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During the last weeks, people in online forums observed some strange Google result changes. Rumor has it that there is a new -60 penalty that Google applies to websites in which it has lost trust. What has happened? Some webmasters found websites that were listed on position 61 in Google's search results that had Google Sitelinks below their listing. Normally, Google only displays Google Sitelinks for the first search result. Many webmasters believe that the website that was listed on position 61 with the Sitelinks was the number 1 result for that keyword but had been penalized by Google. What does Google say about the -60 penalty? In a Google Groups discussion about showing Sitelinks for #61 results Google employee John Mu referred to a -60 penalty discussion. Google hasn't officially confirmed that a -60 penalty exists. However, Google employee John Mu indicated in a discussion about the -60 penalty in the official Google groups that Google penalizes websites if they contain ...

Yahoo has teamed up with McAfee to develop SearchScan, a new safe search service. Here's what you need to know: * Provides always-on alerts to users for "risky" sites with security concerns including spyware, adware and other malicious software * Identifies sites that have shown bad email practices such as flooding user in-boxes with spammy emails * Available for Yahoo! Search users in the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Spain "The new SearchScan feature from Yahoo! Search makes searching the Web even safer than ever before. No other search engine today offers this level of warning before visiting sites that can damage or infect a user's PC and cost them valuable time and money," said Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Search. "Through this partnership with McAfee, we can offer users a safer search experience and drive more users to make Yahoo! Search their starting point on...

Google: White-hat SEO 'a benefit' White-hat search engine optimisation (SEO) firms can help companies and should not be considered the same as spammers, it has been claimed.

Some of the popular google updates. * Florida Update Nov 16th, 2003 * Austin Update Jan 11th, 2004 * Brandy Update Feb 11th 2004 * Google Bourbon Update Part I May, 2005 * Google Bourbon Update Part II * Google Bourbon Update Part III June 7th, 2005 * Jagger Update Part I (Oct 16th, 2005 to Nov 7th, 2005) * Jagger Update Part II (Oct 27th, 2005 to Nov 6th, 2005) * Jagger Update Part II (Oct 4th, 2005 to Nov 18th, 2005) * Big Daddy Infrastructure change

Yesterday some members of Digital Point Forums were talking about a Google search results update and checking the results I would say they were correct. The thing that sticks out the most is that a lot of newish .com sites that are hosted in the UK have had a nice little boost in the Google.co.uk rankings. Three of the .com sites that I have worked on over the last few months up until yesterday were strangely performing much better on Google.com then they were on Google.co.uk (all of these sites were hosted in the UK). I have two possible theories about why this has happened either Google.co.uk is very careful about determining which .com sites are actually from the UK and it just takes a long time or Google have just fixed there algorithm so that all UK hosted .com sites now get full Google.co.uk ranking benefit. It is not just my clients who have been affected, I have noticed many .com sites are now performing much better, Kevin Gibbons site SEOptimise.com appears to have shot up in ...

What is Geographical Keywording? Geographical keywording is the process of getting geographic keywords into your web pages and SEO strategy, and is one of your most powerful SEO tools. Many people who are serious about buying something search based on their location because they prefer to do business with a local company for a variety of reasons. Some people initially don't want to focus on a geographical region because one of the greatest things about the internet is its global reach, and why would you want to limit your web site to your local area? Clearly, nobody wants to limit themselves to a specific geographic region when it comes to showing up in the Google search results. By associating your content and pages with geographical keywords you are not limiting your site but you are just focusing in on your location as a way of capturing the search requests for people in your area. Let's face it, when you launch a site you need to use every tool at your disposal to get an ad...

There is a 10 ways to increase pages indexed. They are.. 1) PageRank 2) Links 3) Sitemap 4) Speed 5) Google's crawl caching proxy 6) Verify 7) Content 9) Staggered launch 10)Size matters. PageRank It depends a lot on PageRank. The higher your PageRank the more pages that will be indexed. PageRank isn't a blanket number for all your pages. Each page has its own PageRank. A high PageRank gives the Googlebot more of a reason to return. Matt Cutts confirms, too, that a higher PageRank means a deeper crawl. Links Give the Googlebot something to follow. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden as the trust is already established. Internal links can help, too. Link to important pages from your homepage. On content pages link to relevant content on other pages. Sitemap A lot of buzz around this one. Some report that a clear, well-structured Sitemap helped get all of their pages indexed. Google's Webmaster guidelines recommends submitting a Sitemap file T...

Is There an Anchor Text Problem? Aaron Wall put up a post about a new Google filter that causes people with high ranking terms to be bumped down to position #6. There is also a thread at Webmaster World about this phenomenon. This is still reasonably speculative in nature, but there are a lot of people who have seen this. Aaron offers some really interesting speculation about why this may be occurring. The most interesting theory was the notion that it was an anchor text problem. Here is what Aaron had to say: I think this issue is likely tied to a stagnant link profile with a too tightly aligned anchor text profile, with the anchor text being overly-optimized when compared against competing sites. Whether or not this is occurring now, this makes complete sense. It is well within Google’s (or any other search engine’s) ability to detect an unusually high density of one form of anchor text to a given domain. For example, if your site is called yourdomain.com, and you sell widgets, a...

Creating and submitting Video Sitemaps files About Google Video Sitemaps Google Video Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to publish and syndicate online video content and its relevant metadata to Google in order to make it searchable in the Google Video index. You can use a Video Sitemap to add descriptive information – such as a video’s title, description, duration, etc. – that makes it easier for users to find a particular piece of content. When a user finds your video through Google, they will be linked to your hosted environments for the full playback. When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, we will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video. Search results will contain a thumbnail image (provided by you or autogenerated by Google) of your video content, as well as information (such as title) contained in your Video Sitemap. In addition, your video may also appear in other Google search products. During this beta period, we can’t predi...

Google is experimenting with new features and improving the search experience.

Of all the SEO strategies that have sprung up in the last few years, none have gained as much repute as link baiting. Link baiting is an exciting prospect and several different variations of this method have propped up recently. Link baiting can be defined as the process of creating content that is interesting enough to catch people’s attention. It can be informational stuff also known as informational hooks, news hooks which provide fresh news information each time and then garner citations and links. ‘Evil hooks’ which is the process of writing something that is mean about someone or some product is also known to gather a lot of attention. Improving link quality While people have commonly created bait articles, you can also provide a fresh information piece and then leave it on the internet as bait. There have been articles that have picked up almost 1000 links in as less as 6 months. A news hook is the most effective one so far. So are contradictory hooks where you contradict someon...

People won't store very much data on their computers if Google has its way. The company is working on a new data storage service that lets users store virtually all of their information on the web, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Dubbed "cloud" computing, both Microsoft and Google have been racing to rollout applications that allow for heavy amounts of web-based storage and activity. While Google would not comment specifically on its recent developments, it did confirm that users would soon be able to store a range of files, including video and audio, on Google-owned servers. The move is an extension of free storage already offered with GMail, however, Google said it would likely sell storage space beyond an initial allotment. Microsoft and Google have been battling for position in the looming cloud war as a way to attract users and use that data for ad serving.

What is Search engine optimization ? Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. How Does SEO Work ? Most websites do not focus on their topic well, keyword lists containing 50 or more phrases per page (Ebay as a keyword is common), the business that has four separate offerings and each page of the website tries to target all four at once and misses. It might be the site is targeting a search phrase that no one is searching for. By focus...