by Sage Lewis
Sage invites you to come meet him and hear him speak in person at Search Engine Guide’s upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference.
Learn something from this post?
Come and experience Search Engine Guide style teaching in person! Join us for our first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Houston, Texas on April 21st and 22nd.
by Sage Lewis
Sage invites you to come meet him and hear him speak in person at Search Engine Guide’s upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference.
Learn something from this post?
Come and experience Search Engine Guide style teaching in person! Join us for our first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Houston, Texas on April 21st and 22nd.
Two years ago, my brother was getting married, and he had asked me to help design his invitations and the maps showing how to get from the church to the restaurant where we were holding the rehearsal dinner. I used to be a professional cartographer, so making a map was not a problem, particularly since online mapping has made it easy enough that any internet user could do it. I was going to find a nice map image and then paste it up with page layout software to print up directions.
Despite being very careful, I ended up making an incorrect map, sending a caravan of cars containing tired, grumpy wedding participants off to the wrong place and my brother was ready to kill me.
My experience in getting an erroneous map from the web isn’t all that uncommon,
and most avid internet users have been tripped up at some point by errors found
in online mapping systems.
So, why do these mapping errors happen so frequently?
Are you responsible for driving traffic to your Web site? Or building awareness with the difficult-to-reach demographic groups like teens and “20 somethings”?
Then don’t miss Search Marketing Expo - SMX Social Media Marketing in Long Beach, CA, April 22-23. Register today to reserve your place.
SMX Social Media Marketing is a must-attend event for internet marketers who want to harness the power of reader-engagement sites and tools like Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Netscape and Wikipedia.
This event is all about practical advice from the trail-blazing marketers who have mastered marketing on social media sites. SMX Social Media Marketing = tips, techniques and best practices.
Program chair and Search Engine Land Editor-In-Chief Danny Sullivan has crafted a program that dives deep into social media. SMX Social Media Marketing will explore current opportunities and future developments, offering both fundamental and advanced panels on topics including:
• Social Media Marketing Essentials
• Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
• Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
• A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
• Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
• Evangelist - The Marketer’s Role in SMM
See the complete agenda
SMX Social Media Marketing will be held at the Westin Long Beach, an ideal venue to host this intensive and intimate 2-day program. We’ve crafted the ideal environment for leaning: intimate setting, Wi-Fi furnished, and ample time for networking with the presenters and fellow attendees.
Don’t miss SMX Social Media Marketing. Tickets are limited. Register today!
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
Local, Maps & Mobile
Link Building
Paid Search & Contextual
Searching
SEM Industry
SEO & SEM
Social Media
Video, Music & Image Search
Web Analytics
Other Items
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
Maybe it’s just me, because I’ve spent years ingesting the Purple Cow Kool-Aid. But I can never get over the number of cookie-cutter, copycat businesses that spring up online. Choosing the exact same business model as someone else almost appears to be a favorite pastime in North America these days. Kind of a macho, or at least masochistic, thing. Like training for a marathon, or riding in the Tour de France without Lance Armstrong’s genetics.
For the past 10 years, most search engines have relied heavily on analyzing anchor text, links, and content to determine relevance. But recently, researchers at the top search engines have begun to look at other signals that might indicate search result relevance.
This weekend, there have been numerous reports about a couple in Western Pennsylvania that has sued Google for taking photographs of their home and displaying it on Google Street View. Aaron and Christine Boring are suing Google for violating their privacy and causing them mental distress.
Some photos of the boring house include the following three photos:
The claim is that the photograph was taken from a driveway that was labeled “Private Road” and that Google did not acknowledge the Boring’s right to privacy.
I’ve read reports about this all weekend, and a number of people have not found any signs that indicate that the drive is private. One person suspects that the sign was put up after the fact. A forum member echoes this sentiment:
If you look at the map and street views in question, it can be confusing as to where the road ends and where the private drive, if any, begins.
Further, members are a bit annoyed that the Borings never actually requested that Google take it down. Their first stop, it seems, was litigation.
As many folks say, what was the damage here? Google Street View shows images from thousands upon thousands of homes. Why does one family decide that their privacy is violated by starting a lawsuit against Google? Is this the way to handle private matters?
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
If you were ever to perform a link: query on Google, you’d be presented with a lot of links. But are they ordered in any such way that authoritative links are listed before any other links? Nobody knows for sure, but some people have seen some experience to indicate that the link: operator only shows higher quality links. However, they also note that in the past, Google has changed this policy because it was a great way for competition to try to score some “higher quality” links.
Tedster reports that the link: operator is merely a sampling of what really exists out there. Similarly, you’re only seeing a sampling of your links when you do a link analysis on Google Webmaster Tools.
Nobody believes that the results are randomized. One forum member reports that the link: operator shows basically the same results every time. There’s some order, but it’s hard to say exactly what it is.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Michael Gray pointed out that Google Code snippets are now part of universal search and I was able to reproduce his findings this morning.
If you notice halfway down the page, you’re seeing a whole brand new set of results that are pulled from a file built in C programming language.
I think the best part, though (at least for many SEOs) is that the Wikipedia result is below the fold. 
What do you think about this new discovery? If you’re a coder, do you find the results valuable or not helpful at all?
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Michael Gray pointed out that Google Code snippets are now part of universal search and I was able to reproduce his findings this morning.
If you notice halfway down the page, you’re seeing a whole brand new set of results that are pulled from a file built in C programming language.
I think the best part, though (at least for many SEOs) is that the Wikipedia result is below the fold.
What do you think about this new discovery? If you’re a coder, do you find the results valuable or not helpful at all?
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Some great websites rank but have horrendous code. At Cre8asite Forums, a webmaster has been given the task of redesigning the website and cleaning up the messy code and adding standard SEO elements (robots.txt, sitemap, external CSS, etc.). However, since the website is ranking well (after all, it’s being updated fairly frequently and the content is good), is there a risk in taking on such a project? Will a redesign kill the rankings?
Well, it all depends. One Cre8asite member says that if the site structure remains relatively the same, nothing should really change substantially.
But what else? You should take the time to educate the client. After all, the site has been around for over 10 years in this case and it will be extremely important to you (and your client) to learn some SEO basics. As EGOL says, the client knows a lot more about her topic than you, the SEO, does. Teaching her will only reap benefits:
In my opinion the best SEOs help their clients develop into better webmasters. There is more to gain by teaching than keeping secrets.
Indeed, she can gain a lot and your life will be a lot easier if you have someone who is eager and willing to take on your recommendations.
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Some great websites rank but have horrendous code. At Cre8asite Forums, a webmaster has been given the task of redesigning the website and cleaning up the messy code and adding standard SEO elements (robots.txt, sitemap, external CSS, etc.). However, since the website is ranking well (after all, it’s being updated fairly frequently and the content is good), is there a risk in taking on such a project? Will a redesign kill the rankings?
Well, it all depends. One Cre8asite member says that if the site structure remains relatively the same, nothing should really change substantially.
But what else? You should take the time to educate the client. After all, the site has been around for over 10 years in this case and it will be extremely important to you (and your client) to learn some SEO basics. As EGOL says, the client knows a lot more about her topic than you, the SEO, does. Teaching her will only reap benefits:
In my opinion the best SEOs help their clients develop into better webmasters. There is more to gain by teaching than keeping secrets.
Indeed, she can gain a lot and your life will be a lot easier if you have someone who is eager and willing to take on your recommendations.
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Forum members are noticing a new feature to Google Analytics that allows you to select certain views (by day, week, or month).
The day view is what you’re used to. On the other hand, the week and month views are entirely different.
Here’s the week view:
Here’s the month view:
On each of these, you can hover over the end points and get the statistics you’re looking for (views per week or per month). Obviously, since it’s only the beginning of April, you’re expected to see a decline in your view for the month as it only calculates visits for the month of April.
Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.