Executive SEO Marketing Blog » Google

Department Of Justice Files Objections To Google Book Search Settlement

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:26:42 +0000

As expected, the US Department Of Justice today has filed a list of objections and modifications it would like seen made in the proposed settlement to the Google Book Search lawsuit. It’s not saying that the settlement should go back to square one. In fact, it suggests that “momentum” potentially could be lost to improve access to books if that happened. But it does want the settlement modified, in particular to protect absent rights holders of “orphan works” and to solve anti-trust concerns.

You’ll find a copy here (PDF) at the Public Index. The New York Times has a summary up here. Gary Price has a press round-up here. A Google statement is at the end of this article, along with one from the Open Content Alliance, which opposes the settlement.

As for the article itself, I’m reading through the entire filing from top to bottom, pulling out parts that seem worth highlighting and providing my own commentary along the way. I’m not a lawyer, keep in mind. James Grimmelman IS a lawyer, has been following this case closely, and provides his own commentary here.

Read full post at Search Engine Land

Show off your Google Voice Number

admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:09:14 +0000

Want to share your new Google number with family, friends and co-workers? To help spread the word (or should we say, the number), get your Google number printed on cards that you can hand out. There are three design options to choose from, so you can decide whether you want to show business info, personal info, or just your name and number.

We are giving away 50,000 free sets of 25 cards (no shipping or any other fees) over the next week. Keep an eye open for an image and link to appear in your Google Voice inbox, on the left side below the account balance, as it will appear at different times for different Google Voice users throughout the week. Once you click on the link, you will be able to customize and order your free cards through iPrint.com.

Google Voice is awesome! I just set it up but so far it seems like a really great thing.

Google Voice Blog

PageRank Sculpting By Matt Cutts

admin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:28:28 +0000

The big issue lately has been Googles “new” treatment of the nofollow tag and how it creates a massive reservoir of lost link juice. SEOMOZ did a good video about the whole subject the other day and everyone seems to be talking about it, including Googles own Matt Cutts.

People think about PageRank in lots of different ways. People have compared PageRank to a “random surfer” model in which PageRank is the probability that a random surfer clicking on links lands on a page. Other people think of the web as an link matrix in which the value at position (i,j) indicates the presence of links from page i to page j. In that case, PageRank corresponds to the principal eigenvector of that normalized link matrix.

Q: Does this mean “PageRank sculpting” (trying to change how PageRank flows within your site using e.g. nofollow) is a bad idea?
A: I wouldn’t recommend it, because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.

For example, it makes a much bigger difference to make sure that people (and bots) can reach the pages on your site by clicking links than it ever did to sculpt PageRank. If you run an e-commerce site, another example of good site architecture would be putting products front-and-center on your web site vs. burying them deep within your site so that visitors and search engines have to click on many links to get to your products.

There may be a miniscule number of pages (such as links to a shopping cart or to a login page) that I might add nofollow on, just because those pages are different for every user and they aren’t that helpful to show up in search engines. But in general, I wouldn’t recommend PageRank sculpting.

Read the full post

Google Turns Off Radio Ads

admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:59:27 +0000

Google continues to pull back the reins on some of its product and service offerings, today announcing that they’re shutting down Google Audio Ads and Google Radio Automation.

In a post on the Google Traditional Media blog, Google’s Susan Wojcicki explains the service wasn’t as successful as they hoped:

In 2006, we launched Google Audio Ads and Google Radio Automation to create a new revenue stream for broadcast radio, produce more relevant advertising for listeners and streamline the buying and selling of radio ads. While we’ve devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven’t had the impact we hoped for.

Advertisers can continue using Google Audio Ads until May 31st. The Google Radio Automation software will be sold. Google will instead focus on developing a service that delivers ads for online streaming audio.

Google says this decision could lead to the loss of up to 40 jobs.

It was just a few weeks ago that Google shut down its newspaper advertising program. And shortly before that, Google announced the closure of several other products/services, too.

Google SearchWiki – Making Search Your Own

admin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:10:21 +0000

From the Google Blog:

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you’re an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it’s not there at all and you’d like to add it. Or maybe you’d like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link.

This can be a cool and useful feature. Google just keeps getting better!

Welcome to the launch of the Executive Internet Marketing SEO Blog

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:43:55 +0000

I have been involved with Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for over 10 years now. I run an Internet Marketing firm based in the Chicago area and we help clients get top organic rankings and drive focused and qualified traffic to their websites.

We use only White Hat SEO techniques and focus on building good websites with solid content. I will be blogging about everything SEO related and focusing on Google SEO and PPC.