Archive: February, 2008

An article published in InformationWeek earlier today, Fear the Google Blacklist, was emailed to me because it appeared to contradict the post I wrote yesterday, Debunking the “Over-SEO” Myth. The piece, written by Thomas Claburn (who is usually accurate – imho), uses a phrase in the first sentence that makes me cringe regarding the dangers of , “… excessive search engine optimization“.

There is NO SUCH THING as excessive search engine optimization. There are foolish SEO practitioners applying SEO techniques in dangerous ways but that doesn’t equate to “excessive SEO”. That sounds more like stupid SEO to me.

For the broken-record: SEO is all about making websites better for users and simpler for search spiders. SEO is about driving pre-qualified traffic. SEO is about being an extraordinary webmaster. SEO is NOT about cheating the search engines for better positioning.

Perhaps I am naive. Though I know there are cheaters in every sector of life, I still believe in the beauty of baseball. I also believe in fair business practices and the tendency of the vast majority of humans to live within the social contract. Similarly, I strongly believe the vast majority of search engine optimization specialists are practicing clean, penalty-free techniques. I know the team I work with here at Metamend does, as do the teams at the two other SEO firms my career has been associated with.

Over at Search Engine Journal, editor Loren Baker makes a good point in a short post titled, “SEO Red Flags & SEO Misinformation : Let’s Put an End to It“. The post was a response to an article one of his writers published a two days ago questioning if the use of the “nofollow” tag alerted Google and set off perceived SEO penalties. (note: If used as intended, it most certainly does not.)

The original post “NoFollow: An SEO Red Flag?” got a lot of attention, setting off a lot of comments and receiving 60 Sphinns (or votes) at Sphinn.com. The fundamental flaw with the assertion of the article is that it was, in fact, wrong.

As a good editor will, Loren makes a good catch in his reply. He also opens debate about the number of SEO Myths out there, including the mega-myth that there is an over-SEO penalty Google applies to sites that have obvious hallmarks of search engine optimization.

There are no such penalties, something Google’s Matt Cutts has pointed out on more than one occasion. In response to the original article’s assertion that using nofollow to control the flow of link juice is a gigantic red flag, Matt wrote, “Nope, it’s not. Or at least, not at Google. I wouldn’t know about Yahoo/MSN/Ask, of course. :)”

The Wall St. Journal is reporting that Yahoo’s Board of Directors will issue a statement on Monday rejecting Microsoft’s $31/share offer. According to the Journal, the Board feels the bid is far below the true value of Yahoo and wants Microsoft to sweeten the offer by at least $9/share.

The source also said that the Board believes Microsoft is wary of pushing the take-over bid much further for fear of alienating its own shareholders, Yahoo employees, or government regulators.

Observers also expect Yahoo to issue a rebuilding plan to satisfy its investors as the company moves to protect its independence. The Board was said to be considering other options last week, including a paid advertising deal with Google that could potentially increase the monetization of Yahoo ads by several cents per click.

If Yahoo’s Board rejects the offer, Microsoft will be forced to either immediately up the offer or prepare for a difficult fight to oust current Board members at the next annual general meeting.

Following Microsoft’s bid to take Yahoo, interest is circulating around another former Internet giant, AOL. According to Marketing Shift blogger John Gartner, Comcast is interested in grabbing AOL’s assets away from TimeWarner which conveniently wishes to shed them. Comcast’s interest is bound to pique Google’s, which already has a 5% interest in AOL.

Interestingly, Comcast and Google want AOL for completely different reasons. Comcast is one of the largest Telco ISPs in the United States. It wants to absorb AOL’s massive base of dial-up and high-speed subscribers. Google is the largest search engine on the ‘net. It wants to take advantage of AOL’s vast user-audience to expand its own advertising opportunities. Google already serves most ads shown at AOL but it doesn’t want to watch AOL’s market-share go to Comcast.

It is possible for TimeWarner to divide AOL into its two component pieces with ISP services going to Comcast and information services going to Google. Perhaps that would be the best move TW’s board could make. Though it makes sense for the worlds largest traditional publisher to have its own mega-network, TimeWarner has never been able to properly serve its info stream via AOL’s network.