June 29, 2007- An
article
on Forbes.com entitled "The Sabateurs of Search"
explain how negative SEO can be used to devalue competitors websites.
Tactics are used such as "Google Bowling" (link spamming),
tattling, copyright take-down notices, duplicate content, denial
of service (DOS), click fraud and "Google Insulation where
blogs are created to float the content over the top of the competitors
on the result pages.
June 25, 2007- A
small startup search company in Tacoma, WA called SearchForItHere
[dot] com is confident it can survive with a local search effort.
The small company has three employees, according to an article
on the Seattle Times website. The company is charging $39.99
per month for listings which they say is less than Google's Adwords
or other paid search on lesser search engines where businesses
are charged each time someone clicks on the displayed ad called
"pay-per-click". They expect $25,000 a month by November.
SEO Metro will follow up in November.
June 22, 2007- The
European Union privacy watchdog groups have opened the probe on
search engine retention data from Google to its search engine
competitors, according to an article
on TheRegister. Some of the competitors include, Yahoo, Lycos
and Microsoft Live. Google has sofar agreed to limit its data
retention from two years down to eighteen months.
June 19, 2007- Web
Targeted recently acquired SEO.com
for a reported $5 million. Web Targeted has moved their
site to the new domain and said it will get a new logo, build
a new site, and have lots of SEO tool, articles, tips, resources
and insight into the SEO/SEM industry, etc.
June 13, 2007- The
Search Engine Professional Organization
has just certified its first applicants for their search engine
optimization course. SEMPO also has started offering
an advanced SEO course along with an Advanced Search Advertising
course. All courses are offered online including the exams.
June 13, 2007- Google
Analytics is moving out of Beta with new bug fixes
and is adding new features based on feedback. Among the new features
are: ability to click on external links, view stats by the hour
or by the day, easier ability to combine an Adwords account to
Google Analytics, US search engine Mama.com
has been added along with new French search engines, an increase
in the amount of table rows on a page from 100 to 500, and a few
other new features have been added.
June 5, 2007- Google
has updated its webmaster guidelines in clearer more
defined detail, particulary directed toward search engine optimization.Webmasters
should avoid techniques such as: hidden text or hidden links,
cloaking or sneaky indirects, automated queries to Google, loaded
pages with irrelevant keywords, duplicate content, pages that
install viruses, trojans or other scripts known as malware, "doorway
pages" created just for search engines and affiliate sites
that contain little useful knowledge for users.
Abusers of the above stated tactics
may be blocked from Google's index. Those webmasters who believe
their sites may not be in compliance may submit their site again
for reinclusion.
Search Engine and SEO News; June 2007
