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Last week, Google's Matt Cutts had a Q&A on the SearchMarketingExpo in Seattle. Here's a summary of the most important statements:

Google's supplemental index

Pages in Google's supplemental results are parsed differently than pages in the regular index. Pages from the supplemental results can get into the main index. According to Matt Cutts, phrase relationships are handled a bit differently for supplemental pages. He didn't reveal details.

Webmasters shouldn't be worried if they have pages in the supplemental index. Matt Cutts has hundreds of his own pages in the supplemental index.

Paid links

Google considers buying links to be outside of their guidelines and they might take strong actions against that in the future. Matt Cutts indicated that "Google might take action" if webmasters buy links anyway.

Outbound links

Matt Cutts said that links to other websites are good for users, and therefore good for search engines.

The impact of spammy domains that are owned by the same person

Matt Cutts indicated that a webmaster who owns many spammy websites might get trouble with his other websites.

Catalog pages and online store search result pages

Google tries to avoid online store result pages in its own result pages. If an online store search result page looks like search results that are available anywhere else, then Google doesn't like the page. It's much better if it has unique content.

Category pages in online shops work better according to Matt Cutts. However, a product should only be listed in the best-applicable category instead of being listed in 30 different locations.

Matt Cutts recommended to analyze the web pages that currently have high rankings because webmasters can learn from them.

We also recommend to analyze the top ranked pages for your keywords. As these pages do have top 10 rankings on Google, they must have done something right. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer tools make analyzing your competitors as easy as 1-2-3.

Yahoo! Search crawler, Slurp, has a new address and signature card

"All machines crawling as Slurp are now in crawl.yahoo.net. You can see this change in your web server logs, where the page accesses from inktomisearch.com are being fully replaced by crawl.yahoo.net contacts."

Yahoo also released a ranking algorithm update.

"Many major SEO firms make it a standard practice to recommend the purchasing of links to their clients. The search engines actively discourage this practice, and do their level best to detect those paid links. Here are 15 things they can use as signals that a link is possibly a paid link."

"It appears from this early analysis that the big winners for this new format are YouTube and Maps, while Image Search and News (which under the older format were occasionally featured top of page) are on the losing end."

Search engine newslets

• The three dimensions of Ask3D.
• Sputtr.com is a new meta search engine with a nice interface.
• New Ask.com UI gives 20% more user satisfaction.
• The lure of great Google perks.
• First public view of Powerset results.
• The impact of caching on search engines (Yahoo research).
• Betting on Google's next move.
• Hands-on with Google gears.
• Yahoo SiteExplorer web vs. API: answers from Yahoo!
• What you can do about the latest Google Desktop flaw.
• The man behind the Google doodle.
• Google escalates Microsoft battle.

"Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users."

Editor's note: Google's Matt Cutts commented on the report here.
Another comment: Can a search engine know too much?

Peek-A-Google

"Google Maps' Street View may just bring the search and advertising giant down to earth. And it has also led to a debate about privacy and the ownership of information that is as important as it is difficult."

"Google in their webmaster guidelines say, 'Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.'

Now take a look at the following URLs, which are all from Google’s copy of the Open Directory project, which all contain the same (or partly, roughly the same) content, and which are all indexable by search engines (and for certain searches, indeed popping up in the SERPs multiple times)"

How to get optimized web page content AND good inbound links

High rankings on Google, Yahoo and other major search engines are the result of optimized web page content and good inbound links. If you want to get high rankings then you need both.

Fortunately, IBP helps you to get your website to the top of the search results:

• Optimize your web page content.
• Optimize your inbound links.

IBP offers everything you need to get top rankings on major search engines. Download your copy here.

• How to clear bad press from search engine results
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• New study: Which web page elements lead to high search engine rankings?
• Are search engine spammers exploiting your sitemaps file?
• Two new Google ranking patents
• The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings
• What Google thinks about hidden and paid links
• View all past issues...