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Axandra
news archive: 28 August
2007
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| Welcome
to the latest issue of the Search
Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we explain how webmasters
can fake the PageRank of their
websites and how you can spot
these fake sites.
In the news: a new open source
search engine tries to be better
than Google, web surfers ignore
ads and a study shows that people
tend to trust Google more than
they should.
Table of contents:
We hope that
you enjoy this newsletter
and that it helps you to get
more out of your website.
Please pass this newsletter
on to your friends.
Best regards,
|
| 1.
How to fake PageRank and how
to find websites with faked
PR |
Although
most professional search engine
optimizers agree that the green
PageRank display has little to
do with the actual performance
of a website in Google and other
search engines, many webmasters
still focus on websites with a
high PageRank when it comes to
link building and website promotion.
How to fake the PageRank
of a website
The PageRank of a web page
can be faked with a combination
of a 301 redirect and cloaking.
It works like this:
- When a search engine spiders
visits a web page URL, the
server redirects the spider
to a web page with high PageRank.
- Google assigns the high
PageRank to the page with
the redirection because it
thinks that the pages are
identical.
- When a human web surfer
visits the web page URL, the
server does not redirect the
surfer. That means that the
web surfer sees the web page
of the faker and the Google
toolbar displays the PageRank
of the redirected URL:
To web surfers,
it looks as if the web page
has a very high PageRank although
it hasn't. Note that this method
doesn't increase the rankings
of the page in any way. It just
influences the PageRank display
in Google's toolbar.
Google doesn't
like cloaking at all so you
risk the rankings of your website
if you use the method above.
How to
check if a website has a faked
PageRank
If you think that
a web page might have a faked
PageRank then you can do the
following simple check:
- Search Google for "info:domain.com" (without
the quotation marks, replace
domain.com with the domain
that you want to check).
- If there are no results
or if the returned URLs don't
match the original URL then
it's likely that the PageRank
has been faked. If Google
returns only one URL for the
query and if the URL is the
same as the checked URL then
the PageRank is okay.
What about the PageRank
of your own website?
The green pixels in Google's
toolbar are not important. It's
important that your website
has high rankings for keywords
that convert to sales. Website
promotion is about getting leads
and sales. It's not about getting
green pixels.
Don't focus on the PageRank
display in Google's toolbar
but try to get good rankings
for keywords that are relevant to
your website. High rankings
for relevant keywords that convert
to sales are much better than
having a lot of green pixels.
|
| 2.
Search engine news of the week |
Tall
Street is a new open source
search engine
"We want to build a
fair ranking system where
everyone gets an input into
the rankings. If you think
a site doesn't belong, you
can mark it as spam.
If you find a site that is
better then what is showing
as the best then you can sign
up and invest in it. [...]
We think current search
rankings were too static,
while the web isn't."
In
Google we trust: users' decisions
on rank, position, and relevance
"An eye tracking experiment
revealed that college student
users have substantial trust
in Google's ability to rank
results by their true relevance
to the query. When the participants
selected a link to follow
from Google's result pages,
their decisions were strongly
biased towards links higher
in position even if the abstracts
themselves were less relevant.
[...]
This demonstrated trust in
Google has implications for
the search engine's tremendous
potential influence on culture,
society, and user traffic
on the Web."
Eyetracking
shows web audience ignores ads
"A newly released eyetracking
study by usability guru Jakob
Nielsen shows that online
banner blindness is worsening.
Nielsen says that banner ads
(indicated by green outlines
in his heat maps below) didn’t
even receive light focus from
skimmers, scanners and readers—and
neither did non-ad content
in the same areas."
Search engine newslets
- Does Yahoo Search hold
the key to
online spending?
- Microsoft releases experimental
search site Tafiti.
- Google result thumbnail.
- See an SEO doodle in
Google AdWords results.
- Baidu spanks Google in China's
online ad market.
- Forget
iPhone, the Gphone is
here.
- Web search IPO stalls on
underwriter doubts.
- Corrupted DMOZ
editors?
- Google
may start New York transit guide
to boost ads.
|
Google
deems cost-per-action as the
'Holy Grail'
"First, CPA has the
potential to significantly
reduce the occurrence of click
fraud--a bigger problem than
most pay-per-click advertisers
realize. [...]
Secondly, if CPA becomes
the dominant advertising model
for Google, it will affect
the entire search marketing
industry. The acquisition
of clicks will become less
interesting to marketers,
and as such, strategies and
tactics will change."
Yahoo!,
Microsoft ink web pact with Chinese
government
"Microsoft and Yahoo!
have signed a pact with the
Chinese government that 'encourages'
the big name web players to
record the identities of bloggers
and censor content. So says
Reporters Without Borders,
an organization that fights
for journalistic rights across
the globe."
Google
AdWords: Improved top ad placement
formula now in effect
"Advertisers with ads
in or near a top spot may
begin to see a change in the
average number of clicks these
ads receive, and also in their
CPCs. The degree to which
your clicks and CPCs may be
impacted will depend on a
number of factors, so it's
difficult to say today how
much of a difference you can
expect to see."
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Axandra.com
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| 4.
Get a permanent link from our
website |
"We
rank top in our state searches"
"Bands
are a dime a dozen. However,
to be popular among searches
your site has to stand out.
The Great Imponderables
not only soared for their
local area, but rank
top in our state searches.
Even more impressive is
how we rank for general
search terms.
IBP was
instrumental in seeing how
we compared with other similar
sites. As a result, we were
able to develop our page
to achieve top rankings.
Now, if the band itself
can do the same..."
Rick
Creel, The
Great Imponderables
Get your site mentioned in front of 130,000+ subscribers
We want to hear from you
about your successes with
IBP or ARELIS. Just write
us 2-3 sentences and you
might get featured in this
newsletter along with your
web site address.
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of contents - Visit
Axandra.com
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