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Much has been said about Google's way to determine the rankings of web pages. Incoming links and optimized web page content are the key to top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

Good writing style and its influence on your Google rankings

It's rather easier to determine what good incoming links are (namely links from related web sites that include words that are related to the content of your site), but it's more difficult to determine what optimized web page content is.

First of all, a web page has optimized content if search engines can easily parse it and if search engines can find the keywords for which you want to be listed in the right places on your site. These two factors are very important if you want to have high search engine rankings.

In addition to that, there's a new theory that Google might also consider the grammar and spelling mistakes on your web pages.

The idea behind this concept is simple and understandable. The fewer mistakes, the better the quality. The better the writing style, the higher is the quality of the found text.

Google might prefer web pages with a clear text structure, few errors and a good writing style.

It's an open secret that natural language processing becomes more important in search engine algorithms. Google explicitly mentions natural language processing on its jobs page .

Are misspellings still a good way to obtain high search engine rankings?

Some SEO experts recommend to use misspellings of keywords to get high rankings for these keywords.

If the theory about the influence of grammar and spelling is true, using misspellings might have a negative effect on your rankings. Although the theory hasn't been officially confirmed yet you should keep it in mind when using misspellings on your web pages.

What does this mean to your Google rankings?

Many people get obsessed with Google's PageRank number when it comes to getting high Google rankings. You shouldn't care about the little green bar in Google's toolbar. Google wants to find good web sites with good content. Tell Google that your web site contains good content by getting good incoming links and by optimizing your content for Google.

The PageRank number displayed in Google's toolbar has little to do with the rankings of a web page (for example, results number 3,4, 6 and 10 for the keyword hurricane katrina had a Google PageRank of zero on 5 September 2005).

Make sure that your web pages don't contain too many grammar and spelling mistakes and that it's easy to find out what your web site is about. Use paragraphs, bullet lists and headlines to structure your text. Use your keywords in the right elements on your web page and use them in the right frequency.

The more clearly you structure your text, the easier it is for search engines to process it.

"Google users were 53.6% male, while Ask Jeeves users were 58.7% female. Yahoo! and MSN searchers were predominantly women, who accounted for 50.2% of Yahoo! Search users and 53.7% of MSN Search users.

MSN Search had the highest proportion of users older than 55, while Ask Jeeves appealed to those between the ages of 18-24 and to those between 35-54 years old."

"Advertisers pay a one-time subscription fee of S$10 (US$5.97) for MSN Keywords. For each keyword, they bid a minimum of S$0.10 and pay for the number of times search users click on their advertisements, which appear as sponsored links alongside search results."

"Google recently began buying ad pages in technology magazines, including PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords."

"Enter 'New Orleans' in the search field at the top of the page, or drag and zoom the map to the area. A red 'Katrina' button will appear at the top right of the map, next to the existing map buttons. Older images for the area are still available too - click the 'Satellite' button to switch to those."

• Google, Microsoft at it again. This time it's VoIP.
• Chinese search engine market to consolidate.
• Microsoft's Start.com web site is available in a beta version.
• Google Local is now available in Chinese.
• Google opens digital library.

"What I find distressing about this is that most people still consider Google to be the gold standard of search engines. [...] Because many of our clients use only Google, they are actually being left behind in terms of search technology.

Google is dumb: it places so much trust on its relevance ranking in its presentation of search results as a simple list of Web sites. Users don't have access to suggestions of alternate concepts or terms or all the tools that other search engines provide."

"Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to 'kill' Internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive 'like wolves,' according to documents filed Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals."

"Our users want the world to be as simple, clean, and accessible as the Google home page itself [...] Soon, it will be. [...] As a part of Purge's first phase, executives will destroy all copyrighted materials that cannot be searched by Google."

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"We are only behind IBM and HP"

"Thought I would send a quick mail to let you know of the success that we have had with your products. We use both IBP8 and Arelis4.

If you type our main keyword 'business partners' into Google UK we are now number 1, and on Google Worldwide we are number 2 or 3 (depending on the day) only behind IBM and HP."
Lawrence Gilbert, www.companypartners.com

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