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Too many links? What's the problem?

It's no secret that Google heavily relies on the number of links and their anchor texts to determine the ranking of a web site. However, Google's recently filed patent indicates that Google might also use historical information to determine the value of links.

Google reveals the details

The patent specification indicates that Google might record the discovery date of a link and its anchor text and the link changes over time. Google might also record the life span of a link and the speed at which a new web site gets links.

Google also seems to monitor the rate at which new links to a web page appear and disappear. They also monitor the growth rates of links as well as the link growth of similar documents.

What does this mean to you?

Google doesn't expect that new web sites have a large number of links. If a new web site gets many new links, this will be tolerated if some of the links are from authorative sites.

Google's patent specification indicates that it is better if link growth remains constant and slow. You should vary your anchor texts as much as possible to make sure that your links look natural. Burst link growth may be a strong indicator of search engine spam for Google.

How to build links to your web site without getting penalized

You shouldn't go for one-shot solutions when building links to your site. If you participate in quick link exchange schemes or buy links to your web site so that you get many links at once, changes are that Google will consider this spamming.

When you exchange links with other web sites, do it slowly and constantly.

Invest some time every week to build the links to your site and vary the texts that point to your site. Make sure that the links to your site contain keywords that are related to your site and vary the link texts. ARELIS and IBP's Link Popularity Improver are the ideal tools to help you with this task.

Yahoo! launched new search index

"We made changes to the index last night so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index as well as some fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches. The changes will be a little more intense than the second weather report and changes will continue over the next week or two."

Editor's note: If you want to know how to react to this Yahoo ranking algorithm change, read this article.

Search engine market shares in June 2005 [PDF]

"Newly released June 2005 search share data reports Google at 47 percent, Yahoo! at 22 Percent and MSN at 12 Percent; My Way Search makes its way into top five rankings for the first time.

AOL and Ask Jeeves rose 15 and 16 percent, respectively, in the number of searches conducted, while Google and Yahoo! maintained single digit growth.

Overall, search as a category saw a five percent increase in the number of searches conducted from Q1 to Q2 during 2005."

Microsoft joins satellite image search engine competition

"The new software is available at virtualearth.msn.com. It has navigation tools that allow users to pan and drag maps. It is designed to allow for users to find satellite images of various addresses and locations."

Search engine newslets

• Yahoo releases a toolbar for Firefox.
• Make your own Google logo with Logogle.
• Google releases Google moon.
• Yahoo releases Yahoo! Widgets.
• Google seeks to stop Microsoft from suing new hire.
• Brazilians used Google's Orkut as drug distribution network.
• Google to open research and development center in China.

Yahoo search update gets mixed reviews

"Yahoo introduced changes to its search engine this week that were meant to improve the quality of search results, but the update is making some webmasters grumpy."

Editor's note: Read this article to make your web site work with his algorithm update.

What Price PageRank? Part 2

"Ladies and gentlemen, get a grip on yourselves! Don't be afraid. Let go of your little, green security blanket. It'll be all right. Trust me [...] There is life and search marketing without the PR meter. Honest. Truth be told, that's the way it's always been. [...]

Google is a fabulous company and a great search engine. I personally know a number of great people who work there. I'd never knock them. But I would openly, publicly ask them to do me this one small favor: dump the toolbar meter. Some people actually take it seriously!"

Mark Cuban to relaunch IceRocket

"Similar to Technorati or PubSub, Cuban's BlogScour will search for the latest postings across the so-called blogosphere and return a list of results."

Pay-per-click speculation market soaring

"The number of web sites being opened purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google Inc and Yahoo Inc is rocketing, according to VeriSign Inc, which runs the .com and .net domain names."

"IBP and ARELIS are great products. The menu structure is simple to use and I could start working with it right away. No steep learning curve. I will not recommend it to my competition because IBP is too good and I don't want them to know about it.

However, I will mention it to everybody outside of my line of business. Thanks for a great software that is designed smart and executed clean."
Malte Strauss, www.luxuryhomesinorlando.com

IBP 8.1 beta 3 version is available

We have just released a new beta version of IBP 8.1. The new version offers several improvements:

• IBP can now delete search engine cookies to make sure that your search results are not influenced by your cookies. This feature is optional and can be turned on in the "General Settings" window.
  
• The ranking reports now tell you how many listings
  you have on the first search engine result page, the second
  page and the third page. The listings are displayed
  individually for your URLs, keywords and search engines.
  
• The Web Site Optimization Editor now displays the
  last Top 10 Optimizer report. This allows you to quickly
  adjust your web page to the suggestions of the Top 10
  Optimizer.
  
• You can now copy the links of the Link Popularity
  Improver to the clipboard. This allows you to import these
  links into ARELIS.
  
• The Link Popularity Improver now finds much
  better results and it is faster than before.

All known bugs have been fixed in IBP 8.1 beta 3. If you want to test the beta version, click here.

• Why has your web site been dropped from Google?
• How to react to the latest ranking algorithm changes
• Is the Open Directory Project still important?
• The perfect balance between on-site and off-site optimization
• Does Google manually influence its search results?
• Google Sitemaps service and your web site
• Google's PageRank - should it be discontinued?
• View all past issues...