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Welcome to the ineedhits Search Engine Marketing blog, where we share the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advice.

We encourage you to get involved in our blog community - so share your opinions and experiences by leaving comments on our posts.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

Tuesday, October 30

Google's Latest Update Sees Websites Lose PageRank Overnight

The latest Google PageRank update has resulted in some popular blogs and news websites suddenly losing their PageRank. The PageRank penalization looks to be a reaction to websites that use link-building strategies that conflict with Google's webmaster guidelines.

Google does not approve of the use of paid links to raise rank, but until the latest release, has yet to punish any websites that use them. Some of the websites that experienced a drop were the Washington Post and Forbes.com who both had a PageRank of 7.5, now both are on 5.

Not all of the websites that experienced a drop were using paid links. Some of the blogs that lost PageRank are a part of blog networks, which have plenty of internal links between sites. This is a legitimate linking technique, but can in the automated eyes of Google look like an inappropriate linking strategy. Google's stance on link building communities is somewhat ambiguous,

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank"

It should be noted that there are a variety of different linking techniques, most of which Google accepts such as natural linking techniques, that use blog and directory links. The update looks to be Google vigorously enforcing its webmaster guidelines, which previously the misuse of, only resulted in sporadic punishment for a few websites.

The enforcement of the webmaster guidelines is happening, without any distinction being made between a website that blatantly manipulates the search algorithms, and those that use some paid links and appropriate link building strategies to deliver traffic.

In the case of some blogs losing PageRank, Google looks to have punished those who have used appropriate link building techniques. Controversy still reigns over the use of paid links, the latest response from Google is bound create even more.

Monday, October 29

Yahoo! Launches Internet Cafes in Vietnam

Last Tuesday, Yahoo! Vietnam announced a new coffee shop initiative by providing Yahoo! powered internet cafes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Mihn City, Vietnam. The new internet cafes are sponsored by Yahoo! and aim to make the internet more accessible to the Vietnamese while effectively branding Yahoo! services in the country.

The cafes are brightly colored and heavily branded with Yahoo! colors and services such as Yahoo Search & Yahoo! Questions and Answers (Yahoo Answers for Vietnam).

Source: Search Engine Journal

Ngo Phuc Ngoc Tan, owner of the first Yahoo! Internet Cafe, said that the cooperation with Yahoo! would help his coffee shop earn a higher profit. Yahoo! plans to open a further 10 cafes in the country in coming years.

Tom Sipple, managing director of Yahoo! Southeast Asia, told the Saigon Times Daily that Yahoo! wanted to gain a foothold in the growing Internet market of Vietnam by launching more added value services in the country. Yahoo! Vietnam's goal is to increase the share of Yahoo-oriented Internet users in Vietnam to 35 percent by 2010.

Launching internet cafes in Vietnam is a strong move by Yahoo! to capture the attention of a growing audience in Vietnam, with over 15 million people now online. If Vietnamese consumers have their first positive internet experiences using Yahoo! services, it could become the default search engine for the masses in Vietnam.

New Ask Ads Turn Heat on Google?

Ask.com have released some new advertisements promoting their Ask3D search engine, which some users have claimed is a direct attack at Google. The new "Instant Getification" Ads start with a tagline "can your search engine do this?".

You can watch an example of one of the commercials below:

The ads, which contrast Ask.com search results with those of a typical search engine, have lead many to believe the company is attacking the likes of Google and Yahoo!. Technically the search results don't have any branding, but it's quite obvious who they are referring to.

I like the idea of the ads, but until Ask.com can show me they provide more relevant results, the ability to play songs in search results isn't of great concern to me.

What do you think of the new Ask commercials? Have your say in our blog comments!

Microsoft Gets 1.6% of Facebook for $240 Million

Microsoft has bought a 1.6 % stake in Facebook for 240 million dollars. The deal comes after Facebook rejected a take over bid of 1 billion dollars from Yahoo! last year.

Facebook is privately owned and currently valued at US$15 billion. Microsoft will now become the exclusive third-party advertising partner for Facebook, looking to increase Facebook's current annual revenue of US$100 million.

The Facebook investment provides the world's largest software maker with a toehold on one of the internet's most popular social networks, and a potentially lucrative forum for selling online ads.

With 49 million active users worldwide, Facebook is now outgrowing MySpace, which has over 200 million worldwide members. Facebook's executives and investors claim the site is growing at between, 3 and 3.5% a week and could overtake MySpace in as little as nine months.

In September, Facebook was the sixth most visited property worldwide with 73.5 million unique visitors, and the fifth most highly trafficked property worldwide with 34.5 billion page views, according to ratings agency comScore.

Microsoft faced stiff competition from Google, who were aggressively pursuing a similar investment deal. There has been no indication from Facebook, if there will be any further investment opportunities.

Friday, October 26

New Google Search Experiments - Search Views, Shortcuts and Navigation

Google has released a new experiments area where users can pilot some of the enhancements that the search giant is trialing. By signing up, you can give them a test drive and provide feedback to help shape their final release.

The experiments include alternative views for search results, keyboard shortcuts and new navigation options. All the experiments represent some interesting improvements to the current Google search experience.

Descriptions of the new experiments as listed on the Google Experiments page:

Alternate views for search results:

See results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, Google's technology extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Navigate search results quickly and easily, minimizing use of your mouse.

Left-hand search navigation:

Search deeper in a particular type of content- patents, products or news, for example. Google searches across all kinds of content, then ranks results by relevance.

If you want to see additional results of a particular content type, just click a link in the left-hand search navigation.

Right-hand contextual search navigation

Similar to the left-hand search navigation, right-hand contextual search navigation allows you to search deeper in a particular type of content or to search related terms - but from the right side of the page.

All the new experiments will be welcome additions to Google's user interface and options. Unfortunately you can only sign up for one of them, so pick wisely and make sure to provide them with feedback - chances are, they'll be released as permanent additions in the not too distant future. Sign up for Google Experiments here.

Yahoo! Opens Up Homepage Exposure to External Sites

The sacred space that is the Yahoo! homepage is now providing exposure to websites outside of the Yahoo! network. This provides an invaluable traffic opportunity for websites with feature worthy content.

According to reports, Yahoo! started publishing links to external content in the "featured" section last Thursday. This is a significant move considering they have kept such exposure solely for Yahoo! content in the past.

The move is a part of Yahoo!'s attempts to become the gateway to the "entire" internet (well at least what Yahoo! has indexed) for more online users. This is an important move aimed at encouraging more people to start their online journey at Yahoo! and more than likely boost their search volumes.

"We are the only one of the old portals to do that... We are linking to the best stuff around the Web." said Tapan Bhat (VP of Front Doors at Yahoo!).

Information featured on the homepage will be selected by editors, with content from Forbes, Time, and the Wall Street Journal already receiving prime exposure. Yahoo! suggests that smaller sites will be featured as related links to avoid traffic overload.

Getting exposure on the Yahoo! homepage will be fairly difficult for the "average joe" website, but at least the opportunity now exists for sites that publish important news and content. It will also be a major attempt to draw users back - especially those who have reverted to search engines and other new portals for their browser homepage.

Tuesday, October 23

Yahoo! Goes Carbon Neutral, Google Goes Black

Search engine giants Google and Yahoo! are both doing their part to help the environment by going carbon neutral and reducing power use. Last week, Google ran a black homepage for a day and today Yahoo! announced plans to go carbon neutral by the end of 2007.

Google's power saving initiative launched late last week in support of "Lights out San Francisco". To raise awareness of the event, Google ran an all Black version of their homepage for users in the San Francisco area, reminding them to turn out their lights. A screenshot can be seen below:

From the Google Blog:

"Google users in the San Francisco Bay Area will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a citywide energy conservation event called Lights Out San Francisco.

Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Lights Out campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful citywide event."

In related news, Yahoo! has also confirmed their commitment to environmental change by setting targets to be carbon neutral by the end of this year. The company is following through on plans made earlier this year to back hydropower in rural Brazil and wind power in India.

According to Christine Page, Yahoo! director of climate and energy strategy, this is the equivalent of removing 35,000 cars from the road for a year, or shutting down the Las Vegas strip for two months. Yahoo! is buying carbon credits from projects in India and Brazil to offset the 250,000 metric tones of greenhouse gases the company uses each year.

Google's Orkut is a Legal Nightmare

Google's landed in some hot water over their social network, Orkut which allows users to interact online, similar to the likes of MySpace and Facebook. The problems arose when Google tried running ads on the site and critics recorded them coming up next to pictures of abused children and animals.

While many Americans have never heard of Orkut before, the website has become a huge hit overseas registering more than 32 billion page views in September 07. Surprisingly, over half of these page views come from Brazil, where the website has become a surprise hit amongst citizens.

Noticing internet use was exploding in Latin America, Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira, a 28-year-old Brazilian law professor, setup a nonprofit website called SaferNet which allows users to report human rights violations via their website. Mr. Tavares claimed within weeks the site started receiving hundreds of complaints, many about Orkut. It is around this time that Google's legal troubles with Orkut began.

Mr. Tavares says he then tried contacting Google to report the problem, but never heard back from his many meeting requests. In early 2006, he gave a Google press officer a CD containing 220 pages of evidence of alleged Orkut crimes, but nothing resulted from his actions.

Legal action has since been ramped up to the point where the head of Google Brazilian operations is facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to turn Orkut users' data over to police. Next month, there is also a hearing that could see Google fined $100,000 per day, or the forced shutdown of its Brazil office. In August this year, Google responded to these legal threats by pulling all advertising from Orkut.

I'm sure scandals like this will be closely monitored by other social networks, as it threatens the business model many of these websites are founded on. If this model is under threat, it may force other social networks to rethink their monetization strategy.

Monday, October 22

DIY Tip: How to Control Your Google Sitelinks

Google have just launched a new function in their Google Webmaster Center where website owners can now decide what Google Sitelinks they want displayed in the search results.

Google Sitelinks, are the internal page links displayed for a website in Google's results, normally when a search is done for the site's title. For example, if you were to do a search for "ineedhits" in Google, you'd see the following at the top of the search results.

NOTE: sitelinks are not displayed for all websites.

The team at Google have now let you control the sitelinks that are displayed to avoid exposure to web pages that you might not want listed or highlighted. According to the release post:

"Now, Webmaster Tools lets you view potential sitelinks for your site and block the ones you don't want to appear in Google search results. Because sitelinks are extremely useful in helping users navigate your site, we don't typically recommend blocking them. However, occasionally you might want to exclude a page from your sitelinks, for example: a page that has become outdated or unavailable, or a page that contains information you don't want emphasized to users. Once you block a page, it won't appear as a sitelink for 90 days unless you choose to unblock it sooner. It may take a week or so to remove a page from your sitelinks, but we are working on making this process faster."

To control which sitelinks you want displayed, log into Google Webmaster Central (assuming you have already verified your website), then click the "links" option from the side navigation and choose "sitelinks" from the menu displayed. Once you're in there, you can decide which ones you want blocked, ensuring Google traffic goes to the pages that matter most.

While selection of sitelinks by Google is done by the algorithm, website owners (at this stage) are unable to specify which pages they would like displayed as sitelinks. I can't see Google allowing site owners to add new sitelinks anytime soon.

Google News Heads to Facebook

There seems to be no stopping the social network juggernaut that is Facebook, and in what seems a case of "if you can't beat them join them", Google News have unveiled their way of tapping into the exponentially growing Facebook audience.

Google have just unveiled their new Google News application for Facebook. The application, once installed by Facebook members, will syndicate top news from predefined categories or via specified searches. Member are able to choose what news they wish displayed on their Facebook profile.

Adding the Google News application is simple: just add the application to your profile, select the topics you want displayed and that's it - 3 stories from each search or category will appear on your profile. NOTE: when adding in "searches", add them one at a time.

So will this move by Google News really provide valuable exposure for its news service? While Facebook undoubtedly has a "massive" audience, the Google News application seems a bit too boring for this sort of social network.

Admittedly it will expose certain news items to more potential viewers...but the key to Facebook application success seems to be interactivity, novelty and innovation - Google News has none of these.

Considering Google's wide range of services, Google News seems like an odd, or too easy choice. Services such as Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Talk or even something out of the lab like Google Music Trends seem better aligned to this audience.

Perhaps this is just a test by the search engine giant before it unveils a range of other more socially apt Facebook applications. I wonder what will happen to Google Applications if the likes of Microsoft buy a stake in Facebook? Click here to add the Google News application to your profile.

Google to Store Your Medical Details

Google is planning to use its substantial data storage and organizational capacities, in the field of medical care and patient records. The yet unnamed service due to launch in early 2008 will provide a number of services related to the health industry.

"Google is often the first place online for health related questions." Head of search at Google, Marissa Mayer had this to say,

"Google has developed a prototype online platform for its health offering that incorporates personal medical records, health care-related search features, diet and exercise regimens, a localized "find a doctor" application, and other elements. The company has shown the prototype to unspecified partners and is having both Google employees and "trusted testers" beta-test the system"

The demand for such a service is strong, with 71 percent of online consumer's using search engines to find health-related information, but only 16 percent find the information they are looking for.

The key problems faced by Google in operating a successful health service is Microsoft and "privacy concerns." Microsoft has already released Health Vault, which aims to be "part medical search engine, part repository of personal data and health information that can be selectively disclosed to doctors and other interested parties."

The success of the service is reliant on Google's ability to maintain the privacy of user's information, and convince first time users that their private medical details will be safe. The unauthorized release of user's details would be disastrous for Google.

New Voice Search Microsoft Live Search 411

Microsoft has launched a voice activated local search service, Live search 411. The service delivers maps, directions, and web results to mobile phone users. Information can also be requested and received by SMS. The Microsoft offering of 1-800-Call-411 joins Google's 1-800-Goog-411, which was released in April 2007.
Live Search 411 features include (from the LiveSearch blog):

Connect to any business listing you find

Receive SMS links to maps, driving directions and traffic conditions

Get movie show times and even buy tickets over the phone

Share text messages of business details with friends so they can easily meet you

Hear the current weather conditions and the forecast

Quickly access travel resources like airlines, hotels, and rental cars

Remember your personalized locations for movie theaters, weather, and traffic, and your preferences for receiving text messages.

Unlike traditional call assistance services like the yellow pages, the service is free for searchers, with businesses being charged per lead. For the SMS service there is an option of placing a locally targeted advertisement next to the message. Yahoo! has not indicated whether it will join Microsoft and Google in voice search.

Wednesday, October 17

Gooruze - A NEW Online Marketing News and Advice Community

A new web 2.0 style community dedicated to online marketers launched yesterday. Gooruze is a one-stop destination for news, reviews, tips and articles from the online marketing world. The best part - the content is created and rated by the members.

At the time of writing this post (just 24 hours after launch), Gooruze is already offering breaking news, over 80 articles (growing by the hour), an active Q&A section and over 40 groups to join - plus a range of great networking features.

Some of the team from ineedhits ( ineedhits.gooruze.com )have helped develop the Gooruze community and are active members. You can check out some of our top articles so far:

Brian Solis, one of the Founding Gooruze, sums up the Gooruze community perfectly:

"I've gone through my entire career learning lessons the hard way. Gooruze is an incredible resource that brings together the best minds in the global marketing community. It is a one-stop directory for me to not only get insight into all things advertising, marcom, PR, and SEO, but also it allows me to tap into trends and new thinking in order to help me continue to grow as a marketing professional."

The Gooruze community is essential for online marketers and web business owners at all levels. To celebrate the launch of Gooruze, they're giving away FREE Google AdWords traffic - there's $10,000 worth on offer. So what are you waiting for - join Gooruze today!

Tuesday, October 16

Google Number 1 in Search

ComScore has released the first panoramic worldwide view of online search activity. The report relates to search activity in August, and was released in October. The report provides an in depth review of the number, and location of searches worldwide. Google has come in at number one, with five times more searches than its nearest rival Yahoo!.

Top list of searches worldwide for August

Google accounts for over half of the searches in August, with the most searches coming from the Asia pacific region,

Bob Ivins, executive vice president of International Markets at comScore had this to say about the results "Seeing Asian search engines like China's Baidu.com and Koreaâ€™s NHN ranked alongside Google and Yahoo! underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon. The continued development of search in international markets will undoubtedly present compelling opportunities for savvy marketers on a global scale."

The intense competition for user adoption will benefit both users and website owners. Each search engine, to remain competitive in each region will strive to provide the best user experience, and most importantly relevant results.

YouTube Launches Anti-Piracy Filter

Google owned YouTube today announced its latest weapon in the fight against online piracy, Video Identification (Beta). The video filtering system will give owners of copyrighted videos the choice of promoting or blocking their content on YouTube.

David King, YouTube product manager explains,

"The technology extracts key visual aspects of uploaded videos and compares that information against reference material provided by copyright holders." "If a content owner identifies material that she doesn't want on YouTube, she can request its removal with the click of a mouse. If particular users repeatedly infringe copyrights, we terminate their accounts."

YouTube claim the average user would be unlikely to notice anything different and there are a few contributors to the copyright database right now.

Google, who owns YouTube, is currently fighting a million dollar lawsuit against Viacom, who accused YouTube of copyright infringement earlier this year. This video identification system should help to prevent further instances of these copyright claims.

The system is currently in Beta as YouTube refine and improve the system to meet everyone's needs. If you're a content owner and want to submit your video's to the copyright database, you can sign up here.