Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Top on Google and Yahoo!

Today, while checking the projects on RAC, I came across this project
make our web site appear in top 1-10 on google and yahoo
We want our website to appear in top 1 - 10 on google and yahoo. Currently its position on yahoo is about 15 for some key words and 25 for some other key words, poorer on google. If you are interested in our project, please let us know, we will offer you details of our web sites, so that you can make a bid. The payment will be made after the results are demonstrated.
So why I am blogging about this? Because:

Max Accepted Bid: $100.00

Time for the person who posted the project to wake up and live in real life :)
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Saturday, December 17, 2005

Time Warner decides in Google's favor for Advertising Partnership

AOL will be partnering with Google after all, according to media reports. Time Warner reportedly ditched Microsoft in favor of Google. To many, this is bad news for Microsoft. Other says that this is not a big deal. I think that Microsoft is dumb to not offer some money for money hungry AOL. They made a mistake years ago by not buying Overture and Altavista when they had a chance. For more, read the Google Wish List article on Search Marketing Ambassador.

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Thursday, December 15, 2005

Google eyeing Opera?

Opera Watch is reporting that Pierre Chappaz, a former president of Yahoo! Europe is claiming that Google is in the process of buying Opera. Facing increased pressure from both Internet Explorer and Firefox, Opera recently started making its browser available for free.


A translation of Chappaz's post about Google to buy Opera and more coverage at SearchMarketingAmbassador.com

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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Google Analytics hurting a web site?

When Google launched Urchin Analytics as Google Analytics, I really wanted to try it but a very close friend told me to hold on as this will just give search engines more data about my site and that 'extra intelligence' may be used to come back at me (some companies are really famous for coming back). Long story short, I didn't use GA. Now there is a thread at Webmaster world by Tolachi about whether Google Analytics is bad for business. Now I'm definitely going to wait and watch this thread for experiences of other web masters to see whether there is a connection.

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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Google asking crazy prices for bids

There is an active thread on WebmasterWorld about Google Adwords quality score including rating of landing page. Overall, this seems to be another ploy of Google to make more money. A comment below caught my eye:
I cannot understand why the minimum bid for some keywords like a toy that I am selling are $10.00. That's insane! Could it be a glitch?
iPo

I am so happy that I don't use junkwords anymore :).
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Thursday, December 01, 2005

Who knows more about you? Google, MSN or Yahoo?

I just came across this post documenting a Q&A session with Matt Cutts, which says that Yahoo! reportedly collects 10TB of data daily, and that:

"Google knows a lot less about the specific user then Yahoo or MSN"


Give me a break, would you? I don't buy that for a minute Matt, unless you provide proof. Google's almost every engineer is obsessed with data collection. The people who buy this don't have a brain and can just believe anything. IMHO, unless Matt agrees that Yahoo! and MSN are bigger than Google, this is the biggest lie of 2005. If there is an even bigger one, I still have to hear it.
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WebmasterWorld: Can you really justify this?

Following are my thoughts and may not please everyone. If you cannot stand constructive criticism, please do me a favor and don't read.

First, let me say that there are few, if any, resources online like Webmasterworld.com. Like many other webmasters, I am very thankful to Brett Tabke and the WebmasterWorld community for working very hard on creating this unmatched community.

Now, that I have thanked and expressed my gratitude, lets get down and dirty.

A whole eternity to transfer a site


I mean come on. How difficult and hard can the migration process be? Well as we see from the case of WMW, it can be very difficult and time consuming. I remember three days seeing the message that they have selected the host and are now transferring the site. Three days? Wow! IMHO, if a site takes more than 24 hours to transfer, hire someone else.

Banning all robots


Regardless of what Brett and other WMW loyalists say, IMHO, no "sensible" argument can be made in the defense of WMW's dumb decision to ban all search bots from indexing it. IMO, the folks at WMW chose the worst possible solution to a simple problem. One would think that a place like WMW will have no shortage of engineers and developers to help them make an informed decision. Imagine if the management of every community online thinks like the management of WMW. Soon we'd have no content.

Could the reason be bandwidth costs?


I have heard people saying that the decision to ban all robots was made because "unauthorized" bots had taken millions of pages from WMW within a short period of time. So is it bandwidth cost thats worrying folks at WMW? But then why didn't they go with a hosting provider like EV1 that can give them 2000GB bandwidth a month for literally pennies? If bandwidth was the reason behind this dumb decision, then may be the folks at WMW don't really know where to shop. They would rather ban all the robots from indexing rather than make an intelligent business decision to choose a hosting provider that does not charge them huge amount of money for bandwidth. I read somewhere on WMW that Brett had his own reasons for not going with EV1.

Could the reason be processing power?


OK. If WMW management was worried about the processing power, there are many options to deal with it, with the dumbest being to block the robots. I mean, talk about paranoia. Here is a sensible solution: write a script that checks for bot abuse. If a bot is found abusing, ban it temporarily or permanently. I am sure even if WMW cannot write the script themselves there must be many volunteers (like me) who would be willing to write and "donate" such a script.

Could WMW management be worried about content theft?


OK. If content theft is an issue, still a simple script can solve the issue. Again the dumbest option being to block the bots.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have serious reservation as to the technical capabilities of the WMW management. I love the resource but by making such dumb decisions, WMW is only paving the way for WMW2.

Brett, if you are reading this, I just want to point the other options you had available. Sometimes it does pay off to really think things over. I still cannot believe you made this decision. What if someone tries a brute force attack on your server? Will you ask the hosting provider to unplug your server so the attacks won't happen. That's definitely a solution -- but not an intelligent one. Every action has an opportunity cost. Sure you have gotten rid of the abusing bot problem. But did you think about what opportunities you are creating for a competitor? If your content is not in search engines, someone else's will be. If you start giving in to industry pressures like this (like abusing bots) then IMHO, someone is done doing business.

WebmasterWorld lost traffic

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Google hurts!

Yet another example of a frustrated small business owner.
No one can help you with that, they will only try to explain away the infamous/famous algorithim. With an MBA from Northwestern University I don't want to hear about their software, I want my site given fair ranking for it's legitimacy and my fair play as owner, merchant and
blog author. In Googles zeal to offer relevant search results something has gone amiss or my blog would have gone North not South. Would their 60 Phd's care to debate that with me? -- Glass Cottage (google.public.support.general )
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