In the latest round of the search-index size contest, Google unveiled an updated index it said is more than three times larger than that of any of its search engine competitors.

"We're celebrating our seventh birthday.... We had a pretty strong year," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a phone interview with CNET News.com, as he listed the launch of new products including Google Talk, Google Earth, Google Video and Google Desktop Search. "And we've sort of been struggling here with respect to the index. It has always been much larger than the others."

"We're announcing tonight that in terms of unduplicated pages our index is now three times larger than any other search engine," he said, without saying how many pages are in the index.

Google will stop providing on its search page a quantity of pages indexed, which previously was listed as 8 billion, "because people don't necessarily agree on how to count it," Schmidt said.

In addition, the company will encourage users to test out the search engines using a specialized query to see which provides the most results, he said.

"We want end users to derive the number to their satisfaction. They will discover that ours is larger," he said.

In a random test, using the search terms "Joe Schmoe" and "pickles," Google returned 451 results, Yahoo returned 62 results, MSN returned 60 results and Ask Jeeves returned 54 results.

Google took exception when Yahoo last month claimed that at more than 20 billion, its index was larger than Google's.

Search Engine Watch Editor Danny Sullivan has argued that relevancy matters most, and has urged the search engines to come together to develop a uniform way to measure relevancy.

"Who's biggest really doesn't matter, as I and others have written so, so, so, so, so many times before," he wrote in a blog after Yahoo's announcement last month.

Asked to respond to Sullivan's comment that relevance trumps size, Schmidt said: "You get better relevancy and more comprehensive news with a larger index."

"We congratulate Google on removing the index size number from its home page and for recognizing it is a meaningless number," Yahoo said in a statement. "As we've said in the past, what matters is that consumers find what they are looking for, and we invite Google users to compare their results to Yahoo search at http://search.yahoo.com."

According to Google, Google's Blog Search is "Google search technology focused on blogs". It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large. You can access it at http://www.blogsearch.google.com.

What the Big Deal Is

A lot of people have probably heard about this extra version of search Google has added and are greeting it with a big yawn, particularly since it's still in Beta. So what is the big deal, anyway?

The big deal is that the top search engine in the world, which was already paying particular attention to blogs in regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special level of search, and not just as an advanced search option, but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that closely, you should be too -- if you want better search engine results. Current fans of blogs will be able to search the freshest results so that they can see what is being discussed right now - information that is often as fresh as the news, and draws upon sources that the media-at-large either doesn't have ready access to, or interest in.

So to those with even the most obscure interests or hobbies, a blog search powered by a top search engine gives ready access to fresh information on any subject that someone can blog about.

And if a blog doesn't yet exist on these narrow themes? You can be the one to start the discussion.

Why It Matters to Your Business

Speaking of the media, this is likely to become one of the many tools that a journalist in the know would use in order to research a story, or to find out more information about a company, directly from the people who use its products or services.

Technorati, is at present, arguably a better tool, but it's just not as well known as the Google brand. If you're a power searcher, you already know what Technorati is. But the key thing to understand is that most consumers - even B2B consumers - aren't as deeply involved in the internet.

But even those folks know what Google is.

There's an even more obvious advantage to this specialized search.

Google Blog search has the unprecedented potential to bring the mainstream surfer into blogging, even more than Yahoo's RSS Headlines pioneered the start of making RSS mainstream about a year ago. Why?

While many of your clients will fall instantly in love with RSS, it's more fair to them to present its possibilities in a format that's easier for them to digest. It's not as hard to explain a blog - and if you can't, you can simply tell them it's a more frequently updated part of your existing site.

When Google's Blog Search is brought more to the front in coming months, if your site gets into position to be visible when more of the internet population becomes blog-happy, then the traffïc potential for your site may prove to be enormous.

The proper use of one RSS feed in one of my content management systems doubled my traffïc, with most of the new users coming from Yahoo, this time last year. Another feed increased my daily traffïc another 75%, and brought me additional return traffïc as well.

At the time the margin between Yahoo and Google was wider than it is today -- so the potential increase from being in Google boggles the mind.

How to Get Listed

According to the Blog Search Help Page:

"If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a förm that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven't picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this."

This means that if you're already blogging - and responsibly pinging, you're probably already listed.

If you haven't been blogging, you're in luck. This special brand of Google search is still in Beta, so if you get moving now, you still have enough time to start getting into position. And since the search currently seems to be focused on freshness and relevance, if you keep up the blogging once you start, and you keep your theme narrow, you could still dominate your niche.

Do It Today

The mantra for blogging before was that, proper blogging is a sure fire way to increase traffïc, as well as build stronger ties to your end users or clients, not to mention that it is the simplest of the many implementations of RSS.

Now, with all three major search engines paying more attention to both RSS and Blogging, you can get spidered more frequently, get more of your pages indexed more deeply, and be included in more searches.

You have absolutely no time to waste - if you're not blogging already, you need to get started quickly. Many webmasters are hesitating because they haven't been able to find a blog system that fits well with their site, or find the most popular tools too sophisticated for their needs.

There are literally dozens of frëe resources to help you decide between the standard systems that were originally built for the personal blogger, and the more robust solutions that are aimed at the medium-sized or corporate company - but that's another article.

Whatever you chose, the important thing is to get started blogging today. You'll be missing out on targeted traffïc from the most dominant search engine, from the most sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it, the mainstream web.

About The Author
Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the co-owner of Leveraged Promotion, which provides many solutions for companies who prefer to out-source their online promotion needs. At Blog.LeveragedPromotion.com you can find out more about how RSS, Blogs and Podcasting can increase your online visibility.

Microsoft asked Keynote Systems not to make a survey of search engine users available to the public.

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Editor's Note: Can MSN meet Steve Ballmer's call for search supremacy? Will MSN's relevance impact your decision to advertise with them? Tell us about it at WebProWorld.

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The numbers didn't look good for the home team in Redmond, the Wall Street Journal reported, and that may have led Microsoft to request the suppression of a search engine study. In the study, MSN Search fell to 5th from 3rd among 2,000 users surveyed in the second quarter of 2005.

Relevance drove the drop, as 27 percent of users found their general search results lacking. 37 percent working with specific geographical locations, ie local search, didn't find the relevance they wanted, WSJ cites the Keynote survey as reporting.

Microsoft says they asked Keynote not to disclose the study, which would have mentioned MSN Search's drop in a press release. A MSN information services group director, Lisa Gurry, claims Microsoft had problems with Keynote's methodology. The results they found didn't match Microsoft's research.

MSN claims that a better assessment of its search performance can be found in its search queries share in the US. WSJ notes comScore's numbers have MSN's percentage at 15.5 percent for July. In comparison, Google had 36.5 percent for the month, and Yahoo had 30.5 percent.

Yahoo figures in the MSN equation, because until February MSN used Yahoo's search to handle its queries. Since the switch to in-house search technology, users have fled for more relevant search engine sites, according to the report.

One of those destinations has been Google, which continues to vex Microsoft with its rollout of products and the much-rumored massive network it is constructing. An internal paper on the Google threat, constructed by MSN execs and seen by the Journal, said "Google threatens Microsoft's position on the Internet, and could potentially lock Microsoft out of its existing distribution channels and reduce the value of Windows."

That document likely led to the recent reorganization of Microsoft's corporate structure, paring seven divisions to three. This morning, Microsoft declared a dividend of 8 cents per share and announced a change to its corporate governance guidelines. Any director on Microsoft's board who has a majority of votes withheld in an uncontested election must resign.

Those directors may be taking another look at the "Google -- The Winner Takes All (And Not Just Search...)" paper, where executives noted the lack of innovative products created by MSN. It could be that an executive or two will be resigning before a director does, if MSN continues to slide, and putting the clamps on negative surveys won't stop that slide from happening.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Google is working on its most ambitious project to date, the creation of a global data transfer network that could effectively serve as a private Internet. Since the introduction of AdWords three years ago, Google has become the world's largest media company and advertising vehicle. It has grown to rival Microsoft in scope and scale. The process has made it a fully globalized corporation.

Google has an estimated $7billion in the bank and employs many of the brightest brains in IT. It also has a reputation for being one of the best tech firms in the world to work for and has been known to use that reputation to headhunt intellect from its rivals. It is focused on the burgeoning Chinese market and appears to be performing better there than its chief rival Microsoft is. Google has the obvious capital and intellectual resources to do just about anything it wants to.

There are a number of reasons backing speculation that Google is building its own global digital communications network. Google has formally entered the telecom business with the release of a VOIP client known as Google Talk. VOIP is an acronym for Voice Over IP, which is a synonym for Internet telephone. In order to provide this service Google has had to acquire technical and physical resources that, along with other assets held by the company, point to the construction of an alternative Internet.

As Microsoft has so ably demonstrated over the past twenty-five years, there are a number of profitable ventures found in a space monopolized by a single mega-corporation. If that is the path Google is taking, building the infrastructure to capitalize on it would be considered the crucial but difficult first step. Over the past ten months, Google has been purchasing a large quantity of redundant fiber-optic lines, (commonly referred to as dark-fiber), in cities around the world. This fiber was laid during the boom years of the late 1990's but left surplus after the dot-com crash in 2000. Speculation about Google building an alternative Internet has been circulating since early January 2005 when Google started buying and accumulating lots of dark-fiber.

Telecommunications industry news-source Light Reading today reported on some of Google's recent real estate acquisitions. Google is leasing large amounts of floor space in or near major telecom interconnection facilities such as the recent leasing of about 1/10th of the rentable space at 111 8th Ave in New York, one the world's largest telecommunications interconnection hubs. It is also said to be in negotiations for large amounts of space at enormous co-location centers (known as carrier hotels) on the west coast, with the goal of linking Google's North American and Asian networks.

In early 2005, Google began issuing RFP notices to relevant tech firms for the development of a DWDM fiber optics network. The RFP process ended earlier this month and Google is currently reviewing bids from multiple tech vendors. Google is said to be planning to first establish a network in North America and then connect it with similar networks established in Europe and Asia. The construction of such a network could give Google the ability to deliver multiple branded media such as music, video, online telephone and other Internet services to every home in the United States.

DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is a technology that exponentially increases the carrying capacity of fiber optic cables. According to an article in yesterday's IPMedia Monitor (sub req.), only a handful of the largest telecommunications providers operate commercial DWDM networks. A small number of private DWDM networks exist but few are large enough to need such capacity.

Google's need for bandwidth capacity is increasing rapidly. It currently pays the traditional telecom firms like AT&T who own the long-haul fiber lines a premium for bandwidth. Building its own data transfer network could be seen as a cost savings solution, especially as it could cost as little as $100millïon (in new spending) to construct one. Google already owns fiber throughout North America and around the world. It just needs to connect it all together.

Once connected, what could Google possibly do with a homebrewed state-of-the-art fiber-optics system? It could develop the kind of exclusive branded environment AOL originally dreamed of. It could capitalize on its recent innovations to provide life-service technologies such as Google Talk (VOIP) and interactive information resources such as local search alerts and the delivery of news, video and music files.

According to the IPMedia Monitor article, "... those who have reviewed the RFP say that Google's plans extend far beyond cost-saving motivation, with an architecture that puts a Google-controlled hub deep within all major metro areas."

Google's stated goal is to organize the world's information. A big part of that goal is to turn a profït while doing so. Google turns a very tidy profït each quarter but has long been seen as too reliant on one kind of income, paid search advertising. Google draws between 90 – 95% of its revenues from paid ads. The development of a Google operated data transfer network would give Google any number of ways to expand the number of productive revenue streams from 1 to 1+ more.

Then again, Google has always prided itself on its ability to organize the world's information and provide it frëe of charge to its users. The cost of Google's services is borne by the advertisers. Google might simply be exponentially increasing its online real estate inventory by enticing hundreds of millïons of new registered users to take a look at whatever it is they are creating. Assuming it is the coolest thing on the block when released and is faster and cheaper than its competitors (as most of Google's new products tend to be), many of those new users will choose to stick around to use the services offered by a Google branded network.

Google appears to be preparing to become the world's greatest data delivery vehicle. Perhaps this phase of Internet history will be summarized with the neo-business aphorism, "If you can't beat them and you can't join them, you can just make your own reality and make lots of monëy over there." Google has $7big in the bank, much of it being investor monëy. From all accounts, it is preparing to light up and connect millïons of miles of dark fiber, starting in North America possibly as early as the first quarter of 2006. Today we wire America. Tomorrow we wire the world. On Saturday, we'll do brunch.

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunïty to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at: jimhedger@stepforth.com.

Whether you like it or not, Google is the place to be ranked well. Yahoo! and MSN can offer their share of traffic, but nothing serves up traffic like a top ranking in Google. Unfortunately, no search engine is quicker to hand out a penalty either.

As the clear leader in the search engine market, it is hard to blame Google for being quick to hand out a penalty on a website. There are hundreds of 'black-hat' SEO techniques and tricks that all aim to 'crack' Google and give a website owner a top ranking without them doing as much work to achieve that ranking. If one person discovers a hole in Google, it takes very little time for an entire drove of website owners to start changing their sites to take advantage of this hole.
Whether you like it or not, Google is the place to be ranked well. Yahoo! and MSN can offer their share of traffïc, but nothing serves up traffïc like a top ranking in Google. Unfortunately, no search engine is quicker to hand out a penalty either.

As the clear leader in the search engine market, it is hard to blame Google for being quick to hand out a penalty on a website. There are hundreds of 'black-hat' SEO techniques and tricks that all aim to 'crack' Google and give a website owner a top ranking without them doing as much work to achieve that ranking. If one person discovers a hole in Google, it takes very little time for an entire drove of website owners to start changing their sites to take advantage of this hole.

But is Google too quick to hand out a penalty? They have claimed in the past that it would be unlikely that a legitïmate site would receive a penalty. However, with all the confusion on the Internet about what good SEO really is, is it possible that a legitïmate site owner accidentally employs a technique that is shared by spammers? The site owner may have no intention of defrauding Google, but they may receive the penalty all the same.

Google Plans to Alert Site Owners of Potential Problems

There is some great news for website owners who fear they may have been penalized by Google. Matt Cutts, the owner of this quickly growing blog and employee of Google, confirmed on his website that Google is piloting a new program which will proactively alert website owners of potential problems on their website.

This is definitely exciting for website owners who do not know if they have been penalized, but it should not be taken for something that it is not. Keep in mind the following points:

1. This is a pilot program. It is not a full fledged program that guarantees everyone will be contacted who has been negatively effected. Chances are, you will not be contacted at all.

2. It is an automated program. Google will not have any one person sending out these emails, but a bot that will have to 'discover' your email address. If it can't find one, it will try to guess an email address. If you are good at protecting yourself from sp@m, you may not get a message from Google even if they want to contact you.

There may be a day in the not-so-far future where Google is able to contact legitïmate website owners who made an honest (or maybe not so honest) mistake. That day is not hëre yet, so the responsibility is still that of the individual website owner to make sure they have a legitïmate website in the eyes of Google.

The Many Ways to Get Penalized by Google

There are many ways to get accidentally penalized by Google. Preventing your site from being penalized takes a lot of attention to detail. Even if you have hired on a professional SEO firm, you should be mindful of the problems that can arise from a simple mistake. Below are several things to look out for on your site.

Duplicate Pages

This is a common problem, and a problem that can be difficult to avoid, especially if you have a large website. Duplicate pages are pages that have essentially the same content; it is an old trick employed by search engine spammers. Search engine spammers would use the same page over and over again, but change keywords at the bottom of the page to create some variance and to focus in on different niches.

Accidentally recreating this sp@m technique can be very easy to do. Below are a few ways in which you could have duplicate pages without even knowing about it:

• If you use different landing pages in your advertising campaigns to measure ad effectiveness, you are essentially building duplicate pages. If Google discovers these different landing pages, they may think that you are using duplicate content.
  
  
• Sites that offer the ability to print pages often create two pages that have essentially the same content.

• Using mod_rewrite to create search engine friendly URL's can create duplicate pages. When you use mod_rewrite the server will serve up the same page regardless of whether you use the search engine friendly url or the regular url.

These are just a few examples of how duplicate pages can creep into your website. You should look for more ways that duplicate pages could have creeped into your website.

If you find that you do have duplicate pages within your website, you should use the robots.txt file to exclude the duplicate pages. We published an article last week about the robots.txt file which should be helpful: How to Prevent Duplicate Content with Robots.txt and Meta Tags

Redirecting Users

Another favorite technique of search engine spammers is to use redirects to create doorway pages (otherwise known as cloaking). The idea hëre is to present one page to a search engine spider that is optimized for the search engine and present an entirely different page to the user. Search engine spammers use all different types of redirects, from complicated javascrïpt redirects to simple http-refresh commands.

There are many valid reasons to redirect users on your website to a different page. Whether you are changing the name of your website or changing the structure, your website pages may not always be in the same place and you nevër want to löse a visitor to an ugly 404 page (even Google does not like 404 pages).

Google does recognize that you may need to throw in a redirection from time to time. If you need to do so, you should use a 301 redirect. There are several ways to employ a 301 permanent redirect. Below are two examples:

Example 1 - Using mod_rewrite

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Save this in a file called .htaccess and upload it to your server.

Example 2 - Using an Apache Redirect

Redirect 301 / http://www.yourdomain.com/

Save this in a file called .htaccess and upload it to your server.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the oldest search engine spamming technique known. All this entails is using your targeted keywords over and over and over again on your website. Keyword stuffing can happen throughout the content of your website, in hidden text, in the alt property of your images, in the meta tags of your website, in HTML comments, or a variety of other ways. To see an example of keyword stuffing, take a look at this thread over in our SEO Tips and Tricks portion of our forums.

The example above is an exaggerated example of keyword stuffing, but it happens a lot with website owners. The desire to rank high in the search engines often leads a person to put their keywords in their site much more often than they would do so normally. As a general rule, if the text on your page appears unnatural to you, it will appear unnatural to the search engines.

Be Vigilant and Be Natural

So far Google has done a decent job of keeping sp@m out of their index. It still finds its way into their results, especially for less competitive keywords, but when Google does find sp@m they tend to develop new methods to detect that sp@m and remove it from their index. Unfortunately they will inevitably affect website owners who really do not know that they are doing something wrong.

Google has taken a very positive step in starting their pilot program aimed at notifying website owners who may be innocently doing something wrong, but the responsibility ultimately will always reside with the website owner. If you are having troubles ranking well for your targeted keywords, take the time today to review your website. Ask yourself if you have duplicate pages, if you have any hidden text or are possibly stuffing keywords on your page. Do you have any redirects which could be misinterpreted? Take the time to re-read Google's webmaster info and familiarize yourself with it.

Getting to the top of Google is hard work, but it is well worth it when you reach the top.

About The Author
Does Google Penalize Innocent Websites was written by Mark Daoust, the owner of
Site-Reference.com.

If you wish to reprint this artice on your website, you may do so as long as all the links are active, this resource box is in place, and none of the links or the article is altered in any way. This applies to posting this article in forums or any other website. We do chëck those who reprint our articles for compliance on a regular basis.

Though copyright law predates the Internet, case law has been established regarding the indexing of copyrighted material, and it has come out in favor of the indexer. Publishers who have issues with Google's Print for Libraries project may end up with little more than hurt feelings.

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Editor's note: Google is receiving legal support for Google Print. Will this affect the way they index these collections? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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Late in 2004, Google made a surprise announcement about an incredibly ambitious project to digitize and index millions of published works, with the aid of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Oxford University, and the New York Public Library. The project was/is expected to cost upwards of $200 million over at least 10 years.

The entire text of books considered to be public domain and out of copyright will be scanned and made available online. For copyrighted material, the books will be scanned, and snippets will be made available structured around search terms with links to where the book can be checked out or purchased.

The publishing community, who had already signed up for Google Print for Publishers where snippets of copyrighted material were indexed for preview purposes, felt somewhat betrayed by Google as the Library project appeared to be sneaked in along side the Publisher program.

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Two major publishers, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), sent letters to Google asking them to stop the project as digitizing entire works of literature was a fundamental violation of copyright and would, in their opinion, hurt publishers and writers financially.

"…News of Google Print for Libraries came as a complete surprise. It had not been mentioned by Google representatives during any of the discussions they were having with our members, and Google's subsequent explanations of Google Print for Libraries have only increased that confusion and transformed it into mounting alarm and concern at a plan that appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale," read a letter written by Peter Givler on behalf of AAUP.

Technically that's correct, Google has not received explicit permission or paid to reproduce the material. Instead, the search engine has gone through the 5 selected libraries which have given permission to digitize all or some of their collections. Though Google paused the project in August to negotiate with publishers, scanning is slated to continue this autumn with publishers having the option to de-list themselves from the project.

Google, as well as critics of the publisher groups, has argued that the Library project will only help to increase exposure and book sales. Publishers say that is yet to be seen, that no one has the right to copy entire texts without permission, that the implications of allowing Google to do so would pave the way for others to do the same, that they're not convinced the system is secure, and that privacy issues (involving cookies and the Patriot Act) remain unresolved.

But all of these objections from publishers may yield little in court because of case law and Fair Use guidelines.

As this copyright analysis from Jonathan Band goes to great lengths to explain, ArribaSoft v. Kelly is one precedent ruling Google's legal team could use in its favor. In this case, image search engine ArribaSoft was cleared of accusations brought about in a lawsuit by a photographer who claimed indexing his copyrighted images was a violation of copyright law. The ruling that ArribaSoft was protected under four separate provisions of Fair Use was upheld in two separate courts.

Here are some of the key rulings in that case:

Read The Full Article


Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Providing wireless Internet looks like one potential for all the fiber Google has bought, but maybe they want to be more than that.

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Editor's note: Google VoIP, Google Pay-Per-Call, Google Phones? Maybe? Phone in your opinion on WebProWorld.

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It's Friday, always a day when writers everywhere dig deep into the mire of probability, speculation, and silliness, in order to find material and feed the ever-hungry audience on the web. For those in the tech world, the Google Game has become a weekly rite. Playing the game is easy - just follow what Google does and project what they intend to do.

Today's version plays upon other theories regarding Google and its acquisition of lots of unused 'dark fiber'. Om Malik and others have theorized about the potential for Google delivering ads, videos, maps, and other web content.

What if it's all about voice? Perhaps the vision of a wireless broadband network operated out of Mountain View is about VoIP instead of any of those services.

The announcement by Intrado of its V9-1-1 Mobility Service looks like another piece of the puzzle needed to ensure compliance with FCC 911 requirements. This component lets wireless VoIP providers have customer access to the emergency network. Failings in this area by Vonage and others have led to lawsuits and FCC involvement in resolving the problem.

"(I)f you want to offer Internet telephone service, you need to make sure your subscribers have access to the dedicated wireline 9-1-1 network," Intrado cites William Stofega, Research Manager with IDC's Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) Services Program, in a statement. "For any wireless carrier considering making the move into VoIP, solutions like Intrado's are worth investigating."
That last statement should cause major wireless carriers like Cingular, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile to reach for the antacids. Why? Well, Google just doubled its cash pile, and Intrado has been the focus of takeover rumors ever since Roy Disney started complaining about the company's business and compensation plans in July.

There's some sentiment among dissident Intrado investors that the company is undervalued. By extending their 911 call routing software to wireless VoIP uses, ensuring emergency calls can be routed correctly, Intrado has made itself a much more attractive target.

Google could pickup Intrado, set up a holding company or outsource customer service and sales of wireless handsets, and partner with a firm like LG to develop a Google branded device. Those handsets could have access to Google applications embedded, and deliver ads to users of those applications.

Its foray into print ads that include call-back numbers shows Google may be ready to delve more deeply into the pay-per-call advertising model. The geocoding used with Google Maps would allow them to target ad sales all the way down to a single street.

Google Talk is free. A Google Phone could be nominally priced, with VoIP supported by advertising. Since Google would own the network, by virtue of all that dark fiber it's purchased, its costs to carry calls would be much less. Maybe it's time to take another look at Google Mobile services; they appear to be ready to take advantage of this proposal.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The migration from print to online for news and business information has pushed down the money made from print ads.

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Editor's Note: Can you visualize a future where your ads appear in videos online? We want to hear about it on WebProWorld.

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In the distant past of 1995, InfoWorld was my primary source of technology information. I found that by following the magazine, and never missing a Bob Metcalfe or Stewart Alsop column, my tech education was progressing nicely. I even discovered that I was better informed than my superiors, and that helped me move up the IT food chain.

An InformationWeek article reminds me of how far the Internet has gained in importance for tech information. That article notes how revenue for the news and trade markets grew 8.7 percent in 2004, but will likely be half that in 2005.

That doesn't come as much of a mystery to those following the online advertising industry. Jupiter Research noted last month that revenue from search engine ads will double within five years to nearly $19 billion.

Yahoo had more than $1 billion in online ad revenue in the first quarter of 2005; that rose to $1.25 billion for the second quarter. Google's second quarter ad revenues were slightly higher at $1.36 billion. All that money comes at the expense of other media outlets, as the print world has seen.

Part of that change has happened as users switched from waiting for the weekly trade journal to arrive to going online for answers. Search engines like Google and Yahoo turn up multiple sources for pretty much every tech issue that exists.

Sites (besides the two mentioned) supported by advertising revenue, and blogs created by individual users, have picked up that traffic. According to research firm Outsell's Market View report, individuals are spending 15 percent less on printed news and trade journals than they did in 2001.

The article discusses how the news and trade industries have seen print ad revenue drop, and that lower cost online ads aren't covering those losses. As online ads gain in importance, a rise in their rates will eventually offset that print ad revenue loss.

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InformationWeek doesn't touch on one aspect of individuals and their purchasing habits, as they might relate to publications like themselves and InfoWorld. That aspect would be outsourcing. As tech companies have aggressively placed jobs in low-cost countries, American employees have found themselves changing fields. Why would someone keep buying tech magazines when embarking on a new career?

With fewer prospects for tech employment in the US, fewer students choose to enter the computer science fields in college. That leads to fewer tech trade readers, print or online, which now impacts print advertising to a much greater degree.

Broadband penetration in the US market has given more households the means to access high-bandwidth video content. News organizations like CBS and CNN have been racing with others to meet that demand, and monetize it via advertising. They can meet the higher expectations of an audience that no longer finds print as compelling a medium. Print media will have to adjust its revenue expectations to match the change in demand.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Greater extensions by Google into traditional advertising media could mark a sea change in ad buying.

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Editor's Note: Can you visualize a future where your ads appear in videos online? We want to hear about it on WebProWorld.

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In the latest edition of divining Google's future, MediaPost discusses a scenario where the search engine company extends beyond print ads in traditional media. The assumptions could apply to Yahoo as well, as they extend further into the entertainment industry.

Both Google and Yahoo have been working on video search, and Yahoo has unveiled audio search recently. In the TV and radio markets, it could be possible that the continued refinement of those searches may lead to a change in where contextual advertising appears.

Instead of buying ads and selling sponsorships, the contextual ad world in traditional media would follow the auction model. That would make ad buying "far more reflective of reality and ROI." The search engines would crawl programs before broadcast and set keyword phrase bid rates.

Imagine the fun when Coke sets up a product placement deal on a show and Pepsi starts bidding up keywords like "Coca-Cola" before it is broadcast. After Google's or Yahoo's video search spider has crawled the show, the 30 second ad space both companies would wish to fill would price at what the market will bear, instead of an arbitrary figure that may not truly reflect the slot's value.

Advertisers could then extend their message across the entire media platform. Not just contextual ads on web pages and in SERPs, but also targeted to other places where their keywords appear on TV and on radio programs. Maybe this could be a future model for satellite radio, especially for Sirius, which has to pay some big money to Howard Stern and the NFL to retain those properties.

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Perhaps audio contextual ads could take advantage of the podcasting phenomenon. Podcasts have achieved greater awareness, which can be attributed to Apple publicizing their availability via iTunes. The big names like ABC and other established media outlets have no problem finding advertisers to pay for sponsored spots.

For the grass roots podcaster, audio contextuals could be to them what AdSense is to bloggers (maybe we could call it VoiSense). The model for determining their exposure would probably have to mirror that of traditional broadcast media; if it is based on downloads, podcasters who continue to keep their content updated and maintain or grow their subscriber base could profit from them.

Now that Yahoo has delved deeply into video entertainment, notably with its presentation of the WB's Supernatural debut episode online a week before its broadcast, perhaps it could offer similar deals to other networks. Yahoo could provide video contextuals (let's call it Visual Match) to help it recoup the expense of hosting and serving other video content.

Google already allows users to submit their video to the search engine. Extend AdSense to them (and call that VidSense) and there's another point of presence for video contextual advertising. They could then offer that model to producers who make their videos available online at Atom Films and other sites. Instant revenue stream for them.

Madison Avenue isn't going to suddenly shutter its ad agencies. Google sees the value of print and traditional media, and search engines do have the ability to sift through and index video and audio. Yahoo already fancies itself a Hollywood player. It's not too much to think how either could extend beyond the Web, but doing so to radio and TV would be a difficult task.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

In a recent issue of Page Zero Advisor, I argued (in part) as follows on the subject of Google's new Site Targeting version of the content targeting program ...

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Editor's Note: With Google making improvements to their site targeting function, would you plan on making use of this feature? Does the ability to determine which sites your AdWords ads appear appeal to you or will you stick with the standard placement procedures Google employs? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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...I think two things have to happen for Site Targeting to work for us (and you): (1) Price drop. Sorry, but I'm getting below $1 CPM's on any of the content campaigns I'm running under the old program, and that's why they work. So $2 minimum means the minimum is at least double what is going to be economically feasible. At least. Many of the publishers currently participating in the program simply don't merit $2 CPM's. A very select few are worth $5, $10, or $50, but they are a tiny minority. Google should do what they did with the paid search program in 2002: listen to reason and get rid of the minimum. Drop it from $2 to something like 10 cents, just to see what happens...

Well, they just dropped the minimum CPM in this particular program from $2 to $1, which is better than a kick in the pants, though rather far from 10 cents. Then again, who ever heard of a ten cent CPM? I must be crazy like a fox to have suggested that.

Site targeting seems to have a ways to go yet as a platform that would fully satisfy advertisers. Mainly, it's about the publishers and how advertisers can gather info on them. As it stands, there is a little tool to help advertisers find appropriate sites to show their ads on. Now all Google needs is a tool to help them sign more quality publishers. :) But seriously, I think the tool is going to have to improve over the next couple of years.

Another thing I want to stress is along the lines of "Google was right." We, the advertisers, are pretty bad at choosing the pages and sites to show our ads on. Part of the problem is the limitations of the process... and the fact that not all the sites we want participate in AdSense and have available inventory. But basically, a "pure" site targeting program is up and running more as a response to advertisers who didn't like the "lack of control" as it is a really workable, effective program in its own right.

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If it were me, I'd want to combine that control somehow with the (widely-dissed) clever matching technology that governed and still governs the original content targeting program. That matching technology helps me as an advertiser. It helps me (and Google, and publishers) achieve scale.

For many advertisers, the main question isn't whether you have control or whether Google is matching the ad placements to the right AdWords accounts, etc. It's more about (a) transparency and disclosure of publisher info, and most of all (b) price.

Reader Comments...

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients' paid search marketing campaigns.

One of the more important tasks in relation to search engine indices involves the keeping this content fresh and up to date. To accomplish this, search engines have developed a number of procedures designed to refresh and update their respective databases. In all likelihood, the most popular of these events has to be when Google performs a backlink and PageRank update, which happens throughout the year at determined intervals.

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Editor's Note: It's that time again. The time where Google can cause increased levels of panic of happiness. Yes, I'm talking about another PageRank/backlink update, an exercise that always causes the SEO world to sit-up and take notice. How did this update affect you? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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Because the different types of backlinks pointing at a site directly affect PageRank, these updates tend to go hand-in-hand; and while these events may not generate the excitement they once did, the search engine optimization community does take notice when Google carries out these updates. For those who may not be aware, Google uses PageRank to provide a type of "quality score" for web pages in their index.

In order to view the PageRank of web page, you have to have the Google Toolbar installed. The toolbar contains a PageRank score, provided in the form of a green bar, for each page being visited. PageRank measures on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 (a full green bar) being the highest.

As mentioned, because backlinks play such an important part with PR scores, these types of updates usually take place at the same time. A backlink update is where Google actively revises the amount of links pointing to a site, while discounting links they consider to be old and/or aged. Because backlinks are considered such a valuable commodity, whenever an update is being conducted, those who depend on search as a key component of their ecommerce lives watch the results with loads of interest.

One of the standard practices when a backlink update is being conducted is to visit the various Google datacenters and perform backlink checks on their site in order to see if there have been any drastic changes. According to SearchEngineRoundtable, currently, the following Google datacenters have been affected by these updates:

72.14.207.99
72.14.207.104
72.14.207.106

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In order to see if the backlink update has affected your site, visit any of the datacenters (as well as the standard Google.com page) and perform a backlink check using the following command:

link:www.nameofsite.com

However, it is important to remember Google only provides a cross-section of the backlinks pointing to the site; they do not show a comprehensive list. Be that as it may, whenever Google issues updates affecting their search index, people who follow-up do indeed notice changes, especially if they are considered negative.

A good place to follow when Google updates occur is WebmasterWorld. Here readers can get a good idea how other people may have been affected by the particular update being monitored. This is also a great place to get tips and tricks on how to conduct further research to see if you gained more backlinks pointing at your site. Fortunately, PageRank increases (or decreases) are easier to observe thanks to the Google Toolbar and the imbedded green PageRank score bar.

Another interesting thing to do is to navigate around and find out if any of the major sites experienced PageRank reductions or increases, especially with sites having a PageRank of 10. Because of the way Google scores using PageRank, only a certain number of sites have acquired this score, with one of the most famous being Apple's main site.

However, when I checked Apple.com this morning, I noticed the PageRank box was grayed-out; an indication the site has no PageRank information. However, if you navigate to the iTunes/iPod portion of the Apple's site, the PR score is a full 10, as are most of the sections. On the other hand, the .Mac portion of the Apple.com has a 0 for its PageRank score (a white PR box); although, a quick look at the link structure of this page may shed some light as to why:

http://www.mac.com/

Because the link structure has changed from when the .Mac portion had a 10 ranking, it appears as if these changes has affected the way the PR score is being passed on to this particular section.

All in all, this appears to be one of the milder updates, at least reaction-wise. WebmasterWorld has its normal commentary, but a lot of other forums seem to be paying only passing lip service to the events that began over the Labor Day weekend.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

Google may plan to redefine the term PPC to mean "pay-per-call" as it focuses on dominating local search markets.

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Editor's Note: Will pay-per-call be the new pay-per-click? Can pay-per-call boost Google's revenues and stock price even more? We're waiting for your call at WebProWorld.

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The recent post on noted industry observer Om Malik's blog sees a connection between Google's plans for dark fiber and Wi-Fi, and the newly debuted Google Talk voice and IM chat application.

Mr. Malik, by way of comments from Lachlan Yachau, gives a nice summary:

"So could all the talk about Google's VoIP plans really be all about extending its advertising franchise into pay-per-call, rather than offering plain old consumer minutes, a la everyone else?"

In a Business 2.0 article, Mr. Malik wrote that Google could "use VOIP technology to dial phone numbers that appear in local search results." With a massive rollout of Wi-Fi and the first version of Google Talk on the Web, combined with Google's scheme of providing Gmail invites to US mobile phone users, the potential use of pay-per-call becomes clearer.

Perhaps as one poster named Steve Borsch suggests, people need to take a hard look at the bigger Google picture:

"Gmail, Google Maps, search history identified to a specific individual, blogging and now IM & talk, imagine the data being captured that can be matched with location awareness (i.e., IP address database matching) and it becomes pretty clear: Google is building an analytics platform that eventually will know more about me and my habits than I know myself."

One of the advertisers featured in the recently announced Google print ads, AHS Systems President Jeff Witkowski, offered an insight on the phone side of the promotion in a Cnet article:

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"It's a lot of exposure for cheap," he said, adding that Google is "doing a ton of tracking on this. They're using their own 1-800 numbers on this, and it forwards to our line." The Internet addresses of the online versions of the ads also redirect traffic through Google servers.

Mr. Malik comments that this could be Google's VoIP play. He notes how AOL's pay-per-call placements show up before Google results on AOL Search "because I am told they make more money for AOL." Pay-per-call could be the answer to the question of why Microsoft purchased Teleo, too, as Jupiter Research's Gary Stein observes:

"I imagine that pay-per-call would be an interesting offering within their AdCenter advertising/search offering. We know that local merchants would rather pay for a call than a click; having pay-per-call as a product is pretty much a must for anyone looking to get into the local directory business."

Mr. Stein further wonders why Microsoft didn't just partner with a firm like AOL's partner Ingenio. Simply, it's probably easier for Microsoft to purchase rather than partner in some cases.

A poster called Neeraj on Mr. Malik's blog thinks the Google pay-per-call strategy could be based on a Verizon announcement at SES 2005:

"At SES this year, Verizon Superpages already announced what Google may be contemplating. Here's the release:
http://newscenter.verizon.com/
Very clever and payments occur when potential customers make calls to merchants."

Another poster named Jack Miller finds Google pay-per-call an impressive prospect:

"The magnitude of this is mind bending. Fewer ads all over the place but more effective ads all over the place."

The print ads containing phone numbers appear in the latest issues of Maximum PC and PC Magazine. If the pay-per-call model seems a bit too reasonable, you could always read about a completely different take on Google's Wi-Fi schemes.

Discuss Google's future at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

With all the literature generated regarding the great battle between Yahoo! and Google, it is easy (and misleading) to assume the two search giants are heading in the same direction. But in light of recent events, 2005 seems to be where the road forks. One path is a virtual on-ramp, while the other is the expressway to everywhere-if everywhere is where you'd like to go.

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Editors Note: Search engine business activity has made speculation sky high about the future of the Internet and where we're all going. Do you have any predictions about the road ahead? Consult your crystal ball and tell us what you see in WebProWorld.

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I'll amend, slightly, what I said earlier about Google becoming a portal. Google will become a point of entry, as omnipresent as power lines, your way to get to wherever it is you're going, equaling or surpassing the ubiquity of Microsoft, a Google logo appearing in large comforting letters on the side of all things tech.

Yahoo!, on the other hand, doesn't seem to share that brand of grandiosity. It has its own brand, or brands, as it aims to become the corner pub, the meeting place, the movie theater, the record store, the stadium, the call center, City Hall, the restaurant at the end of the universe. In short, Yahoo! becomes the next Visa, its everywhere you want to be, and its trying to keep you there.

America Online serves as a better parallel. Google, with 40-minute average visits, is the cab dropping you off at the pub (read, in the future, Yahoo!). AOL, now the stepchild of Time Warner, sets itself up like a Vegas casino, a virtual maze that keeps customers inside for upwards of 6 hours at a time. It's that type of stickiness that Yahoo! seems to be searching for-a way to get you inside and interested long enough for you to see their sponsored content-a mall with some really awesome findable (not searchable) content.

In fact, Yahoo! is in great position to become the premiere media network, as so many of the latest business moves would indicate. Online programming, if you listen closely as a fly on the wall, is going to swallow television. And Yahoo! will be the leader at the forefront of this transition, with MSN and AOL, and probably Fox, close (but not too close) behind.

John McHugh at Wired Magazine provides us with a titillating account of Yahoo!'s foray into the media world, and suddenly, it is quite clear.

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"Watching whatever you want (or didn't even know you wanted) wherever you are whenever you feel like it has been a fantasy since the early days of the Internet. Now it's a reality that [Bradley] Horowitz refers to as a ‘high-class problem.' He and his charges at Yahoo! are trying to figure out how to solve that problem. When they do, it's good-bye network TV, hello networked TV."

Here's a quick review of what Yahoo! has been up to recently (not a timeline):

• Yahoo strikes a multi year advertising deal with media giant Viacom to provide search services and paid search advertising to online Viacom properties including CBSNews.com, MTV.com and BET.com.

• Bradley Horowitz is reported to be tinkering with a self-publishing protocol called Media RSS (MRSS), which will allow niche content creators to syndicate their video and audio content.

• Yahoo! Media Group sets up camp in Santa Monica on a lot where MGM used to live, surrounded by big-time media players HBO, MTV, and Universal.

• "The growing consumer demand for compelling content on the Internet and the proliferation of broadband is an exciting opportunity. We need to enhance our presence in the entertainment capital of the world," said Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig.


• Yahoo! inks deals with Verizon and SBC Commuications to provide high-speed internet access. Verizon announces intentions to be a broadband television provider.

• Yahoo! hires ABC's Lloyd Braun, Fox's Ira Kurgan, NBC's Shawn Hardin, and CBS's David Katz.

Yahoo! has its hands in every area of media there is, soon making it what McHugh called "the super network," indeed, mining the new media frontier in much the same way the major networks constructed television programming in the 1940's. Add that to the persistent whittling down of all things macro to micro levels with Yahoo! local services, and the focus on user-generated content, and you have a really cool online hangout.

Google and Yahoo! aren't battling for the same ends, but are searching for a symbiotic relationship, and may rule the online world together. MSN and AOL? They'll be there, probably always, either as competitors, or as burrowers of their own niches, much in the way that NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox, exist together on the airwaves.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

No doubt about it, Google has Gates-like ambitions. Bill Gates told Fortune magazine in a discussion about Google, …"they are more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with." Clearly, Google is the biggest threat to Microsoft dominance that Microsoft has ever seen.

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Discuss Google's New World Order In WebProWorld.

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Amazingly, after less than a year of going public Google is already valued by stockholders at almost one quarter of Microsoft. That is astonishing considering Microsoft's profits of $8.2 billion last year made it the 12th most profitable among the Fortune 500, just behind IBM. Microsoft is the second most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $293 billion. Google's $80 billion cap puts it in a battle to become the most valuable media company. That is just under Time Warner's market capitalization of $82 billion.

All of this from selling key word searches? Not exactly. Yes, all of Google's revenue and profits are coming from key word searches, but its stock price is reflective of huge growth projections that will come from a variety of business initiatives … some of which will strike at the heart of Microsoft itself.

And Microsot is worried as Robert Cringley writing for PBS explains, "That pace of technical development, which probably isn't sustainable for long at any company, isn't POSSIBLE at all at more mature companies like AOL, Yahoo, and especially Microsoft. That adolescent energy is the mojo that makes a startup scarier to Bill Gates than a mature competitor. He knows that if Microsoft ever takes a big dive, it will be because of a Google, not a Yahoo, and certainly not an AOL."

Cash in on your content with Google AdSense

So what is Google up to that concerns Microsoft? The answer is Google Internet. Using its power position on the Internet Google is winning users by providing them simpler alternatives. Google is beating Microsoft in the battle of the Internet. And as Bill Gates stated a decade ago in his forward thinking book, The Road Ahead, "We stand at the brink of another revolution." Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is Google that is the driving force.

Google Search is still light years ahead in terms of result quality and leads all rivals.

Google Talk will become the leader in consumer and small business messaging. It will also make voice communication over the Internet mainstream. Most of us don't do it now … but thanks to Google we will soon.

Google Desktop has already become the leading desktop search app because it works. Searching for files with Explorer that comes with Windows is cumbersome and can take forever.

Google News is one of the leading news sites in World because they did news aggregation better than anyone else. Definitely better than the first news aggregation site on the Web, NewsLinx, which I founded in 1996.

Gmail beats Microsoft's HotMail and Yahoo Mail hands down. It's better at spam filtering and the ads are much more palatable.

Yes, the battle is still young and Microsoft is working to compete. But it seems that Google knows how to win and is slowly knocking off the competition for the hearts and minds of Internet users.

It appears that If Google makes it they will come. One can certainly understand why Microsoft is worried about what Google is up to. Could a Google distributed operating system be next on the list? What do you think? Please give us your thoughts at WebProWorld.

Below we have an in-depth article today on the "Google Revolution" by iEntry writer Jason Miller.

About the Author:
Rich Ord is the CEO of iEntry, Inc. which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.

Last week, we looked at the recent news that Microsoft had decided to embrace RSS in a big way in its upcoming releases of Internet Explorer and Windows "Longhorn" and determined that this was a Good Thing. This week, we're taking a look at implementing Google Sitemaps, a similar technology developed by Google in order to help you define your site more effectively to the search-engine behemoth. This is not a ticket to a higher Google ranking (at least not that we know about); but it is a useful tool that lets you apply RSS-like control to your website's interactions with the Googlebot.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the current heavyweight of so-called "disruptive technologies" (loosely defined as those that have the effect, if not developed with the intention, of changing the way we use technology in general) and its use is skyrocketing among content providers looking for a way to get their content in front of more eyes and ears. But RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, a standard way of cataloging your site's content for third-party aggregators.

Google Sitemaps have a similar function, in that they are an XML-based way to describe website content in a standard, predictable way; but they differ in that Sitemaps are intended for the Googlebot's eyes only, rather than for any third-party. Think of them as an automated way to make sure Google knows about your site's content (please note, however, that Google does not guarantëe inclusion of your content based solely on the presence of a Sitemap file).

This sounds like a very specific undertaking, but the importance of Google to getting your site's content noticed can simply not be overstated. And with Google's expanding reach into more and more areas of Web content presentation, chances are that you can be assured that the information your Sitemap provides will eventually find some use you haven't yet thought about. That's what disruptive technology is all about, and Google has become one of the more innovative champions of such technological advances.

Where To Start

The first thing you should do as a website developer is create a Google Account for yourself or your company. This will allow you to do other things besides access the Sitemaps infrastructure; but we'll leave that for another day. Create the account hëre and then proceed to the Sitemaps area at this link. Once you've logged in, you'll see the sparse Sitemaps interface. Don't be fooled, however, because like the simple interface to its search engine, this one hides quite a bit of information regarding the creation and use of Sitemaps, presenting it in digestible bites as you walk through the process.

There's probably more there than you need to know at this point, provided you don't have a huge site with a need for multiple Sitemaps and so on. But if you do have such a site, the information is there for creating truly complex Sitemaps and Sitemap Indices referencing many Sitemaps and you can familiarize yourself with that as needed. For now, we'll concentrate on what's required to establish a Sitemap for our site at Cafe ID.

Like creating RSS feeds, creating a Google Sitemap is as simple as putting together an XML file at the root level of your site that describes the site according to the instructions that Google has laid out. You can use any text editor for this purpose, but some editors do a better job of helping you create properly formatted XML files. We heartily recommend two that cost monëy, BBEdit on Mac OS X and Macromedia's Homesite on Windows, but there are excellent frëe alternatives out there and when it comes to text editors, personal preferences take on an almost religious importance, so we won't proselytize about that.

The Googlebot recognizes several Sitemap formats, ranging from a simple list of URLs to Sitemaps already created using something called the Open Archive Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting, a format apparently popular with library collections. The OAI protocol is an advanced XML specification that you don't need to worry about if you don't already understand. An intermediate XML format is what we recommend, over the simple URL list, because of the additional information you can associate with each constituent URL of your site.

If you do want to just get started quickly, simply create a text file that looks like this:

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11 ...

making sure that the file in question does not include embedded newline characters and uses the UTF-8 text encoding (chëck your text editor settings). Also, your sitemap may not contain more than 50,000 URLs and all URLs must me fully-formed since they will be used directly during the Googlebot's crawl.

Getting Fancy

The more advanced format isn't much more difficult to create and lets you specify additional information about each URL. The protocol is described fully at Google and is too detailed to explain hëre. Your finished file will look something like this, except (hopefully) with more URLs specified:

http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

http://www.cafeid.com/
2005-01-01
monthly>
0.8


http://www.cafeid.com/art-over.shtml
weekly

Your Sitemap's location dictates what URLs can be included in it. A Sitemap placed at the root level of your site can specify any URLs on that site, while a Sitemap placed at www.yoursite.com/images can not include URLs under www.yoursite.com/banners, for example.

You can take as full or as little advantage of the availability of the various additional XML tags available in this format. Each needs to include at least the specification, but need not include the other three, and all URLs in a Sitemap file must be encapsulated within the tag. We recommend using at least the tag and the flag to let the Googlebot know how often it should chëck your site for updated content. Be sure to change the date, and maybe even the time, specified in the tag any time you actually update your site.

One more caveat is that your URL specifications must be XML-encoded, similarly to the way they're encoded under RSS. What this means is spelled out in detail W3.org, but essentially, what you're doing is converting a URL like

http://www.yoursite.com/view?widget=3&count>2

to look like this:

http://www.test.org/view?widget=3&count>2

(Note the substitution for the HTML entities & and > for the "&" and ">" symbols.)

Done. Now What Do I Do With It?

You're almost home. Upload the Sitemap file you create to your server and then add the URL to the file itself using your Google Sitemaps account. You don't need to use the account, but doing so will allow you to keep track of what you've uploaded. You're welcome to compress your Sitemap file using gzip, found typically on Mac OS X, Linux and BSD (normal PC zipping won't work, although you can certainly find a third-party gzip program for your Windows box). Clïck the "Add Your First Sitemap" link on the main Sitemaps page after you've logged into your Google Sitemaps account, and that's all there is to it!

You can use your Sitemaps account to keep track of and receive diagnostic information about your Sitemap submissions. You don't need to create a Sitemaps account, however, and if you already have a Google account for receiving Alerts, for accessing the Web Developer APIs and so on, your existing account will work as a Sitemaps account automatically.

Google has already played a significant role in shifting the paradigm of discovering the Web from doing so by following links to doing so by searching, and the company shows no signs of slowing down. Subscribing may well be the next paradigm, based on the flexibility of the protocols that put content syndication in the hands of mere mortals, and getting your content cataloged in these formats should be among your first priorities. The web browser and operating system is adjusting quickly to this new paradigm, and you should be too.

About The Author
Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation and maintenance of business and personal identity online and can be reached at trevor@tryid.com. Stop by CafeID.com for a frëe tryout of the revolutionary SiteBuildingSystem and chëck out our Flash-based website and IMAP e-mail hostïng solutions, complete with live support.

For the past four years, Google has been the undisputed leader in search. Its rivals, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves have spent the past few years working to narrow the vast technological and popularity gap between them and the great Google. It has been a long and hard fought series of skirmishes and battles but this week, two of the three, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, signaled they might be getting closer.

In June 2003, Google made one of the wildest moves in the history of the Internet by innovating on the paid-advertising idea originally conceived by Overture. Already the most popular tool among search engine users, Google gave website publishers a revenue generating gift that kept on giving. Google's great PPC innovation was to permit AdWords advertising to appear on private websites, splitting the click-through fees 50/50 with the private webmasters whose sites delivered traffïc. By giving private webmasters the opportunïty to generate incidental revenues by acting as billboards for AdWords, Google saw profïts from AdWords skyrocket while Internet users became conditioned to accept the small and unobtrusive ads.

The paid-search advertising market is worth billions and is expected to be worth tens of billions in a few years time. Yahoo! is betting that market will support a growing network of small to medium sized online publishers who will in turn bring more revenues to Yahoo!. Google, which generates over 90% of its enormous revenues from the AdWords program, might face serious competition from Yahoo!, which currently receives about 60% of revenues from paid-advertising.

This week, Yahoo! released a beta-test version of a similar program known as the Yahoo! Publisher Network or YPN. Open to a limited number of testers, including StepForth News, the YPN is meant to compete directly with Google's AdWords program. The beta is open, for the most part to US based users only. StepForth is fortunate to be among the few non-US based beta testers.

Yahoo! has had two long years to study the AdSense model and appear to have adopted a unique publisher-focused philosophy offering small and medium sized publishers access to syndicated Yahoo! products and services in a bid to brand Yahoo! content as well as Yahoo! generated paid-advertising. In other words, Yahoo! is not only serving paid-ads to webmasters, it is also helping them bülk site content with Yahoo! products such as search, shopping, travel, RSS, user-option personalization featured, and eventually, Yahoo! syndicated music and video services.

"Yahoo! has developed many highly successful relationships with web publishers around the world, and is building on those experiences to bring new revenue sources and compelling content to even more high quality sites," said Bill Demas, senior vice president, Yahoo! Partner Solutions group. "By helping the broader publishing community maximize the value of their sites, we aim to create an even more rewarding Internet experience for publishers, advertisers and users."

Much like AdWords, YPN will be a revenue generator for webmasters by delivering advertisements that match the topic of the document they are placed on. The Content Match� feature enables publishers to place Yahoo!'s contextually-relevant listings on their sites and receive a share of the revenue generated by them. For example, ads that might appear in future editions of the StepForth Newsletter would likely be about search engines, search marketing, blogs, and/or tools for SEOs and website designers. Contextually driven advertising is cool but, profitable as it is, PPC is not the full story behind the YPN.

The Internet is the backbone network of global communications. Currently facilitating shopping, travel bookings, entertainment and instant-research, the Internet has supplanted traditional tools such as television and radio because it can easily mimic both mediums while simultaneously performing a number of other functions. Users interface with the Internet via documents that are, for the most part, created and posted by small to medium sized publishers. Yahoo! has adopted a publisher focused outlook and is looking to place its brand on information and entertainment content offered (eventually) on tens of millïons of websites.

As publishers from every medium understand, the key to success is in keeping a captivated audience. One of the more interesting features of the YPN will be access to Y!Q, a context-driven search tool which is also in beta-test. Y!Q is a Yahoo! search application that uses the topic of the document it is embedded in or a trigger-word set by the webmaster to present search results in a transparent overlay. The results shown in the overlay consist of images, two news stories, and the first three organic search listings. The logic is site users will stay on a document instead of opening another search window and traveling away from the site. Y!Q is an open-beta. Webmasters interested in using Y!Q on their sites should refer to the Y!Q for publishers page .

Other integrated features in the beta include, Add to My Yahoo and Yahoo Maps, showing an inclination towards local, mobile and personalized search results.

Add to My Yahoo! will help webmasters and publishers find their way onto user monitors and personalized search results via the Yahoo! branded RSS feed and subscription service. RSS stands for really simple syndication and is basically a XML feed that delivers fresh content to people who subscribe to it. As with Y!Q, Add to My Yahoo! is already available for webmasters and publishers.

The inclusion of Yahoo! Maps shows Yahoo!'s understanding that user or webmaster generated maps are extremely important for local and mobile search users. Yahoo! has recently introduced an API for Yahoo! maps allowing webmasters to place geographic information on Yahoo! generated maps.

Yahoo! timed the release of the YPN beta to coincide with next week's Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. As beta testers, we will be using some of these features in future editions.

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunïty to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at jimhedger@stepforth.com.

Monitoring how your site performs with respect to the search engine industry is a key aspect of business in today's era. As a result, the growth of SEO-related services has been tremendous in recent years. Once SEO services are administered, being the creatures of instant gratification that we are, site owners expect to see results immediately.

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Editor's Note: Whether or not Google has a sandbox it can place newly indexed websites has been a major topic of discussion among many forums. What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you think such a thing exists? If so, have you ever experienced what you perceived as being placed in the sandbox? Discuss your experiences at WebProWorld.

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However, when site doesn't perform as well as expected, one of the first things to be blamed, specifically when it comes to Google, is a mythical effect called the sandbox. The term "sandbox" was coined by people who had sites that weren't performing up to expectations. It is believed that if a site hasn't achieved a desired ranking, despite SEO adjustments, the new/altered site has been placed in the sandbox where it is held until the alterations are reflected.

The sandbox effect is a reason (excuse?) routinely used by some when they aren't being rewarded with the results they had anticipated. One of the main targets of the sandbox effect are newer sites who haven't had a chance to age. It is thought these sites are kept in the sandbox until Google gives their SEO and backlink work credit.

Speaking of backlinks, it is also believed the sandbox effect can affect these as well. If a set of newly acquired links hasn't given the recipient site a boost in PageRank or hasn't shown up on a backlink check (link:www.yoursitesname.com), the sandbox is the one to blame, even though Google has stated numerous times a backlink check does not reveal all of the links pointing to a site.

Incidentally, Google has never admitted to having a sandbox, in fact, the existence of a Google sandbox was actually denied by noted Google insider, Google Guy.

The topic is a contentious one. There are those who firmly believe the sandbox does exist, while others are opposed to the idea. This concept is obvious on the WebProWorld forum, where moderator greeneagle invited other posters that feel they'd been affected by the sandbox to show him which site and which keywords the site owner was targeting (the keywords can be calculated using this tool).

As with most sandbox related topics, this particular discussion has grown in length, featuring ideas and examples from both sides of the table. Both sides are well represented with intelligent posts from both camps. On the pro-sandbox side, DMC_34 offered this quite valid example:

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When Google was updating with Bourbon, my new site was #1 for the domain name, and #78 for Holiday Gift Baskets, and many more. I believe during the update the filters were turned off during testing on certain datacenters. Once the update was finished all of rankings disappeared beyond the >1000 marker. I am fairly confident the litterbox does exist but hits new sites and link mongering sites the most.

Another quote, this time from poster Phantom, gives another possibility about what the sandbox could be:

… However, someone told me the sandbox effects only highly competitive keywords. Since the results were for keywords with only a couple hundred thousand results or less, it was dismissed as not falling into the sandbox perimeters. Therefore, my high-ranking sites were not allowed to play in the sand. I've never had a site in a sandbox, nor do I intend to place any of my sites in one.

Because of the evolving nature of the search engine industry (in other words, the effects of many changes, especially in a competitive area are not immediate), I tend to doubt the sandbox's existence. Although, there was a quote that may give some ammo to the conspiracy buffs out there:

Protected AdWord revenue = moneybox = sandbox?

Would Google, or any other search engine for that matter, actually protect sites that are ranking well while being big advertising spenders by purposely delaying another, newer site's climb up the SERPs, provided they were taking the necessary steps (contextual content, IBLs)? That's seems highly unlikely.

The idea of the more competitive the field being harder to break into the top spots seems more probable than the whole sandbox concept of being placed somewhere by Google or Yahoo while the site matures. But perhaps these two lines of thinking have become one and the same? Perhaps both events are being used to describe the sandbox effect.

For another perspective on the Google sandbox theory, please read Xan Porter's blog post, which looks at Google's algorithm patent and how that could determine the existence of a search sandbox.

Continue the discussion here.

About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

The defection of Dr. Kai-fu Lee to Google is the first digit to fall from the leprous giant, Microsoft-the outward manifestation of a bigger problem long in the making. That which made the software giant tall, the nourishment of cutting edge engineering, is also the chief repast of the unexpected rival in Google. The nervous tapping of billionaire fingers can be heard all the way from Redmond.

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Editor's Note: How important is it that Microsoft increases its search presence? While Gates & Co. have cornered the PC market with crushing control, and will likely continue, the Internet and search will be the future center of the tech world-a world likely controlled by Google. Is Microsoft in danger of losing its command of the market? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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"We need to do this to stop Google," Bill Gates is reported to have said to Dr. Lee referring to the lawsuit aimed at preventing Lee from working for the search engine.

This was just months after Lee sat in on a top-secret executive meeting entitled "The Google Challenge."

So why is a software company who controls 90% of the desktop market shaking in its giant boots over a search engine start-up? Simply put, the PC is passé.

Honestly, while a near monopoly is a surefooted position in the future, that future is lackluster when most have a PC that works as well as they need it to, serving as a sufficient portal to the more important utility-the Internet.

"A new science is being defined in an area that will take over much of what we do commercially and socially," said Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and senior vice-president at Yahoo to Business Week.

Not only is Microsoft having trouble establishing their foothold in the ever-evolving and explosive search market (currently only handling 15% of queries and declining), but the company that brought PC utility to the world is losing top executives as well as the greener future stars of the industry to Google and Yahoo, fished from Redmond's back yard.

Business Week Online reported on the recent challenges Microsoft faces in recruiting the brightest of the computer science world.

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Oren Etzioni, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle, told them that Google has hired most of the top one-third of his search class for the past two years.

"High-profile researchers are now flocking to the search engines," echoes Marti Hearst, associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley's school of information management and systems.

It's certainly no secret to Excite.com pioneer Joe Kraus, either.

"If you're talking to someone great, they're invariably talking to Google, and they often have an offer," he said.

Google has been in a hiring frenzy over the past year. The company roster has nearly doubled from 2292 in June 2004 to the current 4183 full-time employees (4184, if you count Dr. Lee). In the second quarter of this year, Google hired 230 engineers, no doubt the best around.

Yahoo has been in the mix as well, taking on Larry Tesler, former VP at Amazon.com, and Prabhakar Raghavan, a first-rate authority on algorithms formerly of search-software firm Verity.

So where does all this leave Microsoft? Nervous as they experience something they're certainly not used to-losing. As Google and Yahoo explode in the second quarter to handle nearly 9 billion queries and 69% of the search world, MSN had to swallow a 4% loss in search queries.

Microsoft will have to be extra aggressive in the future to secure a position, and employees.

As mentioned by a former professor in this forum thread pointed out by SearchEngineRoundTable, the competition is stiff.

"Every semester you have couple hundred students in your courses and most of them are average - the typical student. A small number are very bright... and maybe one or two will be absolutely off the scale in their intelligence, work ethic and driving vision.... a few of those will be inclined towards very practical problems... then a tiny fraction of those will be highly interested in information technologies. In an entire teaching career you might see a couple who might fit what it takes to work and perform well at one of these companies.

Read the Rest of the Article.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Just in case you were wondering which search engines had users with money in the bank (and I know you were), comScore Networks, Inc. reports that in the month of June, MSN searchers were 48% more likely to buy online than the average Internet user. Googlites were 42% more likely.

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Editor's Note: The latest research suggests that MSN and Google have searchers with more money and that are more likely than the average Internet user to buy online. In addition, more specific and complicated search terms seem to have a higher conversion rate, even if the vast majority of purchases are latent-occurring weeks or months later. Will this information influence your search marketing strategy? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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The increased likelihood of AOL users to make an online purchase was nearly nonexistent, reporting a 3 percent better chance than the average user. Yahoo users were 31% more likely and AskJeeves users were 17% more likely.

"That's important to the value of the consumer and the fact they have money in their pockets, which is noteworthy," says James Lamberti, vice president of search solutions, at comScore Networks Inc.

Another area interest is how those buyers are spread out demographically. According comScore, men were most likely to search using Google. Google's audience in June was found to be 51.5% male. Yahoo! was 49.7% male, MSN 49%, AOL 48.1%, and AskJeeves was only 46.3% male.

"The percentage differences aren't that great, but when you talk about 48.5% of Google users being female vs. 52% at AOL, that's a pretty big difference when you are talking about the entire Internet population," says Lamberti.

Googlites seemed to launch more sophisticated searches as well, more often typing in complex search queries. The simpler, more broad search terms occurred more often with AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!.

Lamberti adds that search term specificity is a key indicator of the likelihood of making an online purchase.

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However, likelihood to buy doesn't mean that customers buy right away. A separate study showed that in the consumer electronics category (cameras, TVs, etc.), 85% of purchases were made off line an average of 5 to 12 weeks after the initial search. Only 15% made a purchase during the first search session.

Overall, in the same category, 25% of searches converted to a purchase, but 92% of these purchases occurred off line.

"These findings reinforce the importance of considering the latent impact of search engine usage when evaluating search engine marketing investments," said Lamberti.

"Search cannot be thought of as solely a direct response marketing tool, especially in highly considered product categories where search activity can precede a purchase by as much as 60 to 90 days."

As for search terms, 70% of all searches began with generic search terms (camera, mobile phone), while branded search terms (Sony, Lexmark) accounted for only 20%. The remaining 10% of search terms were product specific (HP notebook nx9010). Sixty-one percent of purchase conversions were begun with generic search terms.

"It's critical that retailers consider generic search terms as an important part of their keyword strategy," said Lamberti.

"Marketers focused solely on specific product terms known to convert directly will fail to address the vast majority of consumers in the buy cycle."

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Does Google place varying levels of value on the types of links pointing to a site when it comes to ranking considerations? This is one of the most oft discussed topics on the subject of Google linking strategies. Will Google punish what it may perceive as too many links too quickly? Are relevant links the only ones given weight?

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Editor's Note: How does Google give credit for the large amounts of backlinks it has to sift through when factoring a result ranking for a specific keyword? Relevancy is king, but will Google actually sandbox a site for getting too many non-relevant links too fast? A lot of it depends on the situation, but you probably won't get as much or any credit for links Google considers to be without editorial discretion. Join the continuing discussion at WebProWorld.

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This particular discussion was brought up and hashed out quite thoroughly at WebProWorld (among other places), in a thread featuring some really good information. The main point of contention seemed to be whether or not sites can get sandboxed for acquiring a large number of links in a short period of time. Will Google discount these links if they are from sites that aren't relevant to the subject of your site? The answer, as with all things related to Google's approach to search rankings, is fluid; meaning there is nothing definitive.

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When you compile the various levels of information related to this subject, it gives you the indication that Google operates on situational level with most of the IBLs that pass through the ranking algorithm.

It's quite obvious that Google values relevant in-bound links. In relation to Google, link relevancy has to do with the subject matter of the sites sending and receiving the links. If the site linking to yours shares similar "interests," then Google will place more value on the link when it comes to ranking. This concept was further supported by Matt Cutts of Google who said the same thing at last year's San Jose SES conference. Essentially, good content relevant to your subject/target will more than likely bring what the WPW topic starter calls "Relevant "Generic" (one-way) links," which Google values a great deal.

Conversely, the other point discussed in the thread was the propensity for people to blame the mythical Google sandbox when their ranking algorithm discounts these links. As many in the thread indicate, this seems to be a mistake made by those who are new to the SEO game and don't grasp the concept of relevancy versus quantity, or people who merely want to place blame because something they attempted did not have the desired affect.

Would Google discount a site's ranking if an article or point of interest within the site received a large amount of IBLs from many different sources? That seems quite unlikely, especially if the majority of site providing the IBL are relevant to the subject being linked. Google's ranking system seems quite capable of noticing the differences between link farms and topically relevant sites when it comes to applying weight for backlinks. Although, Google does seem to take the speed with which these links were acquired into consideration. To further this point, poster DMC_34 pointed out this portion of Google's algorithm patent:

A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links. Examples of documents that give links without editorial discretion include guest books, referrer logs, and "free for all" pages that let anyone add a link to a document.

This would suggest sites receiving large amounts of backlinks at an accelerated rate will in fact be scrutinized a little more closely, and rightfully so. However, if Google finds these IBLs are relevant to the site, they will give the appropriate "weight" to that link. To think that your site is being sandboxed because a number of links didn't get acknowledged may be the wrong approach. It is more likely that Google just didn't give the link any weight because it came from a site that it would consider to be without editorial discretion.

While it's true you can't control who links to your site, you can control the amount of reward expectation you place on receiving different types backlinks. Some links weigh better than others.

About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

The web pages actually at the top of Google have only one thing clearly in common: good writing. Don't let the usual SEO sacred cows and bugbears, such as PageRank, frames, and JavaScrïpt, distract you from the importance of good content.

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really only display web pages that meet arcane technical criteria? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point?

Apparently not.

Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Factors

Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings.

I looked at Google's top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2005. Typically, the top five pages receive an overwhelming majority of the traffïc delivered by Google.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

:: Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.

:: Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's chëck feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use SpellCheck? I can already hear the scoffing on the other side of this computer screen. Before you dismiss the idea completely, keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google's algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is SpellCheck or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.

:: Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.

:: Lists: both bulleted and numbered, make up a large part of the text.

:: Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

:: Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO "Do's" and "Don'ts"

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.

:: PageRank. The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. Of course, this might simply be yet another demonstration that the little PageRank number you get in your browser window is not what Google's algo is using. But if you're one of those people who attaches an overriding value to that little number, this is food for thought.

:: Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site's linking system depends on them. But there are worse ways you could shoot yourself in the foot.

:: JavaScrïpt-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScrïpt for their internal page links. Again, that's not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do.

:: Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all. That may just demonstrate the power of anchor text in inbound links. It also may demonstrate that Google takes a site's entire content into account when categorizing it and deciding what page to display.

:: Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or were images rather than text. That's a very bad design practice, and particularly cruel to blind users. But again, Google is more forgiving.

:: Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it's not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors. But Google doesn't seem to care if your website makes monëy.

:: Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.

Recommendations

:: Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are a SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with unpalatable text, so the increased traffïc is just wasted bandwidth.

:: If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.

:: Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.

:: Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.

In short, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffïc, you should consider making sure the bülk of your investmënt in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.

About The Author
Joel Walsh is the owner, founder and head-writer of UpMarket Content. To read more about website content best practices, get a consultation with Mr. Walsh, or get a sample page for your site at no charge, go to the SEO website content page: http://www.upmarketcontent.com/website-content/#seo.

For those of you not yet aware, Google is currently updating the PageRank they are displaying in their toolbar. Each update causes a stir among the SEO community and webmasters trying to get their websites to the top of the Google Rankings. What

Is PageRank?
Without getting into too much detail, PageRank is essentially a score out of ten as to the "value" of your site in comparison to other websites on the Internet. It is based on two primary factors; the number of links you have pointing to your website and the value of the links pointing to your website. The value is calculated based on the PageRank of the page linking to you and debatably the relevancy of the page linking to you (there is no hard evidence to back up the relevancy factor in regards to PageRank that I have seen, however it definitely is a factor in your overall ranking).

If you are interested in more information on PageRank you would do well to visit the many forums and articles on the topic and also visit Google's own description on their website at http://www.google.com/technology/ where they give a brief description of the technology.

What's New?
The most current PageRank update will undoubtedly cause a largër stir than usual in that many sites have shown drops in their visible PageRank while at the same time showing significant increases in their backlinks. This fact reveals that one of three things has occurred in this latest update:

1. Google has raised the bar on PageRank, making it more difficult to attain a high level, or
2. The way they are displaying their backlinks has changed, or
3. The way they calculate the value of an incoming link has changed.

Any of these are possible and has been noted in the past as something they are willing to do. Additionally, it is possible for all to occur at the same time.

As we don't like to use clients as examples, I will use the Beanstalk site, backlink counts, and PageRank changes as the meter by which the following conclusions are drawn, however this information was attained through looking at a number of client websites and their competitors.

Google Raising The Bar To Lower Yours
In the past few PageRank updates it has become quite apparent that Google is continuously raising the bar on PageRank. In their defense, with all of the reciprocal link building, link renting, etc. going on this was a natural reaction to the growing number of high PageRank sites that attained those ranks simply by building or buying hundreds and thousands of links.

Details, details-such is the Achilles' Hell of the visionary temperament. When Google put forth a massive online literary digitization effort, the scholar, the literati, the purist self-educator, the mousey, bucked-toothed, four-eyed little girl in all of us cheered the soon-to-be nearer reach of all those words. But visions, especially the grandiose, face the speed bumps, the hurdles, of real world logic-or worse, lawyers.

Editor's Note: Google Print for Libraries has opened a Pandora's Box of copyright issues with publishers around the world.

Google says everything is covered under the provisions of Fair Use, the original publisher agreements in Print for Publishers, and the ruling Kelly v. Arriba Soft. Publishers dispute all of Google's assertions. Do you think Google has covered all its bases? Or are the publishers entitled to a separate, collective agreement despite what the library, as is, could do for business? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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Two major associations of publishers have sent letters to Google demanding the cessation of the digitization project that involves scanning the entire text of copyrighted material until all pertinent questions are answered and a collective copyright agreement can be reached.

One letter, written by Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) on behalf his organization and several others, claims that Google Print for Libraries was sneaked in under provisions for the enthusiastically received Google Print for Publishers. But, goes the letter, the library project was never mentioned in meetings about the Print for Publishers program and news of the project was a huge surprise to everyone.

"…News of Google Print for Libraries came as a complete surprise. It had not been mentioned by Google representatives during any of the discussions they were having with our members, and Google's subsequent explanations of Google Print for Libraries have only increased that confusion and transformed it into mounting alarm and concern at a plan that appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale."

The letter outlines 16 pointed questions the respective associations would like answered.

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), a non-profit trade association representing 300+ publishers in more than 30 countries, wrote their own nasty letter to Google. In it, Chief Executive Sally Morris contends that the project is not covered by Fair Use/Fair Dealings, and requests a collective agreement with publishers. Less detailed and more pointed than the AAUP letter, the letter contains some chastising remarks.

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"We cannot believe that a business which prides itself on its cooperation with publishers could seriously wish to build part of its business on a basis of copyright infringement," wrote Morris.

Quick Overview of Google Print for Libraries

Announced in December of 2004, Google plans to digitize the entire collections of several prominent US libraries and one English library. A ten-year, $200 million project, the online material would be donated for scanning from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan University, and the New York Public Library.

Google says the goal is to provide a "virtual card catalog of all books in all languages," while respecting authors and publishers' copyrights.

The search giant addresses copyright issues with self-described "conservative" measures. All books published in the US before 1923 will be considered books in the public domain. The entire text of these books will be available online without worry of copyright infringement. Because of various international copyright laws, all books published outside the US before 1900 will be considered public domain.

As for books published after 1923 in the US and after 1900 outside the US, Google plans to provide "snippets" of text related to a search term. If a searcher wishes to have a complete copy of the book, the service will provide links to libraries and booksellers where the book can be found.

So What's All The Fuss About?

At first glance it would appear that Google has its bases covered here. They cite a precedent ruling, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, which allows search engines to index copyrighted images already on the web. And as only snippets of copyrighted material are provided along with a link to where the book can be purchased, one may conclude that the library would be good for business in the same way that Google Print for Publishers is good for business. After all, they use the same search-snippet-to-vendor-link method.

Read the Rest of the Article.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

A class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court against Google alleging breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices-all involving charges of click fraud. Click Defense Inc, a click fraud protection firm, filed the suit in California in the name of an unknown number of plaintiffs for an amount not less than $5 million.

==> Click to disscuss at WebProWorld. <==
Of course, one should always consider the plaintiff in any suit presented. The publicity gained through this type of action is worth its weight in gold--especially to a click fraud business whose bread and butter is identifying click fraud and getting money back for its clients.

Click fraud is the term used in the Internet search industry to describe the practice of clicking on search advertisements to run up the costs on advertisers.

Is this a publicity stunt or a legitimate claim? Discuss Here

Companies buy an advertisement through Google's AdWords program, whereby certain keywords are purchased in order to appear in the sponsored links section of the search engine's results page.

Advertisers bid upon the search terms with the top spot going to the top bidder. Once the advertisement is in place, advertisers pay a fee to the search engine each time the ad is clicked by a searcher.

Click fraud, estimated by some to be as high as 20% of all clicks, is caused by those with a vested interest using software that clicks on the ad hundreds or thousands of times to either drain the advertising budget of a rival company, or create revenue for the seller of the ad space.

Colorado-based Click Defense, a company that specializing in procuring rebates for advertisers, says the average cost per click is 50 cents, but prime search engine real estate can go for as much as $100. Disputing the 20% estimations, Click Defense alleges that click fraud on Google is as high as 38%.

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The lawsuit claims that since 99% of Google's revenue comes from advertising, Google has a huge financial interest in doing little about the instance of fraudulent clicks and criticizes the search giant for failure to disclose its own estimate of the number of fraudulent clicks.

The suit fall just short of accusing Google of physically performing the click fraud itself. The most visible allegation is the charge of negligence on the part of Google, claiming that Google isn't doing enough to prevent the problem.

Click Defense argues that the same software Google uses to track the number of clicks on an advertisement and then bill advertisers could be used to investigate and identify instances of click fraud.

Google's terms of use with AdWords promises a refund in any event of identifiable click fraud. According to Google's 2005 Annual Report, click fraud is a major concern of the search engine.

"If we fail to detect click-through fraud, we could lose the confidence of our advertisers, thereby causing our business to suffer," as stated in the report.

Google, who reported a first quarter net profit of $1.3 billion, is dismissing the claims of Click Defense.

"We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously," a Google spokesman told Reuters.

It is important to note that Click Defense Inc. makes money by promising protection against click fraud and procuring refunds for client advertisers. The plaintiff in this lawsuit seems especially suspect considering the nature of the business it is in.

That Click Defense is accusing Google of having a financial interest in not detecting click fraud is a little bit funny as Click Defense has a definite financial interest in nailing Google for it.

A jury has been demanded to investigate the claims and they will ultimately decide, if the case goes to trial, whether there is sufficient evidence of the charges brought against Google.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Late last/early this morning, Google launched the highly anticipated full version of Google Earth, the search engine's stand-alone global map utility. The following is a detailed, blow-by-blow description of the launch provided by Nathan Weinberg.

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Editor's Note: Have any of you downloaded Google Earth yet? If so, let us know what you think. Are you impressed or disappointed? Would you consider upgrading to Google Earth Plus? Discuss this and other points at WebProWorld.

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The post appeared at his blog, InsideGoogle. Nathan was quite impressed with Google's newest device, and judging by his blog comments, so do many others. With that, here's Nathan's account:

Google Earth Launching For Free? Launches For Free
Nathan Weinberg

I heard a rumor that Google is about to officially release Google Earth, it's standalone Windows application that combines satellite imagery with Google Local and Google Maps. Best of all, my source says it is going to be completely free. However, this is purely a rumor, and while the source is reputable, the source is not entirely sure. I will officially stake nothing on this rumor, but smugly reserve the right to claim credit if it proves true. Then again, we'll know very soon enough.

UPDATE: Confirmed! Thank you, sir. I couldn't have beaten that article by more than ten minutes, but I'll take it.

UPDATE 2: So, now that we've got that out of the way, the details. Google Earth will be made available at earth.google.com shortly as a free download. In fact, its surprising it isn't there already. The subscription fee is gone, but a $20 fee will get you Google Earth Plus with more features and even more money will buy even bigger versions of the program.

The program lets you do smooth sailing flybyes of the entire Earth. You can easily fly to any spot on the globe, by entering any associated data, like street addresses, place names or lat/long coordinates. There are overlays that put additional information on the map, like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, any number of interesting stuff.

You can do Local searches in the program, with icons on the map and a display on the side showing your results. You can leave notes, called "placemarks" all over the map, so you can remember where all sorts of places are. Searches and placemarks can be saved as bookmarks in "My Places". Everything can be output in an XML format called KML, that will allow the vast popularity of Google Maps to continue in Earth. You can also email a JPEG of the map, or send a KMZ file if you know the recipient has Earth installed.

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Google Earth Plus gives higher resolution images, GPS support, and more sophisticated annotation (like drawing on the map). Online help is available right here.

Screenshot mania!:

Editor's Note : (Due to length constraints, we've only included a couple links of Nathan's images. [Image 1. Image 2.] He has quite a bit more and they can be seen at his blog. It's worth it to take a look if you are unsure about downloading Google's latest tool.

UPDATE 3: The download is available now.

System requirements:

Minimum configuration:

Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP CPU speed: Intel� Pentium� PIII 500 MHz System memory (RAM): 128MB 200MB hard-disk space 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM 1024x768, 32-bit true color screen Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet") Recommended configuration: Operating system: Windows XP CPU speed: Intel� Pentium� P4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+ System memory (RAM): 512MB 2GB hard-disk space 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 32MB VRAM or greater 1280x1024, 32-bit true color screen Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet") I had to download, save, and add ".exe" to the end of the install file, but that's probably because I'm doing all this as Google is uploading it. I'm sure they'll fix it, but just be aware of the issue. Also, Googlers, fix the typo on this page ("Googsle Earth") at the bottom. Google has put together a Google Earth Sightseeing page with images of famous landmarks, and the KMZ files that will get you there. Read the Rest of the Article. About the Author: Chris Richardson is a search engine writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news. google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives google archives

Is Google targeting eBay and PayPal? That is exactly what people thought when news of Google's payment service was leaked. In today's WebProNews, we feature a couple of stories that take a look at the possible uses and implications for Google's upcoming e-wallet.

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Editor's Note: I'm sure you've heard of the upcoming Google Wallet by now. What are some uses you can see it going toward? Do you think Google will take Sugar's advice and embrace the adult industry? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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In an open letter to Google written by Sam Sugar, and appearing on his SugarBank blog, suggests the Google Wallet would be a perfect tool for adult-related Internet purchases. He provides a number of sound reasons why this would be a good move for Google, financially and otherwise.

When it was first revealed, many thought the Google Wallet would be a direct challenge to eBay's PayPal service, this line of thinking was categorically denied by Google CEO. Yesterday, Charlene Li discussed how G-Money could be used to consolidate micropayments (read about Charlene's thoughts in the second article), which constitutes a viable option for the Google Wallet, especially when you consider Charlene's detailed scenario.

A second, more risqué use can be found in Sam's open letter to Google, which asked the search engine to consider embracing adult content-related purchase transactions. The rest of this article looks at Sam's suggestion:

Because eBay does not allow PayPal to be used for pornographic transactions, adult-related web businesses are forced to use expensive merchant services that can leave many, buyers and sellers alike, unsatisfied. For instance, many merchant companies are unequipped to handle these "high risk" transactions. They can also carry expensive merchant charges.

Because of these difficulties, Brad feels Google's payment program would be perfect for the Internet adult industry.

Sugar's rationale comes from the support he feels Google already provides adult businesses. According to the letter:

Google is porn friendly. You provide tools to allow people to view adult images in their search results, there appear to be no restrictions on the type of products that can be found via Froogle, and a great number of the blogs you host (at blogger.com) contain adult material.

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This is quite true. Google users are responsible for filtering adult-related content out of the query results. Of course, Google does not allow adult content on AdWords campaigns, nor do they allow adult sites to display AdSense ads, but this seems to be out of respect for their big-name advertisers who don't want to be associated with such content.

Sugar's open letter also contains a number of conclusions demonstrating why embracing the adult industry with their new payment system would benefit Google financially and otherwise:

Conclusion: Google is already in the porn business and it would be damaging to withdraw.

Conclusion: PayPal have banned ‘high-risk' transactions due to a lack of technical expertise. Google can satisfy a waiting billion dollar market by catering to adult transactions.

Conclusion: Though handling adult transactions is complicated, publishing adult material - which Google already does in it's cache and via blogger.com - is more so.

Conclusion: Taking adult transactions will give Google the ‘adult edge' that VHS used to overtake Betamax. PayPal's neglect is Google's opportunity.

Conclusion: Adult transactions are already being managed profitably and efficiently by a number of small companies. Google has the resources and the brainpower to handle adult transactions safely if it chooses to.

While it remains to be seen whether or not Google will heed Sugar's advice, the fact remains he does provide legitimate and sound reasoning to his suggestion. Monetarily speaking, if Google was to embrace the adult industry with its Google Wallet, the financial rewards would probably be quite extensive.

When you consider both Charlene's and Sam's approach, however different they are, you see that they are opportunities where Google can put their upcoming payment system to effective use. While one of these approaches may seem controversial, it would be quite a financial windfall, especially when you consider the amount of revenue generated by adult-related businesses.

The question remains nonetheless: would Google risk taking such a PR beating by embracing the pornography industry in order to pad their coffers some more?

About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

Google's never ending search for providing a quality end user experience has culminated into a bullet with patent number WO 2005/029368 imprinted across the side. Unfortunately for smaller news services, the bullet may strike the heart of aspiring upstarts—a casualty of Google's friendly fire.

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Editor's Note: How will Google's new News patent affect the smaller news sites? Will it keep them out of Google News completely? If so, what other sources do these authors have that will display their work? Discuss at WebProWorld.

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Of course, it will all depend on how heavily certain things are weighed in the news algorithm technology Google has just sealed in the patent offices of the US and other countries. News giants like CNN and the New York Times will barely notice the decrease of air pressure in the blogosphere, and probably won't mourn the impending loss of younger cousins vying for their thrones.

The patent is aimed at increasing the quality of news delivered into search results, a noble effort to weed out inaccurate, biased, and disreputable sources. Until the implementation of the new algorithm, news is ranked according to relevance to the search word query and by the date (or timeliness) of the article. The source is not considered.

The new technology will take several new things into account, continually measuring qualitative factors like how long the news source has been in existence, the number of stories published, the credibility of the source, average story length, number of stories with bylines, the size of the organization's staff, circulation, number of global operations, number of links to stories from the source, and Web traffic to the site.

Currently, typing in "George W. Bush" will bring up two sources at the top that probably lack many of the things the new algorithm will be looking for. At the top of the page is a satire site called "Unconfirmed Sources" and an editorial from "Guerrilla News Network." So these aren't really news sources, their entertainment and editorial sources.

What concerns many is not so much the supposed increase in objectivity Google painstakingly aspires to create. It is the loss of sites such as the aforementioned from ranking, dropping them into obscurity so that they are difficult to find, read, and mull over. The filtering is taken out of the minds of the users and given into the hands of computer-generated objectivity. Many would rather that job be left to them, as Reuters and the Washington Post are easy enough to find.

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The European world is already leery of the far-reaching arms of Google information channeling. The next ten years will add $200 million dollars to the information indexing effort as Google digitizes some 15 million books from the most respected libraries in the US. The fears of "googlization" are becoming widespread as Europe mobilizes against the search engine by setting up their own literature database in fear of American cultural imperialism.

This is not to say that Europe isn't paranoid with misplaced anxiety. In all honesty, Google should be praised for their digitization and qualitative efforts and for setting the benchmark by which other search engines are measured. And Europe should have had their digitization effort going in spite of, rather than in response to Google's efforts. All information indexing should be welcomed on the web.

There will always be critics. Critics are the warts that come with power and fame. But its hard to not be at least a little bit worried about the underdogs, the upshoots, the legitimate news sources without thousands on staff, who haven't been around for decades and have themselves comfortably imbedded into the establishment. You have to pine just a little bit for the voices that could be potentially lost in the fight for search engine credibility.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace!

It does use XML technology which allows for the crawling and updating of your site's web pages. You can even include your entire web site (all urls) with this indexing program. For anyone targeting the search engines, especially Google, this program (still in beta) is a Must Have