Axandra news archive: 29 January 2008

This week, we're taking a look at new technologies that detect black-hat SEO methods. Your website might be in trouble even if you used black-hat methods years ago.

In the news: China's biggest search engine Baidu enters new markets, Google experiments with new search result layouts and more.

Table of contents:

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• What is new in IBP version 10? - The SEO tool with a guarantee: Part 1
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

Search engine optimization methods are divided in two categories: black hat SEO and white hat SEO. Both methods can help you to get high rankings on search engines.

However, one method is likely to get your website banned on search engines and recent developments indicate that websites that use that method will be in trouble soon.

What is white hat SEO?

White hat SEO means that the webmaster doesn't try to trick search engines. White hat SEO means playing by the rules. Web pages that are created with white-hat SEO methods are beneficial to web surfers, search engines and webmasters.

What is black hat SEO?

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. These methods include cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text, etc.

Google and other search engines have made it clear that they penalize websites that use black hat SEO methods when they detect them.

Black-hat SEO methods seem to work. So why not use them?

Some black-hat SEO methods can lead to good results. There are quite a few webmasters who obtained high rankings for their web pages although they optimized them with methods that were not approved by Google and the other search engines.

You have probably also seen some web pages in the search results that looked strange or hardly related to what you've actually searched. So do black-hat SEO methods seem to work? Should you use them?

Nearly all black-hat SEO methods have been detected by search engines sooner or later. Javascript redirects or doorway pages used to work in the past but nowadays, these methods are usually the ticket to the land of banned websites.

While some cloaking methods continue to work at this time (if your competitors don't peach on you), it's likely that Google can detect them soon. The same is true for paid links. Some paid links can still not be detected by Google but it's only a matter of time until Google has the algorithms that can.

You might get in trouble even if you used black-hat methods years ago

The problem is that things that cannot be detected by Google now might be detected by Google tomorrow. And Google might also be able to find out what you did in the past.

A good example for a spam filter that also considers things that have been done in the past is the WikiScanner. WikiScanner can find manipulations that have been made in the past and it can also associate anonymous changes to the people and companies who made these "anonymous" changes.

Combine such a spam scanner which a web page archive like Archive.org and you have an easy way to track the spam history of a web page.

Things that you have done in the past might backfire on you.

Don't use black-hat SEO methods. As technical possibilities evolve, it's very likely that these methods will be detected even if you don't use them anymore. It's better to use tools that focus on white-hat SEO methods.

Websites that continue to play by the rules will have an advantage in Google's search results. In addition, there's no need to use shady techniques if you can have a white-hat SEO tool that comes with a guarantee.

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Baidu leads China Web search market in Q4

"Baidu.com Inc led China's search engine market in last year's fourth quarter with a 60.1 percent share, research firm Analysys International said on Friday. Google Inc came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent, it said in a statement."

Google introduces experimental views for search results

"For some searches you need more options and more control. That's why we've created our experimental search page to let you try out some of our newest ideas."

Yahoo has updated its ranking algorithm

"Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index."

Search engine newslets

• Search Google Maps without entering an address.
• Google doesn't allow personal attacks in AdWords.
• Google about to release Google Health?
• Rumor: China Yahoo to name new president.
• Ask.com gets more personal.
• Earnings preview: Yahoo.
• Eat Baidu's dust, Microsoft.
• Chuck Norris can hide from Google (humor).
• Creepy Google Maps (humor).

Guaranteed: the all-new IBP version 10 helps you to get top 10 rankings

Version 10 of our popular website promotion software tool IBP is about to be released soon. The IBP user interface has been completely re-designed and it lets you execute many tasks much faster.

There are many great improvements and new features. The new interface is much easier to use for both beginners and search engine professionals.

Many changes and improvements: easier, faster, better :-)

In the new version, many tools have been centralized to single windows. For example you can now find all five submission tools in a single Submission Manager window.

IBP now features six main sections that are important to your search engine optimization success: Keywords, Optimization, Links, Submission, Ranking and Tools. Each of these sections offers a variety of powerful features.

In our next newsletters, we'll explain the new features of the following IBP tools in detail: Keyword Manager, Top 10 Optimizer, ARELIS Link Manager, Submission Manager, Ranking Manager, Reports/Charts, Project management/Scheduler, SEO Checklist.

We guarantee it: IBP is the best tool that you can get!

We're confident that IBP 10 is the most complete website promotion tool that you can get. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines, then IBP should be your choice.

We're so sure that IBP 10 will help you to get top 10 search engine rankings that we can offer you our top 10 rankings or money back guarantee.

If you cannot wait to get started with IBP 10, click here to download the beta version.

Note: If you have or buy the current IBP version, the new IBP version 10 will be a free update for you.

Get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines

IBP's Top 10 Optimizer decrypts Google's ranking algorithm and it tells you what exactly you have to do to get top 10 rankings on Google.

Webmasters all over the world successfully use IBP to get first page rankings on Google. Try it now.

Get your site mentioned in front of 150,000+ 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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