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: Search Engine Marketing BlogMatt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - Filing a reinclusion request
Matt Cutts: Filing a reinclusion request w/ Google
Google engineer Matt Cutts with some nice detailed instructions on the process for pleading guilty, kissing up with Google, and maybe getting your website restored to the Google index. The old email address is apparently out of business or will be soon, and you need to go through the online form.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t address the collateral damage caused by some of their more aggressive filtering practices, or the possibility that following Google’s webmaster guidelines on redirects can do more harm than good.
Some folks reading this may have heard more than a few discouraging words about Google’s re-inclusion process, but I’ve heard from several folks lately, including a couple of my own students, that the process is working again as long as you follow Google’s rules.
Trackback spammers beat Typepad nofollow
Brian Turner has found something really interesting here: Trackback spammers beat Typepad nofollow.
This is the kind of thing that must keep search engine engineers up late at night. What a mess.
(Note: SitePoint uses Wordpress, which doesn’t appear to have been exploited yet)
Google Dropping Snippets?
I’m starting to see a lot more META descriptions and Open Directory (www.dmoz.org) descriptions appearing in Google search results, where in the past you could expect to see a snippet of text content from the listed page.
In some cases, I’m sure this is a good thing, but it can also lead to some really terrible results. Check out the Google search result for “SEO Consulting.”
If you’re seeing the same SERP I am (it’s possible…) you’ll find my site (www.seoresearchlabs.com) at #7, with the ODP description displayed underneath our link. Unfortunately, since the ODP editor couldn’t spell very well, Google is not doing me any favors by showing that description… in fact, the description is misleading because we don’t offer website design. (For reference, the ODP listing reads “Offers search engine marketing, keyword research reportes, website design, marketing training and consutlting.”)
Just above at #6 I see another website (www.increaseranking.com) with their META description displayed in place of a snippet. Which is great news for them, because it’s basically ad copy.
Increase Ranking is not listed in the Open Directory. My site was just recently added, and didn’t have a META description until a few minutes ago.
I’ll follow up in a …
Google doesn’t trust all links
In O’Reilly Radar > Search Engine Spam?, Tim O’Reilly addresses concerns that their network of sites, which includes Perl.com, XML.com, and others, is “selling PageRank” via text link ads.
As Danny sullivan points out in his comments, a lot of companies (including the former owner of Danny’s Search Engine Strategies conference) are selling the same type of advertising, cashing in on the economy created by search engines’ reliance on anchor text to generate search engine rankings.
Google engineer Matt Cutts chipped in to support the use of the rel=nofollow attribute on ad links. He also stated that he had been aware of O’Reilly’s link sales for some time, and that “parts of perl.com, xml.com, etc. have not been trusted in terms of linkage for months and months.” Further, that “just because a site shows up for a ‘link:’ command on Google does not mean that it passes PageRank, reputation, or anchortext.”
Those words, if they are heard throughout the SEO world, are sure to shake the confidence of many text link brokers… it’s about time. Smart link traders will be moving toward a model that makes it easier to use their networks for advertising that isn’t solely targeted at spiders.
SEOmoz | Great Site for Learning about Term Weight
Rand Fishkin has found a nice resource for folks who want to understand the science of information retrieval… SEOmoz Blog | Great Site for Learning about Term Weight
Rich Ackerman’s site has pages on the vector space model and a nice explanation of the math behind it.
I don’t get my own blogroll here, but if I did, SEOMoz would be on it…
Google’s tracking links - grrrrrrrrr!
Over the past couple days, I’ve become plenty annoyed with Google’s tracking links breaking, or failing to return any data. I get the same experience with Yahoo (which loves redirection) quite often - at least with Google SERPs it’s only a small percentage of links that are getting tracked.
Hey Google, if you’re going to implement a feature that does nothing for users, I hope you don’t mind losing a few users in the process. I’m going to switch my default search over to MSN for a bit. Every time Google drives a user to try another search, there’s a chance that the other engine will win the taste test.
For the geeks among you, here’s an (edited down) HTTP trail from WebBug on a Google redirect link:
GET /url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A//www.roundtablepizza.com/&ei=owYJQ-PUCqb4-AG79tG_Dg HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Cache-Control: private
Location: http://www.roundtablepizza.com/
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=ddccf96dc54d1008:TM=1124665190:
LM=1124665190:S=nwisHxMdrjO4hjbp;
expires=Sun, 17-Jan-2038 19:14:07 GMT;
path=/; domain=.google.com
As you can see, Google is setting a cookie on the way through the redirect. I assume this allows them to see when a user clicks the back button or “bounces” from the target page back to the SERP. Conspiracy theorists, have fun with that… (Note: I added the line breaks in the cookie code to make it fit our page layout.) …
Matt Cutts: UI fun: Better snippets
Google employee Matt Cutts describes a new enhancement to Google search results in
UI fun: Better snippets. Mr. Cutts is one of the most watched individuals in the search engine universe, and it’s nice to see him blogging.
I actually noticed this a couple days ago, when I was Googling around, and just sort of said “hmmm, that’s cool!” Then today when I got an email from SitePoint about our new Wordpress based blogging system, I knew that I already had a topic for my first post with the new system.
Thanks to the Just Blog It extension for Firefox, I can blog about anything instantly, without logging into the SitePoint forums, fooling with BBCode, seeing that my post doesn’t look right, going back into the forum to edit, and trial-and-erroring my way into something readable.
Another thing I noticed while Googling to find the URL for just blog it… Google’s got some tracking links turned on again - the link for that site (after Googling “just blog it gecko”) points to http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//blog.warmbrain.com/justblogit/&ei=eGwGQ82WNIW2Yba0yI4K
This is not the most exciting news in the history of search engines, but now that I can blog instantly …
Yahoo’s Mindset: A New Era
Yahoo’s Mindset, currently in Beta and part of Yahoo’s research labs, shows us where the future of search may be.
Through a slider bar, Yahoo Mindset allows searches to choose their mix of commercial search results vs. informational search results. Try running a search for “san diego hotels” and slide the bar around to see how this affects rankings.
On on end, you’re presented with sites specifically allowing you to search for and book hotel rooms. On the “researching” end of the spectrum you get visitor guides and hotel recommendations from the local newspaper, and tourism related Websites.
The future of search results may therefore be to fold: commercial & informational, with two sets of completely different Websites being listed in the Top 10, for the exact same keyword, depending on how they relate to what the searcher wants.
Google insider launches SEM blog
Just a quick one via Matt from the airport on my way back to Melbourne…
Matt Cutt’s, one of Google’s famous Webmaster-liasons now has his own blog which gives lots of insights into Google’s thinking on spam, indexing issues, etc:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
SEM Expert Seeks Apprentice
It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog… my apologies to all who have expected more. Poor health and poor timing have conspired against me.
So a little quick news will have to do for today:
- I Will Be at SES (Search Engine Strategies) in San Jose… but only on Monday August 8. Actually I’ll be there on Sunday too, and I’m not flying home until Tuesday morning, but if you want to see me in person, I’ll be speaking in the Search Term Research and Search APIs sessions on Monday… then look for me wherever free drinks are being served.
- Jupiter Media has sold the SES show, Clickz, and Search Engine Watch. Comments from Alan Meckler explain it all. As long as Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman are still putting the SES conferences together, then the shows will still be good, and this transaction is a non-event for most folks in SEM.
- Google is changing the rules on Adwords a bit - basically, if you want to spend enough, your ads won’t get turned off even if they aren’t getting clicked. Chris Sherman explains it better than Google did, with good background info. Exactly the sort of thing I …
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