google caffeine coming soon

As I (and many other top SEO/SEM blogs) have been reporting since mid-August, the big “Google Caffeine” major algorithm update is coming very soon. According to Matt Cutts (Google’s Head of Web Spam Department), the major Google Caffeine update will take place after the holiday season. To read Matt Cutt’s blog post about the Google Caffeine update, please visit the following link:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-caffeine-update/

In case you are interested, Mashable did an analysis of possible changes that might be part of the update back in August here:
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-new-version/

Here is a very interesting video at the last Search Engine Strategies conference show with Matt Cutts about the Google Caffeine update:


Also, here is more talk from around the web about what might happen:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355684,00.asp
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10394059-93.html
http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/11/googles-caffeine-live-at-one-data-center/
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/091110-093955
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/25086.asp

So it looks like we are all in for some changes together. From my experience from the last 2 major Google algorithm updates (2003 and 2005/2006) I always recommend to not panic and expect major fluctuations of the Google search engine result/rankings for your website. Since this is new for everyone in the SEO world, I recommend remaining patient and to continue marketing your website and business in a white hat manner and long term you should be just fine.

Of course, I will keep you updated (as everyone will in the SEO industry) with any major updates, roll outs, etc.

Google Now Hiring People To Work From Home

If you live in America and you have been wanting to work from home, you might be in luck. Google has now released a new "Work From Home Program" that will allow Americans to work for the titan from the comfort of their own homes.

To thousands of Americans this means that they will soon have a safe and bright future working for one of the fastest growing companies in the world.

In the middle of this recession this country and the world is going through, Google has been thriving and reporting profits consistently every quarter.

Completely innovating the Search Engine industry in the late 1990's, Google has had a history of development and innovation, and another one is about to come.

Google has now opened it's doors and will be hiring everyday people to work from the comfort of their own homes posting links. The way this works is Google will allow people to signup and receive a package which will contain all the step by step instructions to get setup from home.

This will allow Google to hire talent that would otherwise be unreachable and compensate them based on results on a long term basis.

What you need: A Computer, an Internet Connection and the desire to make a living working from home. No special skills are required other than knowing how to use a computer and navigate the internet.

Mary, a mother from San Jose, CA who worked with Google in the experimental parts of this program, is thriving, in the middle of an economic recession, working in the comfort of her own home with Google.

From her website: "I get paid about $25 for every link I post on Google and I get paid every week... I make around $5500 a month right now"

Google has now officially released their new "work from home" system out to the public. There will be thousand of spots available that are expected to go very soon in the next few days.

The way this works is very simple, Google says.

First you will need to apply for their work from home kits. Google has release a limited amount of kits, all distributed through local websites in your area, which will cost $2 of shipping and handling to the public.

Google says this charge is made to cover shipping costs but also to separate the people that are serious about working with them through this program.

Once you have ordered your kit (if you are one of the lucky few to get availability in your area) then you will receive a package that will contain all the instructions you need to start working from home for the online titan.

This kit will show you all you need to know, Google says. You will be performing simple and straightforward tasks such as posting links. "Anybody with basic computer skills will be able to perform these tasks" adding to that they say that "We understand the psychology of working from home and we want to give our employees tasks that are simple and easy, and reward them generously in order to keep them motivated."

Is this worth quitting your job? If you're lucky enough to receive a kit, you might not even have to.

"We start off our work from home program only requiring 1-2 hours a day of work, earning a great income from the start. This way our work from home employees will see the benefit and start devoting more and more time each day and their salaries will increase accordingly" Google reports.

Although they are going very fast since their release earlier today, thousands of positions are still available at the time of this writing.

To apply for a job working from home for Google here are the three steps:

Step 1: Get the Google Work From Home Kit, only pay the $2.95 for shipping. (The shipping cost allows Google to screen for serious people).

Step 2: Follow the directions on your package and set up a Google account. Then they will give you the website links to post. Start posting those links. Google tracks everything.

Step 3: Google will send out your checks weekly. Or you can start to have them wire directly into your checking account. (Your first checks will be about $750 to $1,500 a week. Then it goes up from there. Depends on how many links you posted online.)

Associated Links:
Easy Google Profit official site

affiiate sites

Twitter = content distribution = backlinks

If you think social media provides value now, just wait.

From a developer’s standpoint, Twitter is an exciting application because of the freedom provided through their API. A rogue hacker can download one of the many Twitter libraries, connect to the API, query for the top trending topics at that time, take and put the trending topics in irrelevant tweets that are meant to spam Twitter, in the end 4chan‘ing the trending topics that show on a user’s home page for monetary gain.

Let me explain. Or rather, let me quote Superman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Twitter has essentially given every developer in the world great power by allowing them access to their API. You can make the argument that any API can provide this value. However, due to the sheer amount of content and range of the audience, Twitter takes the cake right now. That is until Facebook releases its search API, if they ever do.

From a business standpoint, Twitter’s API should provide the same excitement. How you might ask? Through savvy content distribution.

So what does this have to do with search engines?

A few months ago I wrote an article on a topic that gained a lot of attention. It was retweeted about 100 times, which wasn’t a huge deal—relatively small in comparison to many other popular articles shared on the web. But what came next was shocking.

Through the retweet button from Tweetmeme, I was able to derive the short URL used to share the link. I also distributed the article by using a short URL link of my own. Using these two short URL links, one posted on the website and the one I created for myself, I setup Google Alerts so that I could track the viral activity of each.

I also took it a step further. I realize that due to the different Twitter clients, web apps, desktop apps, or any of the hundreds of ways to post a Tweet to Twitter, that most likely the short URL would be changed during a retweet, thus diluting my attempt to track the viral activity. To counteract this, I set up a script to check the Twitter search API for Tweets about my article periodically each day. I then logged the URL’s that were included in each Tweet. If the URL showed up more than once, I started to track it with various methods, including Google Alerts.

The point was to try and find out every spot that my article was distributed via Twitter. Luckily right now URL shorteners are usually only used for Twitter, which allowed me to ignore the potential influence from other website applications on the short URL’s.

What I found was a huge opportunity to gain backlinks from posting links in Tweets.

Twitter = content distribution = backlinks

Alarm bells are probably going off telling you that links on Twitter do not count because Twitter utilizes the “nofollow” attribute on all links, and you are correct. Many of my friends who consult for companies on search engine optimization theorize that even though “nofollow” exists, links using the attribute still maintain a measurable value. True or not, I don’t know—but the valuable links from retweets are not search engine backlinks.

The value of the Twitter API comes with giving free access to millions of developers across the globe to your content.

You play the savvy marketing executive and I will play the exceptionally resourceful programmer. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.

Lets say you break a story about Google Wave on your company blog and you ask your bright young intern to Tweet about it with a link to your blog post.

Just after your intern posts the link, I query the Twitter Search API (the beauty of real-time) for “Google Wave” and it serves up your Tweet. Since I am a content aggregator, my cool little script pulls your Tweet down from Twitter to my local database, parses the Tweet for the link to your blog post and removes the shortened link which gives me the full website address to your company blog. I pull the title from your website, and then distribute the result on my website.

Visually, the initial Tweet looks like this:

JoshuaOdmark: Is Google Wave the next best thing? We think so… http://9mp.com/Yxe

And the result that shows on my website:

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.

Boom! You just gained a backlink

Of course this is a hypothetical situation with certain assumptions, but you can see how it is possible to gain backlinks through Twitter. The key is to get your Tweets in front of as many third party applications as you can.

You can do this by getting as many retweets for your links as you can. Each and every retweet is an opportunity to gain at least one backlink.

But always remember, nobody likes a spammer. Take the high road and follow Twitter’s acceptable use guidelines. Over time you will keep all of your current followers, continue to gain more, and create an authoritative Twitter account which will pay off in dividends down the road.

Twitter is one of the hottest companies in the world right now and they have the venture capital funding to prove it. So focus on the long-term value by building great content, continuing to build your engaged followers, and the backlinks from retweets will come naturally.

At that point, all that’s left is to count the increase in organic traffic to your website.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Marketing News

How to Verify Blogger in Google Webmaster tool

You may have seen our recent announcement of changes to the verification system in Webmaster Tools. One side effect of this change is that blogs hosted on Blogger (that haven't yet been verified) will have to use the meta tag verification method rather than the "one-click" integration from the Blogger dashboard. The "Webmaster Tools" auto-verification link from the Blogger dashboard is no longer working and will soon be removed. We're working to reinstate an automated verification approach for Blogger hosted blogs in the future, but for the time being we wanted you to be aware of the steps required to verify your Blogger blog in Webmaster Tools.

Step-By-Step Instructions:

In Webmaster Tools
1. Click the "Add a site" button on the Webmaster Tools Home page
2. Enter your blog's URL (for example, googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) and click the "Continue" button to go to the Manage verification page
3. Select the "Meta tag" verification method and copy the meta tag provided

In Blogger
4. Go to your blog and sign in
5. From the Blogger dashboard click the "Layout" link for the blog you're verifying
6. Click the "Edit HTML" link under the "Layout" tab which will allow you to edit the HTML for your blog's template
7. Paste the meta tag (copied in step 3) immediately after the element within the template HTML and click the "SAVE TEMPLATE" button




In Webmaster Tools
8. On the Manage Verification page, confirm that "Meta tag" is selected as the verification method and click the "Verify" button

Your blog should now be verified. You're ready to start using Webmaster Tools!

How to Handle duplicate content within your own website

Handling duplicate content within your own website can be a big challenge. Websites grow; features get added, changed and removed; content comes—content goes. Over time, many websites collect systematic cruft in the form of multiple URLs that return the same contents. Having duplicate content on your website is generally not problematic, though it can make it harder for search engines to crawl and index the content. Also, PageRank and similar information found via incoming links can get diffused across pages we aren't currently recognizing as duplicates, potentially making your preferred version of the page rank lower in Google.

Steps for dealing with duplicate content within your website

1. Recognize duplicate content on your website.
   The first and most important step is to recognize duplicate content on your website. A simple way to do this is to take a unique text snippet from a page and to search for it, limiting the results to pages from your own website by using a site:query in Google. Multiple results for the same content show duplication you can investigate.
   


2. Determine your preferred URLs.
   Before fixing duplicate content issues, you'll have to determine your preferred URL structure. Which URL would you prefer to use for that piece of content?
   


3. Be consistent within your website.
   Once you've chosen your preferred URLs, make sure to use them in all possible locations within your website (including in your Sitemap file).
   


4. Apply 301 permanent redirects where necessary and possible.
   If you can, redirect duplicate URLs to your preferred URLs using a 301 response code. This helps users and search engines find your preferred URLs should they visit the duplicate URLs. If your site is available on several domain names, pick one and use the 301 redirect appropriately from the others, making sure to forward to the right specific page, not just the root of the domain. If you support both www and non-www host names, pick one, use the preferred domain setting in Webmaster Tools, and redirect appropriately.
   


5. Implement the rel="canonical" link element on your pages where you can.
   Where 301 redirects are not possible, the rel="canonical" link element can give us a better understanding of your site and of your preferred URLs. The use of this link element is also supported by major search engines such as Ask.com, Bing and Yahoo!.
   


6. Use the URL parameter handling tool in Google Webmaster Tools where possible.
   If some or all of your website's duplicate content comes from URLs with query parameters, this tool can help you to notify us of important and irrelevant parameters within your URLs. More information about this tool can be found in our announcement blog post.
   

What about the robots.txt file?

One item which is missing from this list is disallowing crawling of duplicate content with your robots.txt file. We now recommend not blocking access to duplicate content on your website, whether with a robots.txt file or other methods. Instead, use the rel="canonical" link element, the URL parameter handling tool, or 301 redirects. If access to duplicate content is entirely blocked, search engines effectively have to treat those URLs as separate, unique pages since they cannot know that they're actually just different URLs for the same content. A better solution is to allow them to be crawled, but clearly mark them as duplicate using one of our recommended methods. If you allow us to crawl these URLs, Googlebot will learn rules to identify duplicates just by looking at the URL and should largely avoid unnecessary recrawls in any case. In cases where duplicate content still leads to us crawling too much of your website, you can also adjust the crawl rate setting in Webmaster Tools.

Try Google AdWords with USD$100 in free advertising

I got a Message from Google Team to Google Webmaster tool saying this

Dear Site Owner,

Thank you for using Webmaster Tools. While using these tools is a great way to be found on Google, many webmasters also use Google AdWords to increase traffic by promoting themselves to interested visitors and prospects. We want to offer you the opportunity to give AdWords a try with this USD$100 advertising coupon.

What is AdWords? AdWords ads are relevant text ads that appear alongside or above the results in response to searches on Google. So, when someone searches for products, services or content that you offer, your ad could show up alongside or above the organic search results. So, with AdWords, you are promoting yourself to interested prospects right when they are searching for just what you offer.

Other benefits of AdWords:
Control where your ad appears – by country, region or town
Using AdWords, you can target the audience that matters to you, across the globe or right in your neighborhood.

Set your own budget and fully control your costs
There is no minimum spending requirement; how much you invest in AdWords is completely up to you. You could, for instance, set a daily budget of USD$100 and a maximum bid of USD$0.50 for each click on your ad*. You decide how much each new lead (click) is worth to you.

Pay only when somebody clicks on your ad
When your ad is set up with cost-per-click pricing, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.

To sign up for AdWords and take advantage of this USD$100 offer:

1. Visit http://www.google.com/ads/webmastertools. You could use your existing Google Account to sign up and create your new Google AdWords account.
2. Sign in to your new AdWords account.
3. On the Billing tab, enter your information in the Billing Preferences section.
4. To claim your free USD$100 of advertising, enter your unique, non-transferable, one-time use code (including hyphens) into the Promotional code field.
=======================================================
Your personal coupon code: 6T8J-X97Y-8DS5-4G7D-FC
=======================================================
5. Complete the Billing Information section, then click Save and Activate.
6. Create a few ad campaigns and see how AdWords can help your business.

Sincerely,

The Webmaster Tools Team

Google Test More Search Options

Google tested many interfaces for displaying related searches: at the bottom of the page, above the search results, in the left or right sidebar. A recent experiment adds some related searches to the toolbelt, the sidebar that includes many advanced options.

Alistair Lattimore noticed that a search for [Circle on Cavill] returned a big list of refinements in the sidebar: restaurants, retail, apartments, for sale, map, parking, hotel, movies. Selecting one of the suggestions changed the query to [Circle on Cavill restaurants] or [Circle on Cavill retail], even though the search box didn't change the query.


Some would say that Google borrowed a Bing feature, even if Google tested it earlier or Hakia used it before Bing. What I find troubling is that Google combines site categorization filters like forums or reviews with search refinements.

Google continues to roll out some new search related enhancements as if sending a signal to the Bing camp that they are prepared for whatever threat that Microsoft’s search engine is slightly giving them the past couple of months. New on Google’s Search Option tools are nine new search options to filter search by – past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news.These search options are available right after Google gives you the preliminary results of your search, by simply clicking on the “show options” in the blue bar under the Google logo.

Here’s a brief description of what these 9 search options can do:

Past hour and Specific date range – Google’s little effort to make its search results more “real-time”, attacking of course Twitter’s threat. These two options lets you drill down to the freshest results that Google search can provide.

More shopping sites and Fewer shopping sites: – “more shopping sites” gives you additional commercial pages and display prices from those pages right in the search results. While “fewer shopping sites” lets you filter out many of those commercial pages.

Visited pages and Not yet visited – lets you filter search results either based on the sites you’ve visited before or sites that you have not yet visited. I particularly find this search option a real time-saver.

Books, Blogs and News - Gives you search results coming from Google’s Books, Blogs and News index

Google search snippets : Jump to Link you want Now

The Google Blog announced two new features within the Google search results we have spotted earlier. The first are the anchor based links and the second are the snippet based links. Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” article from back in December 2008, told us this was coming as well. Here are pictures of both, that clearly describe each:

Anchor Based Jump To Links or Sitelinks:

Snippet Based Jump To or Sitelinks:

Both these types of links take you to the same page of the main link, but they anchor you down or jump you to a specific point on the page. This is done using anchor links within the page source. The Google Webmaster Central Blog explains how webmasters can help gain these links in their snippets. Google explains:

First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

As a side note, Google has also been testing what I am calling “deep sitelinks.” This is a combination of date and post data with Google Sitelinks in one snippet.

Bavajan is Search Engine Marketing News Editor and owns SEO Training Institute, a bangalore based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Marketing News , a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Bavajan also works for a Matrimony portal called VivahaBandhan and he can be followed on Twitter here

Duplicate Content Across Multiple Domains, URLS

Last month, I gave a talk at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference on Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues. For those who couldn't make it to the conference or would like a recap, we've reproduced the talk on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. Below you can see the short video reproduced from the content at SES:



You can view the slides here:



Posted by Bavajan Search Engine Marketing News Editor and Internet Marketing Specialist at Vivahabandhan - A Matrimonial site

Google Labs Rolls Out Fast Flip, Google’s Newspaper & Magazine

The previously rumored Google news site “Flipper” is in fact launching today as “Fast Flip” in Google Labs. But maybe it should be called Google Skimmer because it permits people to move very quickly through lots of visually rich news pages from dozens of partner publications. According to the Google Blog Post:

Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

Here are some screenshots provided by Google, which look quite similar to the originally leaked screens from the earlier “Flipper” rumors:

According to Google’s Marissa Mayer, Google co-founder Larry Page said, “Why isn’t the web like a magazine?” and wanted a way to browse it. Well, Fast Flip lets users visually browse (as well as search) news. There’s also personalization; the site makes recommendations based on your clicks, searches and other behavior.

When you click on any of the stories, you’re taken to publisher sites, which makes them happy. Speaking of which, Google’s initial publisher partners include the NY Times, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek.

Google is banking that an improved user experience will mean lots of traffic and page views. Google says that revenue generated from ads on the site will be split with publishers. (This could potentially be a goldmine of display inventory for Google if it expands the content from news into a broad range of magazines.)

If it’s a hit, this probably becomes the successor to Google News. And it may be the testing ground for the potential “micropayments platform” that Google is developing for content publishers — it’s all coming together now. I’m only partly kidding with that remark.

We haven’t yet had a chance to try the site but it looks like a much richer and more interesting way to consume news than, well, Google News.

Google says there’s also a mobile version “with tactile page flipping,” for the iPhone and Android.