faux-search engines, all of which tend to have AdSense advertising on them. When users go to or are somehow driven to those sites, those who click on the ads make the site owner (and Google) a little money. Though clicks on these sites might only be worth 5 – 10 cents, the Internet allows MFA site owners to run businesses based on huge volumes of purchased and misdirected visitors. On average, MFA site owners make a few hundred per month on their sites though in some cases, site owners can be making tens of thousands of dollars per month.

Obviously, this use of the AdWords and AdSense programs were far healthier for the MFA site owners (and Google’s bottom line), than they were for advertisers or Internet users. For most, the halcyon days of MFA are over and those webmasters will have to adapt to the new rules surrounding ad distribution through the AdSence program.

As for Google, if cleaning up the system makes advertisers more comfortable over the long-run, it makes far more sense for Google to forgo what is to them a relatively minor revenue source in order to create a more stable advertising environment. Assuming Google successfully removes MFA sites from its system, it will have moved a long way towards cleaning up a highly lucrative arena for click fraud.

Google Universal

The third and perhaps most interesting thing Google did last week was the introduction of the Google Universal results. In a nutshell, Google Universal is about tying many of the multiple search indexes Google maintains into one coherent set of results.

Google literally has over a dozen types of search result available, depending on the type of search each user conducts. Google Universal is their first major attempt to bind all search types into an overarching set of results.

A good contemporary example might be the recent recall of pet foods across North America . This is a topic of extreme interest to pet owners, one that has received a high level of attention from news, governmental and consumer organizations.  A search conducted for “pet food recall” might bring up results from general search, news, YouTube videos, radio reports, shopping search results, etc… Under Google’s old system, a user would have to perform specialty searches to find information kept outside of Google’s general search results. Google Universal should change that by bringing other file formats into what the user will perceive as the general search results.

Google Universal is probably the biggest change made to Google results since the introduction of paid advertising five years ago. The move was made by Google to present a wider array of file types to users. It is a logical change that will have sweeping effects throughout the search marketing industry. SiteProNews will carry fuller coverage of Google Universal later this week.

Last week was one of the most significant and startling weeks in Google’s history. From an outsider’s perspective, it appears Google is taking serious action to improve its services on several fronts. Its greatest weakness is the specter of click fraud, as evidenced by the speed at which the media bit the hook dangled by the Fair Isaac press release. It is prepared to forgo revenues in order to clean up its system and is working to integrate richer media into its general search results. Any one of the three stories could have provided months worth of material for writers in the search marketing space. Together, they provide a clearer indication of Google’s greatest fears and best intentions. This is likely to be another interesting week watching Google.

Author:  Jim Hedger is the Executive Editor of SiteProNews.com

I had the opportunity to attend Google’s Searchology event and found it very exciting viewing it from the paradigm of a member of the press. All major news organizations were there: SearchEngineWatch, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, ZDNet, PC World, Boston Globe, Forbes and Search Engine Land. I may have been one of only a few people who were from a Search Marketing Firm.

I will start with the most important news items first. Udi Manber, VP of Engineering, said that 20-25% of search queries each day are new, that’s an amazing fact - I didn’t realize how fast the world was generating new content and news. He also announced that Google will be launching a new search feature which will allow users to translate search results into another language on the fly, talk about making the content on the internet even more accessible.

VP of Search Products, Marissa Mayer created even more buzz (which now is old news) by announcing the launch of 3 new additions to the Google Search Experience plus one new Google Service:

1) Universal Search - The integration of results from other Google Search Silos such as Video, News, Books and Images into the regular Google Search Results. Marissa launched the query “Steve Jobs” and the results (in addition to text listings) showed Images of Steve Jobs, a video of one of Steve Jobs’ presentations as well as related news items.

2) Contextual search navigation options - After launching a search query users will now see other search options underneath the query text box. These search options are the most relative searches options based on the user’s query. See image below.

3) Universal Navigation Bar - Google also added a new top navigation bar which contains links to other Google’s services (which are now just a click away). This top nav will appear on services such as Gmail as well. See image below.

4) Google Experimental - http://www.google.com/experimental - Shows the latest “experiments” that Google is working on, users can sign up for experiments which integrates the experiment into the user’s search experience. Users will be given the ability to provide feedback to Google as well.

Some of the coolest parts of the event included Sergey Brin joining the Q & A portion of the event as well as hanging around afterwards to answer questions from the press. While I was having lunch with Matthew Glotzbach (Google’s Product Management Director), Larry Page came down and sat beside us and we had a great conversation on how Google’s job will not be complete until Google’s results are so relevant that only a single result is needed to satisfy a users query. Larry also thought that it wasn’t impossible for all content to instantly be indexed as its added to the internet - which is essentially the ultimate feat for any search engine.

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow as I will upload my own videos of Marissa Mayer’s speech as well as pictures from the event.

Author:  Manoj Jasra is the Director of Technology at Enquiro Search Solutions. He is also the publisher of the Web Analytics World blog

Within the e-commerce sphere, the “mind games” between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can’t make a sale if visitors aren’t reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization — converting site visitors to buyers.

Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies.

Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness

SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable.

Numbers are numbers, there’s no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.

Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.

The Google Website Optimizer (GWO)

Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It’s got lots of features, it’s totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what’s working and what would work even better.

One key point here: after indexing billions and billions of web pages, who is going to know better what works and doesn’t work for solid EBO? After all, all the Google gurus have to do is evaluate their top performing sites to develop measurement criteria and tools to improve conversion optimization. Google is going to know what works.

One other point worth mentioning — it’s free. A flexible, user-designed test engine developed by Google and available free. It’s a must have for any site owner, site designer, webmaster or SEO.

What Can Google Website Optimizer Do For Me & How Can It Do It If I Don’t Know the Difference Between a Statistical Mean and a Statistical Average?

Multi-Variable Testing

Got to have it. When quantifying human motivations and the effectiveness of a site page, you must have data to compare - data based on site variables such as a different home page image or revised site text. There are hundreds of variables within any website. Color selections, type font, type color, navigation tools, product images and descriptions — literally an endless líst of variables.

Google’s Website Optimizer allows you to design tests to compare variables to see which ones work best. Often called A/B split tests, these simply compare a change or two to see which performs best. For example, you might have a picture of your product on test site A and a photo of the product in use by a human on test site B. Simply by comparing visitors’ reactions to pages A and B, you can make refinements to your site.

Another useful A/B split test to chëck the success of your Adwords placements is to create two identical ads with two different destination URLs. You’ll quickly discover which placements pay for themselves and which should be dropped.

Easy Analytics

The information gathered by Google during testing is delivered in an easy-to-understand format. You’ll see, in graphic förm, where visitors go and where they don’t go when on site. Taking a good hard look at your bounce rates and possible paths-thru-site are essential parts of your ongoing conversion optimization diet.

Usability Testing

Real humans navigating your site. Get as many people as you can to site down and clíck around - from your computer-whiz 12-year-old to mom and dad who still use dial-up. These tests provide the reasons why visitors take specific actions — over and over again.

Eyeball Optimization

GWO shows you what attracts eyeballs but doesn’t generate a clíck. It also shows what visitors miss entirely because it’s misplaced or mislabeled. Every page should undergo an “EBO” to improve conversion rates.

Follow the Leaders

You can’t copyright an idea so use the same features and techniques employed by higher ranking competitor sites. Then, conduct A/B split tests to see which changes show improvement in conversion optimization.

People Are Still the Same

There’s nothing new about direct response advertising, which is what successful sites use. Infomercials, newspaper ads, TV 30-second spots — these are all examples of direct response advertising and the same motivators that work in other media will also work on your website. Once again, you can’t copyright an idea and the principles of direct response marketing haven’t changed one iota.

Determine and identify the buyer’s needs; provide the solution to meet those needs. It’s worked for the past few millennia and it’ll work for you today.

Small Steps or One Giant Leap

Do you make incremental improvements or try to fix everything all at once. It depends on where you are right now. If you’ve optimized your site (or paid to have it optimized) a small step here and there can make a huge difference, and a major revamping of your site may actually set you back in the optimization race.

On the other hand, if you’re just launching, run a couple of A/B splits and other analytics to see which site pages are hot and which are not. Adjust accordingly. The point here? The more optimized the site, the less optimization is needed so if you’ve been at it for a while, take small steps and assess improvements. If you’re just starting out, launch, track and adjust as needed — whether it be small steps or the proverbial giant leap.

Create a Diagram of Your Marketing Funnel

Start with placed adverts (Adwords, paid links, etc.) Add your home page, each product page, the checkout, automated order conformation, customer care and order fulfillment. Each one of these is a component of a sale and, from the líst and with the help of GWO, you’ll be able to more clearly identify holes in your marketing funnel — those areas most in need of improvement, i.e., optimization.

Now, this is just the beginning. Conversion optimization is an on-going process and there are additional steps you can take based on test results delivered by Google’s Web Optimizer - steps that we’ll look at more closely in part 2 of this series.
Author:  Frederick Townes is the CEO of W3 EDGE, a Boston-based web design company specializing in web standards and search engine friendly web design. Whether your needs fall into the Web 2.0 category or if you need an attractive design that will convert your visitors into buyers, W3 fills the need.

Let’s be honest, the world would be a remarkably dull place without Google. It is at one and the same time a vehicle for making truckloads of profit and a rod for the backs of those desperate to win its favours. It is a great servant, but a very hard task-master.

One wonders whether Messrs Larry Page and Sergey Brin had any inkling of the kind of benign but uncompromising genie they were letting out of the bottle when they launched Google from a garage back in 1996? Probably not, yet their efforts have revolutionized the way we do business and the way we think about business. In the so doing, these two guys became multi-millionaires – and good luck to them, I say.

Google is not a connoisseur of art

As wonderful as all this may be, Google remains an idiot. Or, rather, its search algorithm is an idiot. It operates within certain strict parameters laid down for it by programmers, which means that its decisions are automatic rather than intelligent, blinkered rather than intuitive. And this is why some of the most beautifully constructed and aesthetically pleasing websites often never get so much as a sniff at the Google listings. It is also why some of the most hideous looking sites feature at Number One.

A lot of people can’t understand this. They spend thousands on the construction of a website, the design of which would give pause to Michelangelo, only to discover that Google doesn’t actually care. That’s right, it doesn’t care. Certainly, your potential customers may be impressed by the look of your website; and only a fool would suggest that good design effort is unnecessary. But if Google isn’t sending you any potential customers, your design masterpiece is going to remain unremarked and unvisited.

Google loves words

The truth is that Google robot is only interested in words. All right, it will take things like backlinks into account when it is making an evaluation of your site (and these are very important), but its primary concern is with the words you use. To start with, the robot looks at the words in your Home page HTML code between <head> and </head>. It looks at Title and Description and, to a lesser extent, those in your Keywords configuration. It then examines the words in the Home page body copy – i.e. the blurb that everyone sees. With no more ado, it turns itself inside out to find a correlation between the two. It looks for word repetition and phrase repetition between the <head> material and the body copy; and it looks for synonyms of those words and phrases. And when it does so, its heart leaps just as Wordsworth’s must have done when he saw all those daffs.

Thus, if your Title says to the effect: “Hand Made Italian Shoes”, then the body copy should also say: “We sell hand made Italian shoes.” And if your Title continues along the lines of: “Hand Made Shoes From Italy”, it follows that the body copy should continue with: “Our hand made shoes from Italy come to you at a great price.” The two sets of words reflect each other’s sentiments.

Too often, as I wander around the Net, I see that a website’s <head> material has no bearing on the body copy. The <head> says one thing and the copy – if there is any, which there often isn’t – says something else entirely. The Title says: “Cicero’s Hand Made Italian Shoes”, while the body copy kicks off with: “Cicero’s was founded in 1994 in a shed in our back yard.” There is no relationship for the Google robot to latch on to.

There is nothing difficult about producing the kind of writing that Google likes. It doesn’t have to be Thackeray, just jazz-standard English. To put it in words of one syllable, put it in words of one syllable. As I’ve implied, too, so many websites have no body copy on their Home pages whatsoever. The page is simply a beautiful PhotoShop montage, plus a navigation bar. This is a mistake. Google wants copy. It craves copy. Its whole reason for being is to unearth copy that tells it what the website is selling so that it can evaluate the website in relation to others and assign a listing.

Lack of knowledge is no defense

What I’d like to do now, if you’ll allow me, is prove my thesis with a real-life illustration. There can be few people in the world who know less about the technical side of website building than I do. Talk to me about perl, cgi, php, Flash and so on, and I shall look blank. Which I don’t find difficult. But, anyway, it came to pass a few months ago that a client asked me to optimize his website. Immediately, I saw that the Home page Title, Description and Keywords bore no relationship to the body copy. Likewise, the remaining pages. It was a right royal mess and a challenge that I couldn’t resist.

Re-writing took a day or so; and the site was posted to the major search engines. Nothing happened. Nothing, that is, except Google indexed and cached only the Home page. I therefore tweaked the copy a little and resubmitted. Again nothing, except that Google re-indexed just the Home page. Had I lost my touch? Were my previous successes just a fluke?

Fortunately, I work from time to time with a very bright young web designer and I asked him to take a look at the site in question. Within minutes, he came back with: “According to the Home page, there aren’t any other pages to this site! The reason for this is the links to the other pages are in Flash…not HTML…and Google can’t read it.” Consequently, we rebuilt the navigation bar in HTML and, within a week, the site jumped straight on to page two of Google for all our keyphrases.

Know your Google

So, as I say, Google is an idiot. But it is not so great an idiot as those of us who don’t take the trouble to figure out what it can do and what it can’t. I learned a big lesson from this and have since immersed myself in Google’s operating procedures a to z. If you are in any way serious about elevating your website onto page one of Google, you might be wise to do the same.

Websites that contain all the design bells and whistles are a glory to behold, but if they don’t play Google’s game they are, in commercial terms, a waste of space. Google can be a great friend if you learn to love it!
Author:  Pat Quinn is an award-winning UK copywriter who also operates a search engine optimisation service. Because it’s all in the writing! He can be found at: http://www.search-engine-mechanics.co.uk

If you have been on the Internet for any length of time it is likely you have heard the term Adware mentioned at least once. You may have also likely heard of the term Spyware. While both are similar in some ways, as they run in the background generally with you unaware of their presence, they serve two completely different functions. Today I will be discussing Adware and what it does in its most common forms.
Adware is a software program that is created to display advertisements on your computer. Adware comes in many forms but it is most commonly a simple popup that appears on your desktop when you are not surfing the Internet and when you least expect it.

Adware can also come in less insidious ways such as with another software application that you download for free. Many of these free software applications cost nothing due to the advertising or adware they run on the software.

The company provides you with a free service because they take in advertising revenues from other companies who use adware to “pop up” offers as you use the free software. This has proven to be an effective advertising medium for these companies otherwise they would not be paying for it.

Needless to say, the existence of adware, though less of a threat than spyware, can be quite annoying. Many companies do not make it clear that their applications contain adware programs from third party advertisers, so you could be left with a big mess on your computer after awhile, simply by using common applications.

Adware has a tendency to slow down your computers performance and make surfing the Internet sluggish at best. For those Internet users who are still on dial-up connections, this can prove to be a real problem. Those on DSL and Cable connections are not exempt though. Since DSL and Cable are often left on 24/7 the potential for adware to appear is even greater.

Not all adware is a problem though so it is important for Internet users to become knowledgeable about adware, what it is, and what software applications they are downloading and using as part of their computer experience. Knowing that a piece of software is free due to the fact that it comes with adware bundles will give the user much more control over what they allow on their computers. Knowing what to expect can help protect individuals and their children from being exposed to unwanted advertisements.

There are many software applications that allow users to clean their computers of unwanted adware, and that also give the ability to search for and modify specific adware modules to gain an increasing control over every aspect of their computer and Internet experience.

These specialized software applications have a delicate balance to maintain. They have to be configured well so that important data is not lost and accidentally seen as adware. They also have to avoid confrontations with the advertising industry who provide alot of revenue for smaller software companies through the existence of adware bundles.

This delicate balance has thus far been maintained fairly well, but it is important to know which adware removal and modification software are helpful and which are just adding more adware on your computer as you use them. Sometimes free is not always the best option since someone, somewhere is always paying for it somehow!

Author:  Article courtesy of: http://www.AdwareCompare.com We’ve tested dozens - even hundreds! - of adware removal programs. Some of them are great, most of them get the job done (more or less), and too many simply don’t work. We’ve gathered the top contenders in the field, and reviewed them for your convenience.

The Google Analytics Blog announced today a fresh look and set of tools for Google Analytics; Google’s free web analytics program.The posting announces the following improvements:

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

Check out the excellent tour demo for details.

My Two Bits of Caution
When a company like Google puts all of this work into a free program I have to wonder how much information is used for their gain and the user’s loss. There is no question this is one slick program and their new additions make it all the more tempting so I am sure it will be a hit. That said, the kind of data that Google reaps from this arrangement must be financially worthwhile which in-turn must have positive and negative ramifications for Google advertisers - of which many users of Google Analytics are. After all, Google is bound to want advertisers to spend more. Hmm, I wonder… if the data led Google to a position where they could increase their bottom line but might cost advertisers more money whose best interest Google would ultimately side with?

I am sorry but a lovely little mantra like “don’t be evil” seems hardly enough to trust a company to safeguard my valuable traffic data against its own financial (publicly traded - read ‘pressured’) interests. Unfortunately I am in a hypocritical spot since StepForth has to work with it regularly to keep up with the latest tools so we can properly navigate some of our client’s analytics system; ahh the irony. But just because we are in that position doesn’t mean you have to be. Safeguard your long term interests and use a reputable commercial application if you can afford to - or go with Google Analytics and accept the potential consequences.

Unless finances prohibit the option we strongly advise every client utilize ClickTracks or another quality commercial analytics solution tool for their web analytics needs. At StepForth we may have to use Google Analytics to “keep up with the Jones’s” but 100% of our in-house and outsourced analytics are conducted using ClickTracks Professional. Author:  Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement. Celebrating its 10th year, StepForth is among the oldest and most trusted brands in Search Engine Marketing.

Supplemental results at Google have been around for a while but there has been a growing interest and focus on the evolution of this complementary index.
What are Google Supplemental Results?
Supplemental results are web pages that have been reviewed by Goggle and, after close examination, have been identified as “not very useful” to the user and therefore are placed in a so called supplemental index for future reference: It’s a sort of “just in case” resource that will be accessed if nothing in the main index matches the query.
But Google has indexed billions of pages so it’s gonna be a cold day in hell before the supplementals will be showing up in the SERPs.

Why are pages placed in the supplemental index?
I think the whole matter should be put in historical perspective: if you don’t know where you’re coming from you don’t know where you’re going. So far there have been 3 important factors leading to the supplemental results index:
1. Duplicate Content

When supplemental results first showed up they were mostly duplicate content - copies of pages from dynamic web sites with a search engine unfriendly content management system.

Search engines were faced with the problem of inflated indexes with hundreds of duplicated pages.
2. Duplicate TITLE and/or META TAGS

Another factor that would put you in the supplementals is duplicate TITLE and/or META TAGS. If you don’t believe your pages are worth personalization with unique titles and META TAGS, don’t expect additional efforts from the search engines to understand what they are about.
3. Not Enough Content

Pages with little or close to no visibile content are also subject to supplemental results indexing. This often happens with Ecommerce sites that have literally hundreds (if not thousands) of pages all looking very similar to each other.
This is what was happening. I think the philosophy is changing because of:

• The ever increasing number of crawlable websites
• The limited amount of resources
• The increased amount of effort and complexity to maintain an up to date index of resources

It costs more to get pages into the index and keep them there
If you look at it from the Search Engine perspective, it only makes sense to keep a focus on “the best” pages. There’s less and less room for the others, and Google is putting more and more pages in the supplemental index.
In a recent Forbes article the Supplemental index is called the Google Supplemental Hell – Andy Greenberg opens his article stating: “Don’t anger the Google Gods …” I really wouldn’t go to that extreme and compare supplementals to hell, simply because once you’re in hell there’s no way back.
There is a way out of the Supplemental Results
General statements generate widespread panic and useless talk about non issues. If you have pages in the supplemental results there is a way out.
Fix your site:

•  
  1. Make sure your CMS isn’t generating hard to read URLs or feeding search engine spiders session IDs creating hundreds of identical pages with different URLs
  2. TITLE and META DESCRIPTION TAGS must be unique for each and every one of your web pages.
  3. Page content must be different from the previous and the next.
  4. Implement a deep linking strategy – make sure you have links leading not only to your home page but to the rest of your website

New pages can go supplemental no matter what
I was recently confronted with this paradigm shift in supplemental philosophy. Adding new keyword focused content is a typical ongoing effort. The long tail is where to start looking for niche keywords and create new pages within the context and theme of your website.
About 1 month ago I did just that for a Client and after a few days when I entered the command to monitor indexing status:
site:www.myclients-site.com intitle:keyword
I found the new pages were all supplemental. I had created 3 pages, in the same sub folder (just 1 level beneath the root) over a 10 day period. There was nothing wrong with them, but they were supplemental. I did nothing but wait and wait … until they came out of the supplementals all by themselves.
It looks like there were automatically labelled supplemental, then analysed and “promoted” to the main index. Not only did they come out of the supplemental index but they are also ranking rather well (top 20), considering the fact they are lacking relevant external links right now.
So relax and focus on building a great website.
Keep in mind that supplemental indexing with Google can be an issue but only if you are careless or not doing as well as your competitors are.

Author:  Sante has an engineering degree and has worked the web since 1994. An accomplished speaker, Sante has appeared at many European SES Conferences, including the first Italian SES held in Milan in April 2006. Appointed as an ICT consultant to the regional government in Abruzzo, Sante has also appeared at the Reykjavik Iceland Internet Marketing Conference and will be presenting at SES Milan in late May. Sante has a multilingual blog on Search Engines and Search Marketing.

I found this interesting post from “Dr. Pete” at SEOmoz.org discussing his experience rescuing a client’s website from the vastness of Google’s supplemental index. Pete provided a great deal of detail on how he succeeded with his particular client. In this case the client was definitely in a bad state beforehand where even the most basic SEO strategies were not in place. The most basic fixes he implemented consisted of creating unique Titles and Meta Description Tags which in my opinion would definitely reduce supplemental results.
The gist of his posting is that the following changes seemed to have the most positive results:

• Shortening and increasing the search engine friendliness of the site’s URLs
• Apparently when a 404 page was discovered it provided search engines with an improper response - essentially that the page was “A-okay” (a 200 server response). They fixed this issue which allowed many ‘bad’ pages to be removed from Google’s index.

  On a personal note I noticed this same issue with another client of mine recently by reviewing the client’s Google Webmaster Central profile… lots of valuable information can be found within that toolset - be sure to use it!

• He implemented a robots.txt file to block various parts of the site that provided duplicate content (such as print versions of articles, etc.). The impact on supplemental results appeared to be profound from his standpoint which makes sense. You see supplemental results will often occur when Google notices repetitive content within a website. After all, the supplemental results is by nature meant for results that are already found elsewhere or for pages that offer little or no value to Google.

If you are concerned that your site has too many pages in Google’s supplemental index then I suggest reading and applying the advice in our instructional article “is your website search engine friendly - your personal checklist” because that article digs deep into many of the issues that also cause supplemental index issues.

Auhtor:  Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement. Celebrating its tenth year in business, StepForth is one of the oldest and most trusted brands in SEO. He can be reached at 1-877-385-5526 (toll free in North America)

As a full-time online marketer and webmaster I try to keep my eyes peeled to what is happening with the search engines. These complex creatures control the Internet. They truly are the heart, soul and brains of the web.

Unfortunately, they also control the faith of many struggling webmasters who are clawing their way to the top of SERPs in organic search. Being listed on these first page results for your chosen keyword phrases is the ultimate goal and it is often the determining factor in the success of your site.

Recently, I have noticed some strange movements with my closely watched keywords, especially in Google. Which shouldn’t alarm anyone because there are often sudden movements and adjustments as Google tweaks and refines its algorithm, the complex series of formulas it uses to determine which pages and sites get featured.

(Ed. note: An excellent resource on Google’s Algorithm and ranking factors can be found at: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f41

It’s way too early to jump to any conclusions but the big question on everyone’s mind: Is Google Moving Towards Semantic Search?

Or more precisely will Google have to move to semantic search if it has any chance of surviving in our ‘here today - gone tomorrow’ search world. Most of us old folks can easily recall a pre-Google web. Is a post-Google web possible?

That’s very hard to swallow but stranger things have happened on the net. But the real question should be: will Google have to embrace semantic search or perish?

Wikipedia defines Semantic Search or Semantic Web as the evolving process of taking all the content on the world wide web and “expressing it not only in natural language, but also in a förm that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.”

As can be imagined, finding the formats and framework by which all this data can be processed into meaningful responses directly related to a search enquiry is mind boggling. Technologies such as RDF (Resource Description Framework), data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, Turtle, N3, N-Triples), RDFS (RDF Schema) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) will all probably play a role. Many believe microformats will be very important in this evolving semantic web.

New Semantic Search Engine

We now have our first search engine supposedly based on semantics or meaning: Hakia. Is it the first in a whole new wave of search engines generated and powered by the Semantic Web which is now tagged as Web 3.0? More importantly, can it compete against a more text based search engine such as Google?

Hakia has some great features such as highlighting potential answers to your posted question. For example, ask it a question like: What is the population of Seattle? And you will get an answer. But you will also get a gallery page featuring all the relevant information about Seattle: How to get there? Local Hotels, Restaurant Guides, Local Weather…

Of course, do the same search in Google and you will also find your information along with images and maps of Seattle. However, using Hakia will show you the relevant information faster because it is highlighted and easier to find. And in my opinion having a whole gallery page of information somehow makes your search more relevant and useful.

Can Google Compete?

Is this a better mousetrap? Maybe, maybe not… but it is definitely pointing the way to a better method of searching on the web.

Granted, this type of search engine has a long way to go to match Google’s massive resources and obvious dominance in the search market. But even the most devoted Google user like myself must admit Google’s method of ranking pages and content on the web is not without some flaws. Take for example the issue of Google Bombing where different webmasters influenced the listing of the keyword ‘miserable failure’ to point to President Bush.

Google has now solved that problem but Google is basically an elitist system where sites and content are judged by the PR ranking system and its algorithm and filters. One would like to believe it is a democratic system where the best and highest quality content rises to the top. One would like to…

Information is one thing but opinions and the quality of those opinions is something entirely different. Will the new semantic web/search be able to judge quality content and rank it as good as Google presently does?

Problems For Webmasters

Regardless of how the whole Semantic Web scenario plays out, it may have some consequences for webmasters and marketers. At least in the initial stages until you can adjust or optimize your sites to this new 400 pound Gorilla on the block.

One major concern is how will the literal translation or semantic meaning of your site’s title and URL determine your placement in a semantically themed search engine? Most webmasters know to place their major keywords in their site’s domain name but, if you cover many topics within your site, this is not always possible.

Plus, does a Semantic Web mean everything will probably have to be tagged to the nth degree as we are seeing in blogs, social media and Web 2.0? Thankfully this can be easily done with free software such as WordPress which has tagging already built into its programming.

If we do get truly semantic search, wouldn’t on page factors play an even greater role for ranking? Special care would have to be taken as regards to your keywords and keyword variations. Great care will also have to be taken with page Titles, Meta Tags and your URLS.

I notice I am listed in Hakia for certain keywords but those have the direct phrases in the URLS.

Keen observers will also note that Google is now listing five or six related links in the number one SERPs position for certain keyword phrases. All these links come from the same site but are they more semantically related to the search enquiry than traditional links we have seen in Google? Or are they more in line with the gallery pages we see in Hakia?

Of course, jumping to any conclusions based on just one or two examples is foolhardy to say the least. Especially where search engines are concerned.

Brave New Internet

No doubt, Semantic Search or a Semantic Web poses some difficult obstacles and challenges as we seek a more human response from all those bits and bytes. For example, will semantic search mean we will have more closely focused sites strictly sticking to the topic of the url or domain name. Will the semantic web be more restricting than liberating?

When it is all said and done, will we really be able to devise a computer/machine/system that will be able to truly interpret the vast stored knowledge and give us the right meaningful answers to our questíons? Will it be able to be programmed so it’s human enough to not only understand but also interpret the subtle differences and meanings we have for different words in the whole context of a webpage?

Perhaps the most intriguing question, can someone take the present day ‘www index’ and then apply microformats or even new technology to this massive data and build a supplemental exclusive extension of the present day web? Turn it into a more semantic ‘natural language search’ accessible index. If such a gigantic feat was even feasible, you would also have to wonder who could have the resources to make such a creature possible!

As we have seen from Google a dance is not necessarily a dance and a slap is not necessarily a slap. Could an index be more than an index? It may be too early to tell, but Google will probably be better equipped to quickly adjust than anyone to this new Semantic Web whatever shape or form it takes.

Author:  Titus Hoskins is a full-time online marketer. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Software Or for the most powerful marketing software try: Internet Marketing Tools

Beginning on April 14th, 2007, a firestorm blew through the Internet community with the search engine optimization (SEO) community burning the hottest. The embers were warm and waiting for a strong wind to blow and kick up the flames, but it took Matt Cutts, the Google engineer extraordinaire to fire the flames with an off-the-cuff comment about “paid links.”

The flames raged and in most forums, the wind quickly shifted moving the firestorm back towards Cutts and Google. Thread Watch offered the most biting rebuttal to Cutts’ comments: Google Wants Reports of Paid Links… What a Joke and The Real Reason Google Doesn’t Like Paid Links.
Aaron Wall at Thread Watch is a respectable fellow, and he tore into Google with a ferociousness that I had not anticipated. Matt Cutts tried to answer some of Aaron’s questions, but it seemed that Cutts’ rebuttals only added more fuel to the fire.
I would not have wanted to be in Matt Cutts’ shoes that week. Oh my, it was brutal!
Even on Cutts’ own blog where the “paid link” comment originally surfaced (Hidden Links), Danny Sullivan posted a question that went unanswered, so Sullivan commented about it on his site: Time For Google To Give Up The Fight Against Paid Links?
Search Engine Watch even mentioned this issue and linked to additional forums where the debate was raging: Google Goes to War on Paid Text Links
What Most Readers Took From Cutts’ Comments
There were only a few readers who took Matt Cutts’ comments to be brotherly-advice.
The vast majority of people were screaming that Google intended to exercise their “monopoly control” over the Internet to run all of their competitors out of business.
Generally, I am not a “reactionary” type person. But for about an hour, even I had a ball in the pit of my stomach.
The ball passed from the pit of my stomach when I read a post that mirrored an opinion I have openly written about numerous times before: How does Google determine the “intent” of a person making a link? They can’t!
Understanding The Nuances Of Similar Items
Some people suggest that I should be ashamed of myself for speculating about the future of Google’s algorithms. There is even one clown, who has suggested that I should fear mentioning Matt Cutts’ name in an article, because I am bound to draw Cutts’ ire against me and my businesses. But, I am not worried.
I am simply laying out my “speculative” opinion about what Cutts’ comments might mean to my business and yours. You are free to use your own brain to judge the value of my words.
Am I playing a double standard when I say that Google cannot determine the intent of the person placing a link, and then I comment on how I interpret the future of the Google search algorithms? I don’t think so, and let me tell you why.
Google uses algorithms (software programs) to make distinctions about what a web page is about, how they value that page, and to judge the nature of a link.
I use my intellect (or as some would suggest, my lack thereof) to make a judgment about what Google has told us we should expect from them in the future.
I trust software to a certain extent, but software cannot always read the nuance that separates two very similar items. So, how can the Google algorithm be expected to determine the intent of a person who placed a link?
It has always been my contention that humans are “required” in any process that must make an interpretation of nuance. In my businesses, we refuse to trust computers to make judgments of nuance, because they can’t. That is the reason we employ human beings to process orders.
What Is Google’s Intent Behind The Paid Links Issue?
The whole of Cutts’ argument seems to hinge on nixing “paid links” that are designed to manipulate or “game Google’s PageRank” and to a lesser extent, their organic search results. Google seems to be really agitated that webmasters are “selling links based on the PageRank value of a page.”
The problem is that webmasters are selling an intangible asset that is wholly owned by Google and maintained for “Google’s benefit.” Webmasters are selling this Google asset, but Google will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale.
As a result, Cutts suggested that webmasters should use some method that Google’s spider can use to recognize and distinguish “paid links” from “given links.” Since Google’s algorithm is based on the theory that links are given to websites that deserve those links, the paid links on high PageRank pages can really skew Google’s PageRank values and its organic search results.
Here Is Where It Gets Ugly
Both honest and dishonest people inhabit this Internet.
Google wants webmasters who are selling links to distinguish paid links from given links, so that Google can ignore “links purchased to influence PageRank.”
If honest people distinguish paid links in a way that Google can recognize, then the market demand for those links will dry up. Once the PageRank value of a link is taken away from the buyer, the buyer will be forced to purchase links based only on the traffic that the specific web page receives. If all paid link decisions were based only on a web page’s traffic, then the market value of a link would be decimated.
Once a webmaster tells his link-buying customers that his or her links will no longer carry PageRank value to the buyer’s website, then the value of that link will drop in most cases by 80% or more. Why would a webmaster want to reduce the market value of his links by 80%?
Although Google’s links do not pass PageRank to the websites that are in their index or paid listings, we have to ask ourselves one thing. Would Google be willing to take a step that would reduce the market value of their own links by 80%? They certainly would not do anything that would cut their own bottom line that deeply, yet they are asking webmasters to do just that.
This is the reason people are teed off at Google. At least 80% of the market value of a link is driven by the PageRank value of the web page where the link will be placed.
Dishonest people don’t care to play by the rules; they will continue to sell their PageRank value, as long as they continue to have buyers. Only the honest will suffer.
Link Buyers Are Green With Envy
Link Buyers are envious of the PageRank value given to other web pages, and they want a bit of that value passed over to their own websites.
Link buyers are green with envy, because they can see that little green bar in the top of their browser that tells them how much value Google gives a web page in its algorithms.
If Google were to keep PageRank as a private value, known only to them, then “paid links” would not be an issue for them to manage.
If the public cannot see what a page’s PageRank value is, then link buyers would not be able to use PageRank to influence their link buying decisions, and webmasters would not be able to market their PageRank value to other websites.
How Simple Is That?
All Google has to do to solve this problem of theirs, is to take away the indicator people use to buy and sell PageRank.
Someone suggested to me that Google would never do away with the PageRank indicator in their toolbar, because Google feels that it is the only thing that ensures that people will keep the Google toolbar in their browser. Personally, I will continue to use the Google toolbar for my searches, even if the PageRank indicator was not there, because I like the search results Google gives to me. But that is just my opinion, and I am only one person out of millions of Google toolbar users.
What it boils down to is this. If Google is serious about nixing schemes to buy and sell PageRank, then they would simply take their PageRank indicator away from us. But will they take it away? Only time will tell.
Author:  Bill Platt offers article ghost writing and article distribution services through thePhantomWriters.com. He also offers a guaranteedlink building service, utilizing article marketing as its foundation, through LinksAndTraffic.com. If you have any questions about Bill’s services, you can reach him by phone from 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday at 405-780-7745.