SEO Blog

Though I am not allowed to say exactly when or remotely where, I will be spending some quality time with members of the Google and Microsoft Live Webmaster Central teams this weekend.

Somewhere in America the Webmaster Central teams from Google and Microsoft Live will face each other head to head in quasi-athletic competition. The rival search-squads will be squaring off in public against each other in one of the few forums their extraordinary NDA’s don’t overtly restrict; on a curling rink. Yes, you read that right, a curling rink. Geeks on ice with brooms, rings and rocks. The event is obviously going to be sillier than an algo-update at Christmas time. Being Canadian (and thus having an understanding of such things at birth), I’ve been asked to provide color commentary for WebmasterRadio.FM.

Figuring that much of the WebmasterRadio.FM audience and most of Metamend’s readers have little interest in curling, I want to use the opportunity to ask smart questions to some of the smartest people in search, the ones who actually run the engines.

Starting today, I am compiling a list of questions from the community. If you have anything you want asked, (expect full credit on the air), please let me know in the comments section here.

A conglomeration of four large American newspaper companies is forming to sell advertising space on the Internet sites of newspapers those companies own. It is estimated that the total advertising audience could reach over 50 million unique visitors each month.

The new advertising company, quadrantONE, will receive a portion of online ad-space on sites owned by The Tribune Company, Hearst Newspapers, the Gannet Company, and The New York Times Company. Three well known newspapers included in the advertising conglom are: The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and the Houston Chronical. There are several smaller, more localized papers included as well.

The basic idea seems to revolve around a one-call ad center based in Chicago that will automatically feed online advertising to each newspaper property, an important efficiency not reached by other online news ad-schemes such as Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, the Newspaper National Network, or the New Century Network of the late 1990’s.

Sensing an opening and trying to recoup massive advertising losses, the introduction of quadrantONE into the online advertising market by the biggest US publishers further demonstrates an inherent weakness in that marketplace. Currently, online advertising is dominated by Google AdWords with Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN’s adCenter running far behind.

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. ”

So back in mid-November MSN launched their own Webmaster Center Blog. As with the Google Blog this should provide a peek into some of the inner workings of the their own team of Engineer/PR/Evangelicals as they parade new MSNbot nuances to the throngs of awaiting enthusiasts. After sniffing around the blogroll today I noticed that one particular items was just put to bed. Having threatened to post about this ages ago, my procrastinating ways have lead me to the end of the saga without having weighed in until now.

The ‘Question’ related to the rash of bizarre search referrals that MSN was spreading around earlier this year.

The question was pretty much ‘where the heck is all of this search traffic coming from suddenly?’. Okay, suddenly meaning towards the end of August of this year, just like everyone else. So for an SEO Firm getting hits for the keyword ’search’, this could appear pretty flattering. Did I do something magical to suddenly send the MSNLive Bot into heat? Did someone hijack a PPC campain and we’re going to get a nasty bill from the folks at MSN Adcenter? After playing with those ideas for three to four seconds, it became brutally obvious that this was just bogus bot traffic masking itself with a search referral, thus triggering an entry into our Search Metrics. If I didn’t know any better I could possibly call that cloaking… The plot thickens. After spending some time reflecting on our Enquisite data a few items still didn’t ad up.