Today’s topic is paid links, search rankings, and sitelinks.

I’ve known about these paid links for a long time and so has Google I’m sure. In this particular example, we will be using phpBB.com as the site in question.

I do have to give credit to the phpBB.com webmasters for actually putting “sponsors” and making it very clear that that they are sponsored links. Even in the html, they use rel=”external sponsor” as part of the href link.

The problem I see here though, is that they are still selling links. Whether someone gave them a really big cup of coffee as a thank you or the companies sponsored a phpBB event, they are still sponsored links. phpBB.com still has a PageRank of 5, when it used to have a PageRank of 9.

I find it slightly ironic that Google will drop some sites completely out of the rankings if they have erroneously hacked links or absolutely nothing wrong with their site, but for a site that is clearly stating that they are selling links, stays at the top of the index for their keywords. Let’s take a look at what the rankings look like for phpBB.com still.

Next, let’s take a look at the search rankings and how Google is treating phpBB.com.

Sure, the search is for phpbb, the domain name, but let’s inspect it a little deeper than just that.

Running the query, we can see that phpbb.com is still the first hit. In fact, aside from clearly having paid links and clearly having their PageRank penalized for having paid links, they remain the first hit with sitelinks. Slightly ironic, again, that Google will still give this domain so authority and respect, despite violating its Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Matt Cutts has come out several times stating that this is a pretty bad thing to do and you’re likely to get kicked out of Google’s index for it.

But thing Matt forgot to mention is that it only depends on how big of site you have. If you have enough backlinks pointing to your site, Google will still rank you and still happily send you traffic.

So what’s the lesson we should learn from this example? Buy as many links as possible and spend as much money as possible to get as many backlinks as possible. Buy enough links and Google will still rank you just like do for phpBB.com.

Thanks for not being a hypocrite Google, we love you!

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Doesn’t Hate ALL Paid Links, Just Yours

Today, news has been spreading across the web about how the patent office is changing its policies on what you are and are not allowed to patent.

The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. Patently O

The irony remains though, Google does not own the patent for PageRank, Stanford University does; Google is simply licensing the patent.

But, with the new PTO policies, this could leave Google [and Stanford] in a precarious situation as far as the patent goes. Will the technology be leaked out, giving others the ability to use it?

I’m quite interested in watching the progression with this and to see where it goes.

What are your thoughts on it?

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

PageRank Patent to Expire?

Something to note about these new Blog Lists is that they are search engine friendly. The links will pass PageRank to the links in your Blog List and will help attribute their reputation, as PageRank puts it.

Here is a quick tutorial that Blogger published about how to use the new Blog List feature.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Blogger Launches New Blog List Feature

It’s that time of year again, another PageRank update. Google started exporting their PageRank values to the public.

So what does this mean for you? Absolutely everything nothing! Google’s rankings will not change drastically because of this export. Google is internally updating PageRank on a, well, probably a daily basis.

Many folks who have the Google toolbar use that little green value as a measurement of trust. But because of the shake-up with PageRank not too long ago, those in the loop of SEO and the webmaster community know that PageRank really doesn’t have that much weight anymore, at least the public value.

PageRank has gone back and forth of high for some sites, then low, then back to high. SERoundTable.com for example, is still a PageRank 4. This site is still a PageRank 5, but Techipedia.com went up to a PageRank 6!

Yeah, another “hot news” article for everyone! ;)

Tags: pagerank, google+search, search+engines

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

PageRank Update for April 2008

What is a trademark?

“A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device (or a combination thereof) that identifies the goods or services of a person or company and distinguishes them from the goods and services of others. A trademark assures consumers of consistent quality with respect to those goods or services and aids in their promotion. “

Google has quite a few trademarks out there that they want to protect for brand image.

We will not be digging into legal issues with trademarks here nor discussion of it too much, but this article is a primer for what is to come very soon.

I will be going through a series of articles which will outline trademark usage and general information of trademarks.

Here are a few examples of existing Google trademarks.

• Google™ search
• Google™ search engine
• Google.org™ non-profit foundation
• Google AdSense™ advertising program
• Google Adverting Professionals™ program
• Google AdWords™ advertising program
• Google Alerts™ email update service
• Google Answers™ research service
• Google Analytics™ web analytics service
• Google Base™ listing service
• Google Blog™ weblog
• Google Blog Search™ service
• Google Book Search™ service
• Google Calendar™ calendaring service
• Google Catalogs™ catalog search
• Google Checkout™ payment and billing service
• Google Code™ open source developer site
• Google Co-op™ platform
• Google Compute™ feature
• Google Dashboard Widgets™ for Mac software
• Google Desktop™ searching software
• Google Desktop Search™ search tool
• Google Deskbar™ software
• Google Directory™ web directory
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets™ word processing and spreadsheet program
• Google Earth™ mapping service
• Google Extensions™ for Firefox software
• Google Finance™ financial information service
• Google Foundation™ nonprofit organization
• Google Free™ search services
• Google Gadgets™ software
• Google Glossary™ glossary service
• Google Grants™ program
• Google Groups™ Usenet discussion forums
• Google Image Search™ image search service
• Google Images™ image search service
• Google Labs™ research division
• Google Mail™ webmail service
• Google Maps™ mapping service
• Google Mars™ mapping service
• Google Mini™ hardware
• Google Mobile™ wireless service
• Google Music Search™ service
• Google News™ news service
• Google News Alerts™ news alert service
• Google Pack™ software download service
• Google Page Creator™ web page creation service
• Google Personalized Home™ personalized homepage service
• Google Personalized Search™ personalized search service
• Google Q&A™ search service
• Google Reader™ feed reader
• Google Related Links™ service
• Google Ride Finder™ taxi search
• Google SafeSearch™ filtering
• Google Scholar™ scholarly texts search
• Google Search Appliance™ hardware
• Google Sets™ set prediction service
• Google Sidebar™ software
• Google Sitemaps™ service
• Google Site Search™ service
• Google SMS™ mobile messaging service
• Google Store™ online store
• Google Suggest™ suggestion service
• Google Talk™ instant messaging service
• Google Toolbar™ search bar
• Google Transit™ trip planning service
• Google Translate™ translation service
• Google Video™ video search
• Google Web Accelerator™ software
• Google Web Alerts™ alert service
• Google Web Search™ features
• Google Zeitgeist™ report
• AdWords™ advertising service
• AdSense™ advertising service
• Blogger™ web publishing service
• Blog*Spot™ hosting service
• Froogle™ product search
• Gmail™ webmail service
• I’m Feeling Lucky™ search service
• Orkut™ online community
• PageRank™ algorithm
• Picasa™ photo organizer software
• Hello™ picture instant message service
• Dodgeball™ social networking service
• Joga™ online community
• Keyhole™ mapping service
• Urchin™ web analytics service
• Oingo™ advertising service
• Quantified™ web analytics service
• Writely™ word processing software
• dMarc™ advertising services
• Scott Studios™ audio systems
• Maestro™ audio systems
• Sketchup™ sketching software
• Measure Map™ web analytics service
• Trustrank™ algorithm

Soon to come, Part II of the Google Trademark Basics series.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Trademark Basics (Part I)

This time around, “two real estate agents in Victoria, Australia have filed suit against Google. Mark Forytarz & Paul Castran claim defamation due to articles painting them in a negative light that can be found on the search engine.”

This story sounds awefully familiar. Oh yeah, we last heard this from Kinderstart. Kinderstart.com had their PageRank set to zero, so the logical thing to do was to sue Google. Not too long after Kinderstart.com brought the lawsuit on Google, they lost — Google: 1, Kinderstart.com: 0.

Similarly, these two Australian real estate agents think they can beat Google because it’s giving them a bad name.

People really ought to find something better to do with their time. If these two real estate agents had any idea about how Google works, they would know they could simply build a website that ranks higher for their keyword and then the listing will eventually just fade away. Well, if that doesn’t work, try suing the publishing company instead. And as a last resort, even try sending a DMCA.

Anything would be a better resolution than trying to sue Google [with the deep-pockets].

Tags: lawsuit, google+legal, google+lawsuit

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Lawsuit Over Search Rankings

With just a little effort on your part, Google could include you in their backlinks today!

Today, we’re looking at http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/.

SELand’s Andrew Goodman wrote up an article about the Google Website Optimizer Beta provided for AdWords users. Looks like he got a nice shout out from Google and plenty of link love. The page above is a hefty PageRank 7 and the SELand article is sitting nicely at a PageRank 5.

But wait! There’s more! You too could get a free backlink! They have an internal PageRank 6 page which you could get listed on! All you need to do is use their service and you too could qualify!

Ha. If you haven’t figured out by now, this article is kind of a joke. PageRank isn’t what it used to be, as Tamar points out, but it’s fun to still play games with PageRank.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

More Google Backlinks, for Free!

So we’re back to talking about PageRank, yet again. We talked about links and pagerank a couple months ago, so actually, it hasn’t been all that recent.

But looking back at this week, we need to look at Microsoft and what they are doing in the search industry. Will Fast Search & Transfer take over Google Enterprise and dominate the market? It’s far too early to really say for sure, but it’s a possibility.

Google ought to just completely remove all public PR and it would save a lot of trouble for everyone. But of course, it may put some people out of business (http://www.pagerankupdate.net/).

Tags: google, google+search, pagerank, pagerank+updates, pagerank+2008

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Toolbar PageRank Updates 2008

Apple has already come outrightly and stated that they will fight the unlocking and discontinue any support for those people that do unlock their iPhones. But Google is more than happy to take advertiser’s money in lieu of Apple’s position?

This comes down to a moral decision for Google. Take the money vs. stand behind Apple. This seems to be a big issue with Google lately. We came across this same exact issue with text link brokers and AdWords.

Sure, Google is a business, their own business, but do they have their business partner’s best interest at heart as well? Which weighs in more? Business partner’s best interest vs. being a money-grubbing-whore.

Here’s just another example of the issue I see. It’s a problem I clearly see with Google’s morals and ethics.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Supports iPhone Unlocking

As illustrated in the comic above (which is thanks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail [one of my favorite movies]), we can see how traditional old school link building is dead.

The old style of link building was “Hey! You have a PageRank 8 site, that must mean it’s [uber] trusted by all the search engines! I’ll give you $100 if you put my link there. K? thx!” That is no longer the case. Search engines have been smarter and better.

But from what I can tell, a lot of people are still stuck in the 90s and think that irrelevant linking still works. Let’s take a look at what I’m talking about.

This is just one example I’ve seen around the web. I have seen it numerous times where the links are entirely irrelevant to the site content.

This article is exactly related to the paid links industry and attacks that are happening right now. This makes me question, does Google want to scare or attack the industry because of all the irrelevant linking that is going on or is it because they want to “naturalize” their index?

A Little Google Background on AdWords

10 years ago, Google didn’t have near the computing power or algorithm power it does today. 5 years ago [2002], we were remembering 9/11, we were talking about Anna Nicole Smith and her popularity, and Amazon.com was the #1 top retailer. Were we talking about the paid link industry or even thinking about it? Certainly not. Was Google generating significant revenue through AdWords and AdSense? Certainly.

So what’s different about today and 5 years ago? Google’s obsession to control the spending market.

Google is afraid that if companies move to a pure SEO methodology, it will draw away from their AdWords revenue that is making up a large portion of their entire gross profit. Google reported $4.23 billion for Q3 of 2007, which is a growth of $1.54 billion from Q3 of 2006.

Google is scared of losing that revenue through SEO methods. In reality, Google should not be fighting this at all. Any good SEO knows that moving to a pure SEO method is not the best method of driving traffic to your business. It’s a combination effort of both SEO and PPC. An SEO that moves completely away from PPC has no idea what they’re doing.

Back to Being Relatively Relevant

I completely stand behind Google on wanting to de-value irrelevant links, sure, that only makes sense. But attacking the entire industry of paid links, now that’s just stupid.

Tags: google, seo, ppc, adwords

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Bring Out Your Dead…Bring Out Your Dead Links