Google Webmaster Tools Adds Hack Alert For CMS Programs - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)
Google will be alerting sites to possible hacks of their CMS programs the Google Webmaster Central blog announced today. Nice addition guys.
Recently we've seen more websites get hacked because of various security holes. In order to help webmasters with this issue, we plan to run a test that will alert some webmasters if their content management system (CMS) or publishing platform looks like it might have a security hole or be hackable.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Google Webmaster Central release Updates
Google Webmaster Central has released some updates: one to the API settings and one to the crawl errors feature.
Here is new things you can do with your API settings:
• Crawl Rate: You can request that Googlebot crawl your site slower or faster than it normally would (the details can be found in our Help Center article about crawl rate control). If many of your sites are hosted on the same server and you know your server's capacity, you may want to update all sites at the same time. This now a trivial task using the Webmaster Tools GData API.
• Geographic Location: If your site is targeted towards a particular geographic location but your domain doesn't reflect that (for example with a .com domain), you can provide information to help us determine where your target users are located.
• Preferred Domain: You can select which is the canonical domain to use to index your pages. For example, if you have a site like www.example.com, you can set either example.com or www.example.com as the preferred domain to use. This avoids the risk of treating both sites differently.
• Enhanced Image Search: Tools like the Google Image Labeler allow users to tag images in order to improve Image Search results. Now you can opt in or out for all your sites in a breeze using the Webmaster Tools API.
For the crawl error feature, you now get to see the URL of the inbound link that is linking to an error page.
Google Webmaster Central has released some updates: one to the API settings and one to the crawl errors feature.
Here is new things you can do with your API settings:
• Crawl Rate: You can request that Googlebot crawl your site slower or faster than it normally would (the details can be found in our Help Center article about crawl rate control). If many of your sites are hosted on the same server and you know your server's capacity, you may want to update all sites at the same time. This now a trivial task using the Webmaster Tools GData API.
• Geographic Location: If your site is targeted towards a particular geographic location but your domain doesn't reflect that (for example with a .com domain), you can provide information to help us determine where your target users are located.
• Preferred Domain: You can select which is the canonical domain to use to index your pages. For example, if you have a site like www.example.com, you can set either example.com or www.example.com as the preferred domain to use. This avoids the risk of treating both sites differently.
• Enhanced Image Search: Tools like the Google Image Labeler allow users to tag images in order to improve Image Search results. Now you can opt in or out for all your sites in a breeze using the Webmaster Tools API.
For the crawl error feature, you now get to see the URL of the inbound link that is linking to an error page.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links
Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links
Ever since Google Webmaster Tools started reporting on broken links to a site, webmasters have been asking for the sources of those links.
Today, Google has delivered. From Webmaster Tools you can now see the page that each broken link is coming from. This information should be of great help for webmasters in ensuring the visitors find their sites and that their links are properly credited.
Ever since Google Webmaster Tools started reporting on broken links to a site, webmasters have been asking for the sources of those links.
Today, Google has delivered. From Webmaster Tools you can now see the page that each broken link is coming from. This information should be of great help for webmasters in ensuring the visitors find their sites and that their links are properly credited.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Google Want links, but what kind of links?
Google with a tutorial on inbound links. It says basically what SEO experts have been saying for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in that order.
Just because it’s old news doesn’t mean it’s bad news. Google’s had a real history of silence on the SEO side of things, and experts were often left to theorize and test—and worse, try to game. Google sent a pretty loud signal this time last year by hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, a move seeming to confirm basic white-hat SEO tactics. The virtues of naturally gained, editorial inbound links and directly denounces links appear “spammy,” or not “merit-based.”
One of the strongest ranking factors on a site is the site's content. Additionally, perhaps a site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.
Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.
Here are four bullet points on how to earn merit-based links, paraphrased below:
• Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or entertainment.
• Be interesting. Be a teacher.
• Participate in the community surrounding your industry—social media, blog comments, user reviews.
• Provide useful products or services.
In short: content, content, content, a little participation, and the links will come.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Soon you can track your business with Google RSS
Google will unveil the new RSS alert service for Web Search, which will sit aside it's current email alerts. Web search alerts make it easier for website and business owners to keep track of their listings and references in Google's web results.
Google currently offers RSS alerts for its News and Blog search services, but is the last of the top 3 search engines to offer feed alerts on its core search results. Microsoft and Yahoo! have offered RSS alerts for quite some time.
For those of you wondering what's so special about Google Search RSS alerts, it makes tracking your site/business in the search engine much easier.
You'll get an automate update every time Google indexes new content that references a particular keyword or search term such as your website or business.
For example, I have set up my main keywords for some Pages and feeds as a Google alert. So everytime Google's spiders crawl and index a web page or article that references us, I get alerted.
It helps me keep up to date on our reputation online, check some of our SEO strategies and generally keep my finger on the pulse. It's also a great way to keep on top of what your competitors are doing.
As said, RSS feeds will be an extension of Google Alerts, which currently only allow notification by email.Screen-scraping Google results was already easily possible but once live, RSS feeds should be a nice addition nevertheless, especially for all the tools out there which only work on RSS. Theres no specific launch date set for this, Google says.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Inside AdWords: AdWords Editor 6.5 for Windows and Mac
Inside AdWords: AdWords Editor 6.5 for Windows and Mac
This release includes several features to help you navigate and manage your account, such as a new Keyword Opportunities tool, horizontal scrolling in the data view, and auto-sizing columns. You can learn more about these and other new features in the release notes.
This release includes several features to help you navigate and manage your account, such as a new Keyword Opportunities tool, horizontal scrolling in the data view, and auto-sizing columns. You can learn more about these and other new features in the release notes.
YouTube, Now with Click-to-Buy
YouTube has begun placing click-to-buy links beneath videos. This is the beginning of a greater plan to offer YouTube as an e-commerce platform to interested companies.
Amazon, iTunes, EMI Music and Electronic Arts are among the first to get a crack at the new feature, which is currently only available in the United States.
Memo to Viacom: Instead of suing Google and YouTube, which is costing you undoubtedly large sums of money in legal fees, you might try advertising on the wildly popular online video network instead.
YouTube has begun placing click-to-buy links beneath videos. This is the beginning of a greater plan to offer YouTube as an e-commerce platform to interested companies.
Amazon, iTunes, EMI Music and Electronic Arts are among the first to get a crack at the new feature, which is currently only available in the United States.
Memo to Viacom: Instead of suing Google and YouTube, which is costing you undoubtedly large sums of money in legal fees, you might try advertising on the wildly popular online video network instead.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Advertise with online video.
Online video is becoming quite popular, and it stands to reason that opportunities for video advertising are increasing right along with that popularity.
Sure, ads in online videos aren't nearly as popular as the videos themselves. Actually, they tend to annoy users who just want to watch a TV show or whatever. It's really not that different than television, except that ad time in online video tends to be much shorter, so the ads don't drive users away.
Ads are how many online video providers monetize their sites though, and they are going to have ads regardless, so they might as well be your ads.
Apart from true online video, Google has even made it easier to get your video ads on television. They just signed a deal with NBC Universal that will see them putting ads for clients on the network's stations such as MSNBC, CNBC, Sci-Fi, Oxygen, Sleuth, and Chiller. If all goes well, they will likely add more stations as well - possibly even NBC.
The interesting part about this is that you can manage your ads from the same place as your Google AdWords account. So think about how easy it would be to transition the ads you make for online rotation to traditional television.
The bottom line is: online video is getting bigger. You don't want to be left behind and miss out on potential customers because you don’t have a presence.
Online video is becoming quite popular, and it stands to reason that opportunities for video advertising are increasing right along with that popularity.
Sure, ads in online videos aren't nearly as popular as the videos themselves. Actually, they tend to annoy users who just want to watch a TV show or whatever. It's really not that different than television, except that ad time in online video tends to be much shorter, so the ads don't drive users away.
Ads are how many online video providers monetize their sites though, and they are going to have ads regardless, so they might as well be your ads.
Apart from true online video, Google has even made it easier to get your video ads on television. They just signed a deal with NBC Universal that will see them putting ads for clients on the network's stations such as MSNBC, CNBC, Sci-Fi, Oxygen, Sleuth, and Chiller. If all goes well, they will likely add more stations as well - possibly even NBC.
The interesting part about this is that you can manage your ads from the same place as your Google AdWords account. So think about how easy it would be to transition the ads you make for online rotation to traditional television.
The bottom line is: online video is getting bigger. You don't want to be left behind and miss out on potential customers because you don’t have a presence.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
A New Advertising Opportunity from MySpace
MySpace has recently launched a new ad program: MySpace Music, a new service that lets people create their own playlists of songs, and offers a huge catalog of millions of major label and independent label songs to stream on demand. This can be a very big and popular service.
What they did is to start a new advertising program that MySpace announced just before the launch of MySpace Music. While it is geared toward bands to help promote themselves, since MySpace is such a great tool for them to do so, there is no reason that any small business can't utilize the same program.
It is a self-serve ad program that allows users to create their own banner ads easily, and then target them toward the audience that they wish. You can narrow your campaign down by gender, geographical area, or age, based on information that users supply on their profile pages.
Users can use MySpace's new tool to track their ads' performance, and control how much they spend on any campaign. There is a minimum of $25, but you can spend as little as that, and up to $10,000, and you only pay when your ad is clicked on.
MySpace is still very popular, and will probably grow more now that MySpace Music has been launched. Since lovers of just about every kind of music can find something they like with MySpace Music, they should make up just about every demographic you could possibly want to go after with your advertising campaign.
This Should Be Great for Small Businesses
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement
Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement
Google has launched a new informational site designed to tell its story about why there's no need to fear an ad partnership between it and Yahoo. Within the site, you'll lots of information about the deal except for one key fact: when exactly does it start? The launch of the site suggests any day now.
Google has launched a new informational site designed to tell its story about why there's no need to fear an ad partnership between it and Yahoo. Within the site, you'll lots of information about the deal except for one key fact: when exactly does it start? The launch of the site suggests any day now.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Google Book Search APIs - Google Code
The Google Book Search Blog announced the new developer site for the Google Book Search APIs. The API allows developers to add Google Book Search features to their web site.
For example, you can now embed book previews, when available, to books listed on your site.With this API, anyone can:
* Embed book previews on your site
* Add book search results to your site
* Locate book information, reviews, ratings, labels, and user libraries
* Send Google user-generated content
* Link your users to Google Book Search
* and more.
More details here:
Friday, September 19, 2008
Social Networking in the Sky - Yahoo! News
Airlines are edging into online social networking, giving air travelers an opportunity to share experiences and maybe score some discounted airfares. In return, the airlines are developing a marvelous new marketing tool.
Just this week, Lufthansa, the dominant German carrier, introduced what it says is the first-ever dedicated airline-sponsored social network for college students: GenFlyLounge.com. GenFlyLounge.com allows duly enrolled student-members to compare notes on travel experiences and destinations and buy discounted student airfares on Lufthansa. Users must have current .edu e-mail addresses and present college IDs when they check-in at the airport for their flights.
Lufthansa's virtual lounge follows by 18 months KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' launch of online communities KLM Club Africa and Club China - which target road-warrior business executives who fly often to Africa and China - and Flying Blue Golf, which is aimed at duffers. This last social network is especially notable; it allows golfers to comment on their golf scores and courses they have played, use KLM frequent flyer points to buy golfing equipment and, of course, book golfing trips on KLM.
Recently, Scandinavian Airlines moved to establish close ties with a high-profile, high-income demographic group by establishing a Web site dedicated to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual community.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days
Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days
Still no mention on turning on old accounts when they stop the inactive status, but they have given more details on how the Quality Score is measured including all of the CTRs in your account. This may force people to be a lot tighter with the keywords they add to their accounts so they do not have to pay higher rates for their established terms.
There are some interesting new details:
For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you'll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages -- as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.
Advertisers familiar with the competitive landscape for their keywords may indeed notice that the first page bid estimates provided are in line with the CPCs that they had been bidding to appear on the first page prior to the release of these Quality Score improvements, although this is not a given.
Still no mention on turning on old accounts when they stop the inactive status, but they have given more details on how the Quality Score is measured including all of the CTRs in your account. This may force people to be a lot tighter with the keywords they add to their accounts so they do not have to pay higher rates for their established terms.
There are some interesting new details:
For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you'll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages -- as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.
Advertisers familiar with the competitive landscape for their keywords may indeed notice that the first page bid estimates provided are in line with the CPCs that they had been bidding to appear on the first page prior to the release of these Quality Score improvements, although this is not a given.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Is Crome The End To Google Toolbar PageRank?
Here are a few comments from Digital Forums
Google's new browser Chrome has been launched, but it does not support Google Toolbar, does it indicate that its end of PageRank (PR)?
yes may be its beta stage, but in my opinion Google would have came out with browser to support all its other products. I guess they might come out with updated version of toolbar with some new technology.
It's in beta and the best browser out there. Such fast. It will start to get slower as new things get added. Like google toolbar of course. I mean pagerank is their greatest invention, not chrome.
It won't mean the end of PR. In fact if anything Google will be using it to further promote it's PR calculation.
So it is the end of all toolbars! You should wait , for sure they will launch a lot of add-ons.
may be you are right, but still there is no support for Google toolbar on Chrome.
Google toolbar is something which simply displays pagerank, you can find out pagerank from many other sources. The reason it doesn't support it is because it is in beta stages, quite obviously.
I like Google Chrome. It's faster then all the other browsers I've been using before. True, a little PR icon would be cool, but since Google has revised the whole PR system latley, it'll take some time for many sites to re-obtain their new revised PR, just like my Ralf Engel dot Com blog.
Google didn't create chrome for webmasters alone. They created it for users for now and maybe they will create add ons for webmasters in their next update.
First things first. Chrome is still in beta. It is not the final version. There are tens of other things in the Google Toolbar as well, so why only Pagerank? The question should be does it indicate the end of Google Toolbar? Not Pagerank in specific. I personally think that it is NOT the ended of Google Pagerank or the toolbar itself.
Here are a few comments from Digital Forums
Google's new browser Chrome has been launched, but it does not support Google Toolbar, does it indicate that its end of PageRank (PR)?
yes may be its beta stage, but in my opinion Google would have came out with browser to support all its other products. I guess they might come out with updated version of toolbar with some new technology.
It's in beta and the best browser out there. Such fast. It will start to get slower as new things get added. Like google toolbar of course. I mean pagerank is their greatest invention, not chrome.
It won't mean the end of PR. In fact if anything Google will be using it to further promote it's PR calculation.
So it is the end of all toolbars! You should wait , for sure they will launch a lot of add-ons.
may be you are right, but still there is no support for Google toolbar on Chrome.
Google toolbar is something which simply displays pagerank, you can find out pagerank from many other sources. The reason it doesn't support it is because it is in beta stages, quite obviously.
I like Google Chrome. It's faster then all the other browsers I've been using before. True, a little PR icon would be cool, but since Google has revised the whole PR system latley, it'll take some time for many sites to re-obtain their new revised PR, just like my Ralf Engel dot Com blog.
Google didn't create chrome for webmasters alone. They created it for users for now and maybe they will create add ons for webmasters in their next update.
First things first. Chrome is still in beta. It is not the final version. There are tens of other things in the Google Toolbar as well, so why only Pagerank? The question should be does it indicate the end of Google Toolbar? Not Pagerank in specific. I personally think that it is NOT the ended of Google Pagerank or the toolbar itself.
Googling in Person to Make Friends - NYTimes.com
Googling in Person to Make Friends - NYTimes.com
It's Not Just About Adwords Anymore
Google is trying to get advertising agencies to warm up to it after years of not being their favorite entity. After all, think of all the marketing dollars spent on search engine advertising (and SEO campaigns for that matter) that agencies missed out on because of a certain search giant.
Aggressive Advertising
It's not unreasonable to suspect that Google has its own best interests in mind. Why wouldn't it? The company does seem to be working its way further into the advertising world more aggressively than ever. For example, they're talking about not even waiting for Federal approval before going forward with their ad deal with Yahoo.
It's Not Just About Adwords Anymore
Google is trying to get advertising agencies to warm up to it after years of not being their favorite entity. After all, think of all the marketing dollars spent on search engine advertising (and SEO campaigns for that matter) that agencies missed out on because of a certain search giant.
Aggressive Advertising
It's not unreasonable to suspect that Google has its own best interests in mind. Why wouldn't it? The company does seem to be working its way further into the advertising world more aggressively than ever. For example, they're talking about not even waiting for Federal approval before going forward with their ad deal with Yahoo.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
B2B Lead Generation Tips
B2B Lead Generation Tips
The goal of many B2B search marketing programs is to generate online inquiries and leads. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) programs are designed to find highly-qualified prospects and drive them to targeted landing pages where people register to receive valuable information or complete contact forms. Below I share five simple yet effective tips to improve landing pages and registration forms - two critical elements of any lead gen program.
The goal of many B2B search marketing programs is to generate online inquiries and leads. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) programs are designed to find highly-qualified prospects and drive them to targeted landing pages where people register to receive valuable information or complete contact forms. Below I share five simple yet effective tips to improve landing pages and registration forms - two critical elements of any lead gen program.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Could CROME be the start of an operating system
Today, Google has made a significant step toward becoming a Web-based operating system by launching a beta version of the open-source Google Chrome browser, which has been optimized to run Web applications rather than simply rendering HTML on a page.
"All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."
Chrome's main features include a beefed-up Javascript engine (aka V8), which will improve performance of AJAX apps like Gmail and Google Docs. It also offers better memory allocation, and an architecture that keeps apps running in separate windows as isolated processes -- so a crashed app won't bring down the browser, and security is markedly improved.
The browser includes its own URL box, which Google is calling the "Omnibox." It incorporates features from Google Suggest, browser history and search history.
As with the Google Toolbar before it, Chrome will also present an opportunity for Google to collect more user behavioral data. On the plus side, that could help Google develop better Web analytics applications. More cynically, Google can also take this mountain of user data and use it to better monetize its ad platforms.
Today, Google has made a significant step toward becoming a Web-based operating system by launching a beta version of the open-source Google Chrome browser, which has been optimized to run Web applications rather than simply rendering HTML on a page.
"All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."
Chrome's main features include a beefed-up Javascript engine (aka V8), which will improve performance of AJAX apps like Gmail and Google Docs. It also offers better memory allocation, and an architecture that keeps apps running in separate windows as isolated processes -- so a crashed app won't bring down the browser, and security is markedly improved.
The browser includes its own URL box, which Google is calling the "Omnibox." It incorporates features from Google Suggest, browser history and search history.
As with the Google Toolbar before it, Chrome will also present an opportunity for Google to collect more user behavioral data. On the plus side, that could help Google develop better Web analytics applications. More cynically, Google can also take this mountain of user data and use it to better monetize its ad platforms.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Google Chrome: Google Open Source Browser [SearchEngineWatch]
Google Chrome: Google Open Source Browser [SearchEngineWatch]
Google will lounch their own Web brower. Read more.
Google will lounch their own Web brower. Read more.
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