Search Engine Strategy & Optimization Updates for..

Highlights in this month's updates...

* Google...
›› Google Notifying Webmasters of Spam Violations
›› Releases NEW 'unavailable_after' Meta Tag
* Google AdWords...
›› NEW impression share reporting metric helps identify Lost Sales
›› Greatly Improves Location Targeting for Ad Preview Tool
* Google AdSense...
›› New Site Authentication program finally allows AdSense to deliver targeted ads on password protected sites
* Yahoo Search Marketing...
›› Releases precision-targeted, customizable new SmartAds tool which may give them a genuine revenue edge over their rivals
* Windows Live...
›› Increases search share while Google and Yahoo fall
›› Now supporting autodiscovery of XML sitemaps
›› Signs ad deal with Digg.com
›› Goes on an ad network buying spree
* Ask...
›› Ask Launching new search history privacy tool



Google Update http://www.google.com
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
http://www.google.com/downloads

What's new

Google Notifying Webmasters of Spam Violations

Google recently launched a new program designed to make it easier to alert you of potential spam violations on your website. If you have a Google Webmaster Central account, you may have already noticed the new message center.

Hopefully, you haven't actually received any letters, since the message center is (currently) exclusively dedicated to informing webmasters that their sites have violated Google's webmaster guidelines.

Here is a sample letter that a Webmaster might receive:

July 16, 2007

Dear site owner or webmaster of www.example.com,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that were outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html.

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, we have temporarily removed some webpages from our search results. Currently pages from www.example.com are scheduled to be removed for at least 30 days.

Specifically, we detected hidden text on www.example.com.

We would prefer to have your pages in Google's index. If you wish to be reincluded, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When you are ready, please visit:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reinclusion?hl=en

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

As you can see, not only does Google inform you that your pages have been removed from their search results, but they also inform you how to reinclude them. This is obviously a welcome gift to webmasters who (willingly or not) violated Google's webmaster guidelines and would now like to make amends.

Google actually began sending these notifications by email back in 2005. However, Google had to temporarily suspend the practice when fake versions were sent out to webmasters in Germany. In fact, these fake notifications led to the idea of the Message Center – a place where a webmaster could know for sure that a warning or penalty came from Google.

However, the advent of the Message Center does not mean that Google will stop sending out regular emails, only that a copy will also go to the message center. That way, a webmaster can determine if the notification actually comes from Google or is a fake. At the same time, Google can still communicate with people who do not have a Google Webmaster account (although those people are susceptible to receiving fake emails).

Finally, it's worth noting that the Google message center is capable of providing information in all supported Webmaster Tools languages, across all countries. So if English is not your preferred language, you can still get a Google traffic ticket.

Kudos to Google for launching the Message Center. One more step towards becoming a more webmaster-friendly search engine.

Google Releases New 'unavailable_after' Meta Tag

Google recently announced the addition of a new META tag called unavailable_after. With this new tag, webmasters will be able to label articles with an expiration date. That means that when Google sends out the spiders, they'll crawl over the tag and know when the page should no longer be listed in the search results. This is great for time-sensitive material, such as a grand-opening or a special deal.

There may be a number of SEO advantages to this tag. To start with, you can better direct the search engine spider's time on your site. Why have them waste their time crawling and indexing pages that you no longer want people to see? Furthermore, you may also find yourself facing less competition as competitor-sites begin directing Google to ignore their time-sensitive pages.

Using this tag is simple. For instance, let's say that you want Google to remove a particular page from their search results after 5pm Eastern Standard Time on August 17, 2007. All you have to do is add the following tag to the first section of the page:



It will take a day or so from the removal date for the page to actually be removed from Google's search results. Also worth noting is that, although the page is removed from Google's search results, it still remains listed within Google's system. In order to completely remove a page from Google you can use Google's URL removal tool. However, that option has drawbacks so be careful.



Google AdWords http://adwords.google.com

What's new

NEW impression share reporting metric helps identify Lost Sales

AdWords recently added a new metric that lets you track how often your ads are being displayed compared to how often they could be displayed if you had a maximum ad quality score and a maxed out budget.

They're calling the new metric Impression Share, and they've added the following three columns to the AdWords report interface:

Impression Share (IS): The percentage of times your ads were shown out of the total available impressions in the market you were targeting. This metric is available at the campaign and account level for search.

Lost IS (Rank): The percentage of impressions lost due to low Ad Rank (cost-per-click bid x Quality Score).

Lost IS (Budget): The percentage of impressions lost due to budget constraints.

The new metric is designed to let you know if you're missing out on potential sales by not having your ads show often enough. Sometimes ads which you thought were being displayed every time someone typed in the keywords you're bidding on turn out to be displayed infrequently. This is generally due to a low ad quality score.

While it can be a useful tool, it's important to remember that you don't necessarily want your ads running all the time. If your tracking shows that you rarely get sales on the weekends, but you get lots of non-converting clicks, you may not want your ads running at that time.

For more information check out the AdWords Blog.

Greatly Improves Location Targeting for Ad Preview Tool

Ever wonder what your Google ads look like to a user in Denmark who's searching using Google Spain? Probably not, but it's likely you're targeting at least a few international markets and it's a good idea to know what kinds of ads people in other countries are seeing.

The Google Ad Preview Tool is designed to do just that. You can now see exactly what ads and search results a user in any country using any version of Google sees. Although this tool was released almost a year ago, it's still worth mentioning if you're targeting international markets, because it lets you see who you're up against both for PPC and organic search.

Google recently improved it by adding the countries to a drop-down menu so you don't have to enter them manually.

More from the AdWords blog.



Google AdSense https://www.google.com/adsense/

What's new

New Site Authentication program finally allows AdSense to deliver targeted ads on password protected sites.

Up until now, if you've used AdSense on your password-protected site, you've probably been less than impressed with a lack of relevant ads. That's all about to change, though. Google's just introduced the Site Authentication program so that webmasters can display relevant Google ads on their password secure sites!

Let's back up for a moment to understand why this is so crucial. When Google sends out the spiders, both for ad generation purposes and for search result purposes, they occasionally encounter password-protected sites. For the poor little crawler that reaches these pages, it's like a dead-end locked door.

Given that Google's spiders don't have a username and password, they are effectively locked out. This might not matter so much for search results (after all, you may not want these pages showing up in the search engines), but it does matter a great deal if you're showing AdSense.

After all, AdSense is all about finding the right ads for your site. If you post an article about credit repair, you want ads for credit card companies and financial advisors, not for environmental groups. The right ads appear on your site because the spiders are able to analyze the keywords on your pages. However, if they can't crawl your site then they can't look for keywords. All you're left with are generic ads that aren't really relevant to your content.

With the new Site Authentication program, you can give Google's crawlers a key to that locked door. And granting access is really easy, even if you're not especially computer-savvy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your AdSense account.
2. Click on the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Click on the Site Authentication Link.
4. Enter the URL and login information.
5. As prompted, verify that you are the site's Webmaster.

That's it! Note that you will only have access to the Site Authentication program if you've updated your AdSense login to a Google Account. Once you've authenticated your site, you'll have granted the Google AdSense spider access to your site. And that means more relevant ads and higher profits.




Yahoo Update http://www.yahoo.com

Slow month at Yahoo Search—nothing strategically significant to report.




Yahoo Search Marketing
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/

What's New

Releases precision-targeted, customizable new SmartAds tool which may give them a genuine revenue edge over their rivals

Yahoo may be eating Google's dust when it comes to search advertising, but the race between these two Internet giants just got more interesting. Yahoo recently announced they aren't giving up the advertising fight just yet, revealing their newest banner platform and making waves in the online community. Called SmartAds, this program could make Yahoo a contender again.

SmartAds is an innovative new way for advertisers to reach the clients they truly want to reach. It uses data about individual Internet users to customize the ads they see. For example, if you'd recently searched for women's clothing on the Yahoo search engine, the ad you see will be for clothing retailers in your hometown. However, it actually goes a step further—SmartAds will customize the colors and images in the ad's banner as well to reflect your demographic.

But if Yahoo is keeping track of all your information with its smart programs, is that a threat to your privacy? This is exactly the question some of today's top analysts are asking. Reports by ABC news and other news sources question if Yahoo is taking profiling a step too far.

The bottom line is this: Are these smart advertisements just the first step? Is Yahoo playing Big Brother? AdSense, the program currently used by Google, customizes your ads based on your keyword searches and zip code. But Yahoo ups the ante by actually compiling a history of your activities.

With over 500 million Yahoo users, advertisers don't see SmartAds as a spy program—they see it as a wonderful opportunity to cut costs. Instead of mass advertising, much of which is done blindly, advertisers can stop paying for lingerie ads that appear to men and children's toy ads that appear to people who don't have children—at least, that's the hope. And not having to read ads for auto services in Detroit when you live in Miami will save consumers some valuable time as well. Advertisers see this as a win-win situation.

And this situation is exactly what Yahoo needs. After disappointing revenue reports, CEO Terry Semel parted ways with Yahoo earlier this year to the cheers of many shareholders. As the Google empire continues to grow, Yahoo and other search engine sites have significant reason to worry. However, SmartAds could give Yahoo a chance to reclaim some of its glory.

This platform will work well with another of Yahoo's recent purchases, RightMedia. The RightMedia ad network is a direct competitor to Google's new pet, DoubleClick. As the FTC weighs whether to approve both deals it will be interesting to see the head-to-head battle. Will Yahoo out-maneuver Google in the advertising industry? Stay tuned!




Windows Live Search Update http://search.live.com/

What's New

Microsoft Increases Search Share While Google and Yahoo Fall

When Microsoft launched its own search engine more than two years ago, most people didn't take notice. Since then, Microsoft has been struggling to get a foothold in the search marketing industry. But Microsoft's efforts may finally be starting to pay off.

Microsoft's search share jumped last month from 8.4% to 13.2%, while Google saw their's fall from 67% to 62.7%. Most of the boost in traffic appears to have come from Microsoft's Live Search Club, where users play games to win points they can exchange for Microsoft products. And, of course, most of the games require that you use Microsoft's Live search engine.

Live Search Club doesn't require consumers to pay a fee or go through a long registration process. A few clicks to create a user name, and you can begin playing. The games found on Live Search Club are vocabulary-based, and when users enter an answer, Live Search automatically uses Microsoft's search engine to display relevant results to the word.

For example, in a game that resembles a word find, users may find the hidden word gecko in the puzzle. Below their game, a typical search engine result list appears, as if one had searched for the word gecko.

And it isn't just the fun aspect of the games that is drawing more and more people to register each day. When you play a game, you earn tickets, and after building up your account with these tickets, you can cash them in for prizes, including a copy of Windows Vista or Microsoft Office, a webcam, or even an Xbox 360.

Not bad for a day's work, and best of all, these goals are obtainable. Whereas other gaming sites only allow you to buy chances to win prizes, Microsoft's rewards are very real. Essentially, they're paying users to play games and use their search engine.

Critics wonder if this will translate into real search engine growth. In other words, will users begin to make legitimate searches, or will they simply show up on Live Search Club to play the games, while still using Google or Yahoo to search for information? It's too soon to tell.

Another problem with this system is the use of user-generated programs (or bots) to artificially play the games for them (thus earning them tickets and, eventually, prizes). Some say that Microsoft's increased market share is largely due to these user-generated bots.

While it's not nearly enough to threaten Google's leadership status, if Microsoft has a few more months like this and a chunk of those game players stick around to become regular searchers, Microsoft could be giving Google a run for their money before long.

Microsoft Now Supporting Autodiscovery of XML Sitemaps

Although they signed on to the concept of sitemap autodiscovery several month's ago, Microsoft only just recently got around to deploying it.

Sitemap autodiscovery simply means that search engines can find your XML sitemap (formerly called a Google Sitemap before all the other search engines began using them too) by simply crawling your robots.txt file. You simply tell search engines where your sitemap is adding the following line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: sitemap_location

Note: Replace sitemap_location with the actual location of your sitemap.

At the moment Microsoft does not have a way to manually submit your sitemap, but autodiscovery works well and is supported not only by Microsoft but by Google, Yahoo and Ask as well.

As for the other search engines:

* Google – Sitemaps can be submitted directly via Webmaster Central (sign into your Google Account), crawled via autodiscovery, or you can ping Google at: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

* Yahoo – Sitemaps can be submitted directly via SiteExplorer (sign into your Yahoo account) or you can ping Yahoo at: http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=sitemap_url

* Ask – No manual submit, but you can use autodiscovery or submit by pinging Ask at the following URL: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Again, in all these examples replace sitemap_url with the path to your actual sitemap.

Microsoft Signs Ad Deal With Digg.com

Microsoft and social news sharing site Digg.com have hooked up a 3-year advertising deal. Ads from Microsoft's advertising network are due to replace the currently appearing Google AdSense ads shortly. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Digg says they looked at both Google and Yahoo before deciding to sign up with Microsoft.

Microsoft Goes on an Ad Network Buying Spree

In addition to their recent advertising deal with Digg, Microsoft also recently locked in deals with in-game advertiser EA games and online advertising exchange AdECN. They've also announced the launch of a new research group focused on advertising.

AdECN's ad exchange is a service in which ads are auctioned off to advertising networks, similar to a stock exchange. In essence, they purchase ad space from web sites and then resell them to advertisers in a bidding process. It works similar to the Right Media ad exchange Yahoo purchased a few months back. AdECN is expected to be integrated with Microsoft's adCenter, most likely as a way to improve adCenter's current PPC bidding technology.

In the words of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer,

"We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business. This is essential if our software plus services vision is going to come to fruition."

In light of the buying spree these top search engines have been on lately, it's looking like a good time to be an ad network.



Ask Update http://www.ask.com

What's new

Ask Launching New Search History Privacy Tool

Ask.com is getting ready to release AskEraser, a tool which will let users delete any trace of their searching history from Ask's records.

They're also preparing to roll out a 18-month search history retention policy, after which all search records will be separated from IP address or other data that could be used to connect a given search to someone's personal identity. Google has announced a similar program in which they will anonymize all search records after 24 months.

With AskEraser, users who opt in to the program will have their data destroyed immediately after they search, although Ask hasn't specified exactly how they plan to carry out the technical aspects of such a request.