Reality SEO - Search Engine Commentary

Duplicate Content Concerns Adressed by Google's Grothaus

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:55:00 +0000

Greg Grothaus of Google Webmaster Central team gives the ultimate Duplicate Content presentation which should clear up the vast majority of questions surrounding dupe content from webmasters. 14 minutes spent here will resolve a lot of concerns by webmasters and resolve questions for a few of those dual SEM/SEO types in which the SEM is the larger part of their split personality.

Google Caffeine Real-Time, Fresh, Fast,

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:21:00 +0000

Matt Cutts discusses the new Caffeine Sandbox with Michael MacDonald at Search Engine Strategies Show in San Jose. Good stuff to pay attention to, since Cutts suggests that "power users" might notice differences in the rankings between the current default search and Caffeine.

Here's a suggestion I'd like to make for your testing if you do decide to check it out - play with the "Filter by Date" option in the left rail which appears on the current page if you click "options" on Google's current results page. For that matter, I'd like to suggest that many of the "options" may find their way into the standard results you get from that new SandBox.

I think they may have already released many of the tweaks in that recently released UI, but found few people using them in that form. So rather than requiring everyone to make choices (or maybe making some of the most "popular" choices already ranked from testing) the Caffeine option may represent choices made based on testing so far.

Now they want to see if you like those choices once they are baked into the default product. That's my take based on reviews and my own testing. Your mileage may vary and I may be way off base, but it's a good story.

More WebProNews Videos

Google Says Faster is Better - SEO Element?

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:19:00 +0000

Just stumbled across this video this morning, even though it's been on the Google YouTube channel since June. Probably heard little about it because SEO's pay less attention to speed than developers, but I've always been a fan of accessiblity issues, which SEO's pay too little attention to as well. Speed and accessibility are related because complex web apps like Flash, javascript and other client side apps can get in the way of speed, crawlability and indexing. I believe SEO's should pay more attention to speed.

Boondoggle SEO - Jill Whalen Stirring up Bad SEO's

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Jill Whalen, one of best SEO's in the industry, stated the obvious last week - that there are bad SEO's working away with unknowing, uneducated clients - and suddenly there's an uproar due to the great (link bait) title for her Boondoggle SEO post at SearchEngineLand. Not surprisingly others interviewed Jill because she stated the obvious (with that great link-bait title), causing another wave of blog posts and a bit more controversy.

I have a lot of respect for Jill, and also for a few of those she disagrees with. But the disagreements all come down to differences in opinion on minor issues that can turn bad SEO's into evangelists for their pet techniques. (They've gotta protect their image and justify what they just sold to the clients who may question their recommendations after hearing of Jill's position.)

My opinions have ebbed and flowed on ingredients off the secret sauce of SEO for a dozen years, but we are all acting on a single method - deconstructing search results.

Google doesn't tell us how to make sites search friendly, we have to figure it out by doing searches and looking at the results. Some are lucky enough to be in a position to do large-scale testing, some may rely a bit too much on some carefully stated pearl of wisdom from Google insiders uttered at a conference or in a video. Some build vast technical tools with carefully crafted algorithms meant to figure out the machinations in Mountain View, and still others do nothing but adopt the latest technique they heard at some forum or in a newsletter.

Sometimes new things are discovered that work to adjust search rankings upward which may work only temporarily because the engines are working on stopping it from becoming the next search engine spammer tool. But at the end of the day, the fundamentals matter most, some things stop working because the search engines see that they are too easily abused, and we SEO's keep struggling to make sense of it all.

Kudos for gaining the attention of the industry Jill and thanks for re-focusing our attention on best-practices and fundamentals. You can count on BAD SEO's to attempt to rip your statements to shreds because it upsets their business model. Count on some disagreements from some and some supportive rallying cries from others - while we all keep doing our best for our clients and employers at honing our skills and keeping up with industry trends and new developments.

I do love this job - but sometimes it gets ridiculous how dramatic the obvious can become.

Wolfram Alpha, it's Knowledge Engine Not Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:57:00 +0000

New technology term to add to the lexicon: "Knowledge Engine"

Very distinctly different from a search engine in that you are not intended to "Find" anything at all, then leave to go look at one of the results you found. The intent here is to learn something and gain knowledge by providing queries to the Wolfram "Knowledge Engine" then continuing to learn by refining the direction and scope of those queries until you come up with knowledge. Sometimes you learn things you didn't realize you wanted to know, but still find useful and relevant.

As I watched the demo video I found myself shaking my head in disbelief while I kept mouthing the word "Wow!" I'd be surprised if you don't have the same reaction, because it really is that fascinating and unbelievable. It is of limited use right now due to the factual data stored by Wolfram to compute the knowledge, but is nonetheless incredible.

Often the term "Google Killer" comes up when a new service or tool arises, but it usually turns out to not be a true competitor for a myriad of reasons. I've heard the term "Google Killer" applied to such odd warriors as Twitter or Facebook and now it's being applied by many here. That's foolish in this case as well - especially with the new features released by Google last week.

I've long been interested in the "Open" strategy and have been looking of late at the utility of adding external services to both my own and to client sites. So of course I stumbled into the Wolfram "Developer" section and started ruminating on how I might leverage the power of a knowledge engine and where it would be most useful on my own sites and those of others.

I'm an advocate of using specialists do what they do best and if that means AddThis for social media sharing, or Google Custom Search embedded on every page, I don't pretend that I can do better than those who specialize in those tasks. They are always going to offer evolving functionality and steady improvement that I won't have to bother with.

So it appears that Wolfram Alpha now offers an extensive API, widgets and other interface options with enterprise level partners. Since I've always been a fan of learning and knowledge, there are dozens of places I'd love to integrate Wolfram into my own sites. It seems that others might find that utility of value as well.

I don't see this as a Google Killer or even a competitor except for those who are using Google to gain knowledge, rather than discovery, as intended. When I want to learn something that Wolfram does well, I'll go there, when I want to find a web site, review, video or news, I'll go to a search engine. Maybe the next great innovation will be someone who comes up with a tool that solves the navigational search of those who type web addresses into the search box at Google. :)

SEM or SEO? No Both for Most Search Teams

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:28:00 +0000

At the MediaPost Search Insider Summit, I got the opportunity to join a panel on social media and search with Darrin Shamo of Zappos and panel moderator Bob Heyman of MediaSmith (and co-author of the book Digital Engagement). I'm not going to discuss that panel here and will leave that to another post. But an interesting thing came up during my presentation...

The event is pretty heavily weighted toward SEM and I asked what turned out, to those in attendance, to be a bit of a dopey question. I asked "How many here are interested purely in SEM?" then when only a couple of hands were raised, I was encouraged to think it may be more of an SEO crowd, so I asked "How many are interested purely in SEO?" and saw only another sprinkling of raised hands.

So, based on one of my previous experiences at a major company where the team was half SEM and half SEO, and my current position, which is entirely SEO team with no SEM - I assumed a similar situation would be true of most in-house teams at substantially sized companies.

My assumption was apparently skewed. It seems that most do double-duty on in-house teams. When I asked "What's the balance here?" a few people said, (a few with emotion) "Both!"

That surprised me, based on what I knew before asking that question. But now I know that, at least among the crowd attending Search Insider Summit, that the oft joined SEM/SEO label applies to most. Well I suppose that was a gaff then, but...

Later in the day, I overheard a conversation on a shuttle bus which makes me wonder if SEO is being best served by in-house SEM/SEO's. After two strangers from the conference exchanged greetings & pleasantries, the inevitable "What do you do?" came up from one.

The answer, "SEM and I've been tasked with learning SEO for our team." (emphasis mine) Then the response from an ill-informed questioner was short-sighted and probably simplistic thinking from those who THINK they understand SEO - "So you're learning about meta tags and H1's?"

I'd like to argue that the two disciplines should be divided and I'd wager that many SEM's who love what they do will agree. The skill-set is completely different. Both SEM's and SEO's deal with keywords, and target search engine results pages, but that is where the similarity ends.

Having recently worked day-to-day with an SEM team in-house and being separated only by a cubicle wall for 18 months. I recall the SEO team only dealing with the SEM team during our bi-weekly online marketing group meetings.

So if someone who loves SEM is "tasked with learning SEO," (like that overheard conversation I mentioned above) they are not likely to understand or fully invest themselves in truly learning an important aspect of the Search Marketing business. They'll learn a couple of things and not all aspects of the work. They'll continue to do a great job of SEM and start doing a poor job of SEO.

I'll also argue that if that role is reversed and an SEO is "tasked with learning SEM for the team" then they will learn a few things, but not all of the elements of good SEM and not do a complete and thorough job of SEM but will continue to do a good job of SEO.

I recall a couple of job interviews about 5 years ago where in both cases, I was talking with an SEM manager who had convinced their boss that they needed a full-time SEO on staff to handle things they weren't able to continue doing as the company grew. Rather than evenly split SEM and SEO tasks among two staffers, they were dividing the two. That's the smart way to go.

I didn't take either of those jobs, and I'm quite happy about that now. I also walked away from a job that would have required me to significantly sharpen my SEM skills so that I could handle both. I didn't doubt that I could do it, but love SEO and very likely wouldn't have done as well with the SEM piece.

So I'd like to ask the question of those SEM/SEO dual purpose people - are you doing both because you love both or are you doing both because you were "tasked to learn" one of those pieces because your company won't increase the budget enough for a new head on the payroll? Would you rather focus on one or continue doing both?

Is Examiner.com Dominating Search Results Near Yours?

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:01:00 +0000

I'm a long-time subscriber to Google News and Blog alerts. They're a great way to stay up to date with any topic and I subscribe to several alerts on subjects, companies and categories I'm interested in across a wide range of topics. Something rather startling has occurred to me in watching those results across multiple categories. The new Examiner.com site is dominating search results for both news and non-news (blog, web) alerts.

Also noted is the interesting fact that many more Examiner.com results appear across dozens of other search results. Since I make my living optimizing search, this tends to stand out for me more than it has for friends and relatives I've asked about it. So tell me - Are you seeing any of your search terms threatened by Examiner.com?

Because they are considered a "News" source, the site gets indexed instantly for almost any topic. Their "News" results appear in Google Universal and Yahoo Blended search results in the top five rankings.

Interestingly, you needn't be a trained journalist to write for Examiner.com and it appears they are actively recruiting writers.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to review their site structure or on-page optimization efforts - but whatever they are doing, it is landing the site in lots of top ranked spots for hotly contested search phrases. This will be interesting to watch.

Meanwhile, take a look at the video below for the root of the story, which is tied to the demise of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver - especially since the biggest name behind the Examiner.com is Denver Billionaire, Philip Anschutz. The video below includes an interview with Examiner.com CEO Michael Sherrod

They are using the tilde for the first time in years in their URL's. I thought that had died long ago. Interesting trend to watch. I also see that Google news shows over 28,498 results for Examiner.com in their site search. More than the 9600 for the New York Times or the 7500 for the Boston Globe. Hmmm - that bears watching as well.

Canonical URL Link Element - Not Meta Tag

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Last week we learned of the magical new Link Element which was announced at SMX West which was purported to resolve a longstanding problem with duplicate content by pointing search engines to a single URL for pages which could have multiple paths to the same content.

Well it turns out that the single solution is only a partial solution. According to the video below from Matt Cutts, we should still do all we can to avoid internal links with session ID's, sort order, path analysis and tracking parameters appended. Damn, can't be simple solutions that resolve it all.

It turns out that the search engines will just "prefer" your canonical tag as the single source and "favor" it as the most important ... and they "reserve the right" to do what seems most appropriate, regardless of your link element tags. Damn!

Well I guess a little help is better than none. I've recommended the tag heavily to everyone while trailing around party balloons and confetti. Now I gotta go back and say, "Well, go ahead and do what I told you, just don't expect it to completely solve your problems and - by the way - ya still gotta do the 301 redirects and consistent linking and everything we did before."

Here's Matt Cutts with the news that - not only won't this magical tag solve our problems, but we also have to be careful how we use it and make certain those tags all use absolute URL's and not relative URL's.

So really, this is just something we should adopt as a best practice for SEO and then keep fighting the good fight for 301's and consistent linking practices. Hmmm. Glad I fought for an application which does internal redirects while tracking URL's before this whole thing came up. :)

Canonical Tag Ends Dupe Content, Consolidates PageRank

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:13:00 +0000

Big News in an SMX West announcement by search engines last week! There is a new tag to place in the "Head" section of your web pages which can resolve forever the problem of duplicate content in search!

Something many SEO's have fought for years are things such as session ID's, tracking ID's, referrer tags, clickstream data, and variable formatting and source strings in URL's. As of this day in SEO history, those are no longer a problem.

Google's Matt Cutts, in the WebProNews video below announces that the three top search engines have each signed on to support the "Canonical tag" concept, which allows webmasters to post the canonical source for all potentially duplicated URL's. (Those URL's that vary, but produce the same content.)

That new magical tag (shown below) is a godsend for those of us who have fought for years against "Print page" URL variations, "Marketing tracking URL's," database strings which tell servers how to display everything from page formatting to custom logos and that dreaded "Session ID" problem.

I'd started to dread speaking with engineers and developers to request a new 301 redirect, and now I can simply ask for a site-wide application of this tag to tell search engines to redirect everything that varies that URL string.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://RealitySEO.com/” />

That way, if we have a marketing campaign running with an URL like this:

http://RealitySEO.com/?ref=blog&trackingid=9876&sessionid=654321

That Canonical tag above simply tells search engines to consolidate PageRank and more or less treat any variation in that URL with added appendages as a single headed beast, rather than the many headed Hydra it can turn into on some sites.

More WebProNews Videos

I intend on continuing the fight against splitting pagerank among many tracking coded URL's, but the search engines have just made it much easier to solve for this problem in cases where 301 redirects are not practical. Thank goodness for this little SEO godsend.

Marissa Mayer Leaving Google? Don't Laugh

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:41:00 +0000

There are reports that Marissa Mayer is leaving Google. Barry Schwartz commented briefly about it today on SearchEngineLand and he points to a report coming from Valleywag yesterday. I've heard Mayer speak at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose in August of 2007 where I took a few photographs of her conversation with Danny Sullivan, below. (Click the image for more photos)

SES-8-22-07

She seemed personable and intelligent there as she discussed Google search and displayed the iPhone interface on her phone. I've briefly mentioned her comments in a post on "previous Query Refinement" but don't recall hearing much from her elsewhere.

To get a better idea of what google is losing if she does indeed depart, I took a look at a video of her presentations at Google I/O Developer conference 2008. Here's that hour long presentation if you have time for it:

It's often odd to see executives leave successful companies, knowing that they have made major, substantial contributions to the shape of that success. The video above is a great way to become familiar with what Google is losing.

Gawker apparently wants to poke with the sharpest stick and they focus on her personal fortune as the 19th employee of the startup, fresh out of Stanford and her laugh! The laugh does surface a time or two in her I/O conference presentation above, but seems endearing and humanizing there.

Google is apparently about to lose a big talent. I've often wondered why people leave startups after they go public - those who help to build the vision over time. Sergei and Larry are clearly not serial entrepreneurs. They are staying. Is Mayer on the way out?

UPDATE: Turns out she isn't leaving. Still there as of April 1st. Maybe it was an early April fools joke played on Google by Valleywag?

eHow Wins Mashable's "How To" Open Web Award Category

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:25:00 +0000

eHow.com won the Bloggers Choice for the "How To" category of the Mashable Open Web Awards! Rich Noguchi, community manager for eHow, announced the win this morning on the eHow Blog.

This comes on the heels of getting a bit of Television love from New York Fox Affiliate WNYW where eHow GM Greg Boudewijn along with eHow Food expert Bethany Frankel were both featured in a "How to Make Money from Home in a Tough Economy" news spot. How-To is an expanding category of content and to dominate for what are normally "Stop Words" is quite an achievement.

YouTube offers Search From ALL Embedded Videos

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:07:00 +0000

Today I was reviewing my blog after adding a TwitPic widget to the shoulder (left side) and coincidently moved the cursor over an embedded YouTube video on the Google iPhone App when I noticed a search box appear under my cursor!

Wow, that is pretty incredible and according to the YouTube blog, they just recently added the functionality - I love it when I hear about new stuff when it's still new. Searching YouTube from all embedded YouTube videos, wherever they are in blogs and web sites all over the webIs pretty impressive!

I've often been watching an embedded video on a blog here or there, wanted to see a related video that wasn't shown in the "Related" videos they incorporate into the scrolling strip at the bottom of each video after completion of the clip you just finished watching. I always think, "Nah, I'm busy right now - I'll go later" (I never do that) but now I'm in danger of actually getting distracted immediately - NOW - because I can search YouTube from the video I've just watched, on the site I'm already on.

This is a great offering from YouTube and may result in many of us who formerly resisted wasting our time watching too much YouTube stuff to start wasting too much time watching more YouTube stuff. Because we can now search for it from every existing YouTube player across the web.

Below is an example from the YouTube blog explaining the search feature. Take a look at other new features while you are at it, like the ability to see closed captioning, translations of those closed caption subtitles, and all included video annotations from the author. Those features are basically available from the button in the lower right corner of the video player.

Impressive stuff guys! I hope I can resist the temptation to use the search feature and stop myself from looking at foreign language closed captions

SEO Accessibility for Visually Impaired Visitors: OdioGo

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:43:00 +0000

For years I've been interested in SEO as it related to web accessibility issues. After doing some initial research into how SEO was tied to accessibility, I wrote an article (linked above) suggesting that they are so closely linked they should be married. So far I've found little interest among clients in making their sites fully W3C Compliant for Accessibility, due to the low volume of blind visitors to their web sites.

Visually impaired web visitors often use special screen readers to allow them auditory access to web page text content. But today I stumbled across a tool that makes text content accessible, not only to visually impaired, but to anyone who'd rather listen than read. So there is actually little to no SEO benefit to the audio option discussed here.

This makes "Accessible" have another meaning - as in accessible to those who prefer auditory to visual content. As a matter of fact, you can subscribe via iTunes if you like, among others.There is a great audio subscription page hosted by OdioGo, which gives visitors the option of listening to a stream of all posts or downloading individual MP3's.

As you may have noted, there is a "Listen Now" link right below the post title above, which plays an automated "Text to Speech" version of this blog post. I doubt there is any SEO benefit to that and since it is displayed using javascript, it won't work for those who surf with javascript turned off. That's a bit ironic, since accessibility is often opposed to content displayed using AJAX or javascript.

I've been interested not just in accessibility though - I'm interested in availability to all who might be interested, including those who don't happen to speak my language. I've recently installed the Google Translate widget on several of my websites for the benefit of those who seek my content in other languages (in the left shoulder on this blog).

Again, no value to SEO there, and there are no cached versions of those pages to get indexed in foreign search engines, but it does make the content available and useful for more people - who may use the AddThis "Share" button to bookmark - which leads to more external inbound links and higher rankings.

I guess it's a great illustration of the concept "Just create great content" and your audience will find you. In this case, those who speak other languages, and those who would rather listen than read your blog.

Demand Media @ Web 2.0 Conference 2008

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:36:00 +0000

The video below is Richard Rosenblatt at the Web 2.0 conference presenting on Demand Media Social Media tools. Pluck on Demand discussed and explained.

Demand Media

View SlideShare Demand Media Web 2.0 presentation or (tags: web2summit)

Full disclosure: I work for Demand Media.

Google Mobile Voice App Live: iTunes App Store

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Just saw that the google Mobile App is live on the iTunes store. Even though it isn't apparently available as an update through the Application itself. Problem is that the link here doesn't work through the iPhone itself. Grrrrr. Have to wait until I get home to download and test it.

AddThis Social Bookmark Widget for Open Web Award

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:12:00 +0000

I have been a strong advocate of the AddThis widget to ease social bookmarking since I first spotted it in September of 2006 and did an emailed interview of co-founder Dom Vonarburg here at RealitySEO.

Since then, it has spread like wildfire to major media sites like Time.com, CBS, ABC and a long list of web publishers that needed a scalable way to do link building. As you can see from this blog, I use it here at the foot of every post.

For me, the single AddThis dropdown widget has always been preferable to what I've heard called "Iconistan" - where sites show a collection of up to a dozen social bookmarking site icons on every article page.

This single tiny social bookmarking widget allows visitors to any site where it is used to bookmark the landing page easily at up to 39 social bookmarking services.

Here is an example inline so you can view details by hovering as you read.

Since the beginning, AddThis has offered publishers new tools, like branding the popup window which results if users choose the "more" option on the dropdown, customization of the sites shown in that dropdown, and tracking for publishers of how many times the widget is used by visitors and for which bookmarking services.

AddThis has constantly added new services to the pop-up as they have become popular and this makes it easier on publishers to keep up with the ever-evolving world of social media. The single tool gives you access to 39 social media sites in a single widget and adds trackability.

AddThis is the perfect win-win - ease of access to social bookmarking sites for users and trackability and link building scalability for publishers. Recently AddThis was acquired by ClearSpring and those added resources and reach will no doubt allow improvement of the tool.

I was happy to see that AddThis has been nominated for the Mashable Open Web Awards and, as a big fan of widgets, I want to make it possible for readers to vote using the widget below. Simply enter your email address and you'll receive a follow-up email from Mashable to confirm your vote.

Google iPhone App Gets Voice Search Upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:05:00 +0000

A New York Times article this morning breaks the story of an upgrade to the Google Search iPhone App, to be released today (and a Twitter Post from CNet last night).

If the app works anywhere near as well as the Google Demo Video below, the search world may be turned on it's ear, or maybe we'd say, it's voice.

Can't wait to try this, and although I've tried, via the iTunes App Store, to find this app or get the upgrade to my current version of the Google Search App, it's not showing up in either place yet. Stay tuned and I'll post the iTunes App Store link as soon as I find it working.

Update from TechCrunch says the App will appear on tomorrow, Monday October 17th.

Just saw via VentureBeat that the google Mobile App is live on the iTunes store. Even though it isn't apparently available as an update through the Application itself. Problem is that the link here doesn't work through the iPhone itself. Grrrrr. Have to wait until I get home to download and test it.

Search Mexico Vacation Spot: Google Earth iPhone App

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:29:00 +0000

World search with Google Earth on iPhone is now possible. I sincerely wish I'd seen this the day before leaving on my vacation cruise to Mexico last week, expecially because I could have overcome some strange GPS issues on my iPhone 3g when checking location while at sea, the iPhone GPS showed me in British Columbia anytime I was aboard the ship from just out of the Port of Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta. A quick check with the ship internet cafe manager at the start of my Mexican Riviera cruise got an "I don't know" when I asked why is my GPS showing me in British Columbia while on the ship?

So now Google Earth comes out with an iPhone App, that would have let me enter the latitude and longitude readings showing in the location information on my stateroom television channel. I could have zoomed in on Google Earth from those coordinates to see my location on a map had I downloaded the app before departing Los Angeles Harbor.

Grrr! So I'd still pay the .99 cents per minute international charge on my AT&T bill to view the data, but wouldn't have wasted the time going to the internet cafe each time I wanted to view maps while on-board. Below is a video demo I found at the Google Latlong blog which shows the App in action.

This Google Earth App for iPhone is incredibly cool. It's tied into the "My Location" function of the phone's GPS and shows you where on the earth you are currently when you touch the "Current Location" button in the lower left corner of the iPhone screen. There are interesting tie-ins with the iPhone accelerometer which change the satellite view on the map to let you tilt the phone upright to see the horizon relative to your location, then flat to see the downward view of the map location.

Now comes the search functionality. You can search any business near your current location - or nearby - or in any city you choose. This functionality makes many Apps, like the Where App I use to find Starbucks coffee shops, a bit redundant. Both use your location data via the iPhone GPS, but the Google Earth App brings search, and all the useful Google Earth functionality.

There are Panaramio photos incorporated into the App as well - which lets me post my own photographs to the app after vacation, as well as seeing the photos contributed by others for that location! I'm definitely investing in that eyefi card for my Canon EOS and will be enjoying geek travel on my next vacation via Google Earth, the iPhone, and geolocation of my vacation photos.

Here's my first view of my neighborhood using the
iPhone Screenshot App

and the GPS feature to locate myself in the Google Earth App.

Ubiquity FireFox Browser Add-in Productivity Video

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:57:00 +0000

I don't go off-topic much on this blog, but I've just got to share this productivity tool. I'm sure it can do some cool search-related stuff, so I'll play with it and report what I find. The video below describes an amazing browser add-in called "Ubiquity" from Mozilla Labs. The Post title links to a Ubiquity tutorial. The tool is amazingly easy to use and if you have the basic skills to add commands to the already included set built in, you'll find it a really incredible time saver.

It's almost magical how well it works. My favorite use in this video is being able to insert a map, along with a Yelp review, embed quickly and easily in your email! Watch that in the following video and be prepared to be impressed at what a browser add-in can do.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Remember the Poor, It Costs Nothing: Blog Action Day

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:20:00 +0000

"Remember the poor, it costs nothing" -- Josh Billings

... For 60 days I've been posting money quotations on Poverty and the Poor over on my Money Quotations Blog in preparation for this one day - Blog Action Day - Poverty - where over 9000 bloggers have agreed to discuss, explore and seek solutions to poverty. (Even the MySpace Impact Channel got into the Poverty conversation on their blog

My decision to support #BAD08, as it's come to be called on Twitter, was out of a desire to continue expanding my collection of Money Quotes on this blog. But, inevitably I got more interested in the topic and in learning something about Poverty - through words - but not just blather, these are some of the most powerful words ever uttered about the Poor and Poverty.

In the two months since I started collecting and posting quotations, I found over 150 Poverty Quotes in the larger collection of quotes on the poor, Here are a dozen to get you started.

Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank said, "One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like" and truly believes we can cut global Poverty in HALF by 2015!
Most powerful quote on poverty from a politician IMHO was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said in 1953, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed"
Many politicians, as a matter of fact, had something to say of poverty - from Thomas Jefferson, "Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor"
To Ronald Reagan, "Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people"
There are those who devote their lives to the poor, "There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much" -- Mother Teresa
There are those who poke fun at poverty, "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons." -- Woody Allen
Some believe it's sometimes better to be poor, "Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor" -- Alexander Pope
Some flatly state the obvious, "I've been rich and I've been poor: Rich is better." -- Sophie Tucker
And even more obvious, "A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." -- W.C. Fields
Some point out misconceptions "Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty—the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc." -- Mason Cooley
There is the frightening commentary from Colin Powell, "Terrorism really flourishes in areas of poverty, despair and hopelessness, where people see no future"
And in the end, it really doesn't matter whether we are rich or poor, "Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king" -- Horace

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Join the discussion, but don't stop there, decide to take action to end poverty, consider donating your day's earnings to the poor.

SEO Value Attribution Links - Video & Widget Embeds

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:38:00 +0000

The value of attribution links on syndicated content is huge for SEO, but as is so often the case in SEO, some go way overboard and overdo to the point of spamming. Others correctly see the value as an incremental addition to their SEO tool set. I've long been an advocate for attribution links on flash widgets, video embeds, article syndication resource boxes and any other type of syndicated content.

Below is an example of a well executed attribution link. On a video embed

How to Search Specific Sites with Google -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Both of these use keyword focused attribution to the originating source of the content. If the content was unrelated to the keyword text links following those embeds, that would be the abusive and spammy approach I suggested above. The spammy approach has been used widely with web page counters prevalent on early web sites which linked back to spammer sites with entirely unrelated link text. But because the above video embed points to highly relevant and useful resource entirely related to the attribution link, it scores well in SEO.

The best approach is always to link to topical and relevant content, preferably, the source of the actual piece of content featured in order to score well in search engine relevancy and landing page quality.

I used the technique discussed in the video - site limited search - to find a copy of that syndicated content without the attribution link attached to the video player to show syndicated content that does the source no good other than the good-will of sharing their content.

The following gains zero benefit other than an occasional visitor who clicks through:

If anyone uses the second video, directly above, the second source site gains no benefit to providing the content. The top example source site gains a highly relevant link to the originating page of the actual video.

I've consulted with several video and widget vendors who look at me through quizzical sideways tilted gazes when I make this point, like I'm speaking Martian. That attribution link is highly valuable to the content provider. It offers the visitor a link equity to the content source and justifies the content provider bandwidth in delivering that valuable content to others who use the providers resources to display the content external to the provider. Why make your content to others without that link-back?

Here's another example on a widget:

Relevant, interesting and useful information of interest to a highly targeted audience, with an attribution link to related information.

I've proposed this approach to link-building to easily a dozen client sites as they were about to launch major initiatives of distributed content. Most of them think the video or widget is a cool idea and respond to that, but many ask why that attribution link is necessary - a couple even removed it after development because they didn't like how it looked outside the player or widget. Great, now you are providing useful and interesting content - for free - on your bandwidth - with no return on investment - the link is worth it's weight in SEO gold.

SEO Salaries, SEO Jobs & In-House Survey - More Data!

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:41:00 +0000

In October of 2006, when I was first interviewing for in-house SEO positions, I wrote a series of articles on SEO job searches (listed below) and incorporated my own research on Salary ranges for SEO.

Here's a chart I created at the time showing in-house SEO salary ranges from Salary.com data. If you are currently looking for an SEO job, I invite you to use the Google Custom Search SEO jobs Search Engine To Find Search Marketing Jobs I created this CSE back then when Google first introduced the tool.

I also shared a list of articles on SEO jobs both from myself and others which I'll include again here:

If you are interested in more SEO salary data there is the November 2006 post from Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz.

Then there is this Top 30 Cities to Earn a Big SEO Salary chart from Reilly O'Donnell at Onward Search.

Here's a great tool from SimplyHired which can show SEO Salaries by city if they have appropriate income data based on past job posts.

Then there is this Manoj Jasra interview with SEMPO's Duane Forrester which is short on actual numbers, but gives some good surrounding data. Curiously, I couldn't fine the actual SEMPO data from that salary survey on their site which was released right before the interview. Perhaps it's not public?

Below is an SEO survey from Jennifer Mathews (or SEO Goddess) which I'd love to see results. Jenn promises to share results if you provide an email address. Thanks for this Jenn!

There's nothing wrong with more data on SEO so please chime in and offer your two cents.

If you are looking for a great SEO Job now, good luck with your search and please share your current salary range in the survey above.

If you are attending SES San Jose this month and have between 7-10 years of combined SEO/SEM (both organic & paid search) experience and are looking for a great Director Level job in San Francisco, leave a comment here and I'll hook you up with an interview. ;-)

Flash SEO Coming: Spammer Exploits Follow?

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Flash SEO may soon be a service offered by search marketing firms and in-house teams will be scrambling to learn and leverage the latest tricks of SWF optimization. Adobe says:

We are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of Flash files to search.

Google claims they developed the technology, but either way, it's clear that Adobe doesn't want the public to know what is in that technology made available to "Google and Yahoo" (What? No Microsoft?). I believe I'd like the opportunity to make technology available to Google and Yahoo to effectively search my own sites and those of my clients so I could sell more products to the public.

OK, Adobe owns web video format and isn't likely to sell Flash Optimization tools to the public that just happen to help optimize Flash which work well with that tool they released to Google and Yahoo as a part of their Flash Studio Suite - are they?

Enough cynicism - let's look at the effect this may have on SEO for Flash. White text on white background keyword stuffing in SWF files will be a lot harder to discover without that proprietary tool released to the search engines - but do you think anyone will attempt to game that?

Sorry I meant to drop the sarcasm - it snuck up on me again. Well now search engines will be able to "see" the text in Flash files and index it as though it were plain HTML on the page. Most SEO's know how hard it is to get their clients to actually USE the phrases they want to rank for on the page in plain text on the page (Sorry no javascript, no image based text, no AJAX, no "display=none" in CSS).

Well how likely is it we can get those same clients, now freed from the "No Flash" restriction we handed to them in regard to their navigation links and body text - to actually use their keyword phrases in indexable text in Flash? We'll have to have long conversations with Flash developers about best practices for Flash SEO, one group we didn't need to train in SEO previously.

Sorry to say, SEO's will all now need to purchase Adobe Flash Studio to deconstruct the text inside those flying, bouncing, twisting, spinning, turning letters, only to find out there is very little readable text in those files anyway. The links may be crawlable, but how does the custom Adobe algorithm treat hypertext embedded keyword phrases in Flash versions of image files?

Adobe, I see higher sales in your future.

Google and Yahoo, I see a lot of indexed spinning text under hyperlinks exposed to your flash indexing tool from Adobe.

Fellow SEO's, I see a lot of silly discussions with clients AND their flash developers about Flash SEO best practices and how they don't apply to image based text or double spaced spinning letters or white text against a white background in those Flash files. And I have to buy new software to have those conversations.

I have a headache already!

Adobe Press Release Here

Washington Post Running Old Jerry Yang Search Ads

noreply@blogger.com (RealitySEO) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:20:00 +0000

This is an interesting case of what appears to be a forgotten SEM Campaign at the Washington Post. I've been intrigued by Adwords campaigns which promote newspapers through headline keywords in search ads. Clearly they are meant to gain readership for those publications running the news-focused ads.

Since virtually all major pubs cover big stories like the Yahoo vs Microsoft acquisition fight, it isn't that odd to see search ads run against news. Here's an Adsense ad that popped up on a blog post I wrote pondering why everyone is out to lynch Jerry Yang. The ad simply uses the headline "Jerry Yang" and the copy reads "Yahoo CEO steps down, cofounder takes his place"

Now that isn't so odd that the Washington Post wants to advertise against news, but the odd thing is advertising against OLD NEWS. Did they forget this campaign? Who's managing those ads guys?

See Larger Image!

My headline on the post that produced that contextual ad was "NY Times as Yahoo Armchair CEO for Jerry Yang" so it is well targeted, just old, since it is currently pointing at the story about Terry Semel stepping down and Yang taking his place - which ran exactly one year ago at the Washington Post.

When I saw the ad, my heart sank, as I'm seriously opposed to Yang stepping down. I hope he displays as much fortitude against the rising tide of opposition to his leadership as he did against the monster Microsoft as they distracted him for 5 or 6 months from running his company. But when I visited the page the ad linked to, I felt relieved since it was inaccurate.

Should it be journalistically acceptable to run ads against news that is completely wrong? Yes, I know if you read it carefully, you'd figure out it's not likely Filo stepping in to fill Yang's shoes - but those ads are not meant to be read carefully - they rely on impulse. My immediate response was "Oh, NO! Say it ain't so!" when I looked at the display URL in the ad and it said Washingtonpost.com/technology

Fortunately, that ad was not what it seemed. But this suggests to me that search ads that are run against news headlines should be VERY carefully managed.