Reuben Yau

Lee Odden wrote a post about how he thought search engine rankings are turning into a myth and that there’s much more involved than just monitoring search engine rankings. He also mentions monitoring visibility in blog, video and audio searches and that his firm stopped using Web Position Gold in 2003.

I posted a comment, but I guess it got caught up in his spam filters or something, so I thought I’d post here and hopefully get my opinion heard via a trackback.

Lee’s point is that with personalization, search engine rankings are turning into a myth because results are going to vary for each person performing the search. While this is true my tests show that the results do not change significantly enough for this to be called a myth.

Ranking reports are still beneficial because they give you a sense of whether your optimization techniques are working. Since personalization is now an issue, I use ranking reports as a guide and tell clients likewise. So many people are hung up on the rankings of a few key terms that they sometimes miss the big picture.

As far as blog, video and audio search and other “visibility” factors are concerned, for the SME clients I deal with, there’s so little content and such little demand in those spaces right now that it’s not worth it for them to invest their time in writing a blog, or creating other content. As a marketing consultant that keeps business through showing proven sales results, I have to think about my clients’ best interests as far as resource allocation, so advising them to blindly follow the latest trend isn’t always in their best interests.

As far as calling search engine rankings a myth, I think that’s taking it a little too far, they aren’t (yet) on par with the myth of search engine submissions.

I was looking through an overall keyword conversion report in Analytics and noticed some strange search phrases appearing. They looked like long strings of random numbers and characters. It turns out that AOL must be testing some new URL structure in the search results and changed the variable that identifies the search query. I took a look at the urchin.js and noticed that the new query variable (userQuery) is not included.

The urchin.js file currently has these variables to define AOL:

_uOsr[3]="aol"; _uOkw[3]="query";
_uOsr[4]="aol"; _uOkw[4]="encquery";

To track the new AOL search queries just place these 2 lines before the urchinTracker() function in your Google Analytics tracking code:

_uOsr.push("aol");
_uOkw.push("userQuery");

Update: I replaced the manual insertion of elements into the _uOsr and _uOkw arrays with the push() function which is a much better solution.

I really enjoyed this post by donna, so I thought I’d put together my own favorite five, based on what I’ve seen over the years:

1) Renaming pages or moving them to a different directory location without putting in 301 redirects (this is by far the most common and worst of all mistakes)

2) URL spamming (by choice or by accident)

3) Redesigned website/homepage with a flash intro page - but it looks so cool!

4) Relying too heavily on one type of inbound link (playing the cat and mouse game with Google)

5) Moved to a new webhost and forgot to also move the robots.txt and/or .htaccess files.

Many of these items could easily be avoided if the website owner retained the services of an online marketing consultant.

One of my clients was recently accepted into the Google Pay Per Action beta program, so I started to set up the actions, conversion tracking and ad campaigns.

One of the biggest problems with PPA is that it’s really not really geared towards a typical ecommerce site. Most ecommerce sites have one template for the receipt page, which is where you usually place conversion tracking codes.

Now consider a store that sells a number of products from $30 to $50,000 per item. I may be willing to pay $1000/action for the $50,000 item, what if someone then buys the $30 item? Continue reading…

So now that I’ve had a chance to see the new version, I quite like it. I can also confirm that my hack to obtain the full referring URL still works. The only minor difference in the interface is how you get to the Top Content report in the left navigation menus and the filter is now moved to the bottom of the page. Here’s a screenshot to confirm:

Yes, a new version is soon coming.

I haven’t yet seen it, but I’m hoping that it has a report which shows the full URL including all the parameters by default and/or doesn’t mess with the Google Analytics hack I put in place. I guess I’ll find out when one of my accounts get converted in the coming weeks. I’ll keep an eye out and post any observations/modifications to the javascript code as soon as I have it figured out.

Google Local Business Center is down for maintenance and is displaying this humorous error message.

Here’s the transcript for those not able to view the image:

The Google Local Business Center is unavailable for the next hour

We appreciate your patience as we perform some routine system maintenance.

More specifically, we’re updating ‘the backend’ (to employ that catchy, catchall moniker coined and lent to us by engineering folks who work on all of the technical fiddly bits behind the scenes but know we communications folks can’t very well say ‘We’re updating all of the technical fiddly bits behind the scenes’ and expect you, an enlightened Google user, to take us seriously or at least not wonder aloud ‘ Wait, what sort of bits were those again?’).

So please check back in sixty minutes. Maybe less, considering the time you’ve invested in deciphering this message.

I like the way Yahoo Sponsored Search displays the character count as you create ads, but unfortunately we don’t get that little luxury with Google AdWords, so I created this little tool to count the characters as well as preview the ad and have the ability to copy it into a local document. It also gives you the ability to add in some Google Analytics tracking variables to the destination URL.

I use this tool at work almost every day and it’s saved me a lot of time, I hope you find it as useful.

Matt Cutts [post] requested that people use their account in the webmaster central console to report sites that are selling links. This kicked off a storm, among the webmasters and SEO community, which was bound to happen. Here are a few of my thoughts about this whole paid link issue.

It’s Just The Next Step
Over the past few years we’ve seen all kinds of methods used to try and artificially inflate a site’s PageRank, but every step of the way Google has been making updates to discount these methods, which have included:

1) Link farms
2) Reciprocal links
3) 3 way links
4) Directories

There may be others, but these have been the most obvious methods tackled.

This Isn’t New
Matt warned about paying for links specifically for PageRank purposes back in September 2005. In that post he says:
Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.

I talked to my business partner about it and the only thing that really came out of our conversation was how they would detect paid links and how aggressive the algo would become. Our concern is that if they turned up the wick too high it would catch valid, non paid links.

Although being caught in the cross fire and being wrongly identified as buying or selling text links wouldn’t be fun for myself or any of my clients, I do think that Google will be stepping very cautiously on this issue.

People Have Been Asking For This
One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically

Redirects Pass PageRank
The suggested guidelines for anyone selling links is to use the rel=nofollow attribute, which prevents link popularity from being passed on, or to use a redirect script, which is Disallowed in the robots.txt file. Something which some people may not have picked up on, is that the latter method actually confirms that redirect scripts actually do pass on link popularity.

Affiliate Links
Some people are stretching the definition to include affiliate links or other links which are given through some means of compensation. Remember Google’s goal is to identify sites that sell links for PR. Affiliate links are not put in place to artificially inflate PR, infact by their very nature, they don’t do that because most often they aren’t text links with a key phrase as the link text. The link either goes through a 3rd party tracking script or includes some affiliate id, which is not ideal for PR inflating.

But Google Sells Links - It’s Hypocritical!
Yes they do, but those links are not intended to artificially inflate a site’s PageRank, they’re designed to send traffic.

Doesn’t Google Have the Resources To Do This?
Yes of course they do, but what better way to gather many examples, than from people in the field who are monitoring their competitors. Let’s face it, many people do a lot worse than reporting a bit of paid link spam.

You Democrats Can’t Have It Both Ways!
1) At pubcon 2006 Matt Cutts did a red/blue poll and the overwhelming majority were blue.
2) People complain that Digg.com isn’t being democratic when it pulls certain stories
3) Since Al Gore invented the internet (yeah I know… ) it should be a democratic state right? ;-)

But you complain when Google wants to put a stop to sites buying their way up instead of obtaining links based on their merit?

So You Like What Google Is Doing?
Yes, I love it. I have even sent in my own paid link spam report. It levels the playing field and hopefully gets rid of a lot of junk. I want to see quality content in the SERPs and on sites I visit - all those obvious paid links don’t add any value to me reading the site and I never click on them.

Google’s plans to dominate the online advertising world just took another leap forwards today when they announced the acquisition of Doubleclick.

At Google, we are constantly looking for new, innovative ways to make the information you want more accessible and more relevant—and to deliver it as fast as possible.

Once Google gets firmly established in the other major media outlets, TV, Radio, Newspaper, you have to wonder what’s next.

In 2034 will I wake up each morning and listen to my Google clock radio? Will I have ads beamed onto the inside of my shower curtain? When I take a number two, will I have TP with Sponsored Sheets? Will advertisers be billed on a PPR (Pay Per Roll) model?