Search Industry Job of the Week: Country Marketing Manager Google Australia

Job Title: Country Marketing Manager - Google Australia

Job Reference #: Unknown

Position Type: Full Time

Name of employer: Google

Location: Sydney, Australia

Date Posted: November 2007

Position description:

Do you love Google? Interested in learning more about one of the most cutting-edge technology companies in the world? We are looking for flexible, hardworking, experienced people, passionate about Google, to analyze, measure, position, package, and promote Google's product and business offerings in Australia.

Major responsibilities:

• Build and manage a world class team to handle all of Google marketing efforts in the region.
• Lead the development of Google's marketing plans for consumer, advertiser and publisher products in Australia, working closely with cross functional teams in the region and around the world.
• Ensure the monitoring of consumer, industry and competitive behaviour in Australia and provide local market expertise to the Google team.
• Create the Australia agency strategy, solicit and evaluate agency bids, and manage agency relationships.
• Drive the implementation of marketing campaigns including: Direct marketing, affiliate marketing, online/offline advertising and promotions.
• Marketing communications materials including sales collateral, merchandise, print and online advertising, email newsletters and blogs.
• Trade shows and industry events and advise where company participation or sponsorship would be appropriate.
• Standalone Google events and workshops, where appropriate.
• Co-marketing, reseller and other third party relationships.
• Ongoing retention programs for consumers, advertisers and publishers.
• Local market research.
• Effectively champion the needs of the local markets.
• Contribute pro-actively to the overall development of Google through ideas and creativity based on solid market and sector knowledge.
• Evaluate marketing opportunities and initiate programs to increase awareness and usage of Google products.
• Oversee the Australia marketing budget.

Requirements:

• MBA or masters preferred.
• Fluent in English.
• Minimum 8-10 years marketing experience in the Australia market.
• 3-5 years Internet, online services/media industry experience.
• Minimum 4 years business-to-business marketing experience.
• Strong aptitude for determining the optimal way to position products in the market.
• Understanding of the search, online advertising, or web publishing markets.
• Understanding of Google's strategic and competitive position.
• Proven ability to deliver outstanding and highly innovative marketing achievements with limited budgets.
• A proven track record of increasing awareness, product usage and revenue through well-executed marketing efforts.
• Thorough knowledge of on/offline advertising, tracking and reporting.
• Strong leadership skills.
• Entrepreneurial and thrives in fast-paced and dynamic environments.
• Motivated and creative with the ability to self-manage.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Project management skills and the ability to multitask across projects and products.
• Demonstrated excellence with agency and client relations.
• Thorough knowledge of off/online advertising planning, tracking and reporting.
• Strong aptitude for determining the optimal way to position products in the market.
• Understanding of the search, online advertising, or web publishing markets.
• Understanding of Google's strategic and competitive position.
• Team player able to work on multi-part projects with multiple teams and able to ensure that local and global project deadlines and budgets are met.
• Strong computer application skills including PowerPoint, Excel and MS Office.

Salary range: Unknown

Closing date: Unknown

More info from: Google Jobs

Contact: Send resumes via online form Google Jobs Application Form

To see more search industry job vacancies visit: Search Engine College Jobs Board

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Broken: AdWords Keyword Analysis Tool

Not sure if this is a regional issue or not, but Google have confirmed a technical bug with the Keyword Analysis tool for some AdWords accounts, including mine.

For the past 24 hours or so, whenever I try to view the Keyword Analysis tool for any of my keywords, I get the following message:

----------
Ad Showing? No
The keyword phrase doesn't currently trigger any of your ads. There are several possible reasons your ad isn't showing for this keyword, such as:

* You just added the keyword to your campaign. You may experience a short wait as your keyword goes through the review process.
* Our server is experiencing a delay.
* Your ad delivery is being spaced throughout the day.
------------

I get the same message for every keyword in my account, but the keywords are not new, I'm getting click-throughs and my daily budget is large enough to prevent ad delivery spacing. In response to my email, Google wrote:

Dear Kalena

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about the Keyword Analysis reasons. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with your AdWords account. We've identified a known technical issue affecting a limited number of accounts. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

Let's hope they get this fixed pronto! Anyone outside Australia having this issue?


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Google's SPOOOOOKY Halloween Logo

Visited Google today? When you do, you'll see they've turned their logo into a spooky haunted house (pictured) to celebrate Halloween. Bwaa ha haaaa!! Happy Halloween Everyone!


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Q and A: Why do my keywords appear and disappear in Google?

Dear Kalena...

Hello, I am confused as to what is going on with my site in Google. I have a pretty good base of backlinks, not a lot but a decent amount, but when I do searches for a lot keywords my site would appear on the first or 2nd page. It would stay like that for a few weeks then it would disappear for a while like a few weeks or a month or two. Then they would reappear for a few weeks then go away again. This has happened for about 8-9 months now. I don't know if it has to do with changing algorithms. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Travis


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Travis

Google search results come from a wide range of data-centers located around the US and the world. It is very common for Google to pull search results from one datacenter for a week or two and then switch to another datacenter.

In my experience, the search results seem to fluctuate between two major datacenters, which would account for why you are seeing certain results for a few weeks and then seeing them disappear again. See Google's own explanation for ranking fluctuations.


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Q and A: Does Google prefer sub directories over sub domains?

Dear Kalena...

Topweddingsites.com main domain is doing fine in the serps but our state sub domains dropped from page one for all of our top keywords to page 5 and below. Trying to figure out - is it that Google has decided folders are a better way to do a portal like this over sub domains?

Donna

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Donna

As far as I know, Google doesn't have a preference when it comes to sites that use sub directories like http://www.yoursite.com/state/index.htm or sub domains like http://state.yoursite.com. Both versions are indexable. But something to keep in mind is that most search engines only index a certain number of sub levels deep on your site. So, for example, a page like http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/index.htm might get indexed, while http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/region/street/index.htm may not.

The closer your content is to the top level of your site, the more likely it will be found and indexed. It's also widely assumed that content closer to the top level is considered to be more important by Google and given more relevancy weight in Google's ranking algorithm. Many SEO experts insist that sub-domains are more effective than sub directories and rank better too.

As for your situation, I don't think it has anything to do with your use of sub domains. I think it has more to do with the fact that your State pages are all very similar to each other. For example http://ok.topweddingsites.com/ is almost identical to http://mi.topweddingsites.com/. Multiply that by 50 States and you've got yourself a serious duplicate content problem.

In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google specifically states:

"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

My guess is that your State sub domains have tripped a duplicate content filter and have been slapped with a ranking suppression or penalty. If you review Google's definition of duplicate content, you'll see some helpful suggestions for fixing the problem.

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Q and A: Do you really need to hide optimization from Google?

Dear Kalena...

What do you think of this article by Jill Whalen? This goes against everything I’ve learned; you need to SEO your sites but “under the Google radar” so that they don’t think you are SEOing but optimized your site by accident?

What’s a SEOer to do?

Thanks,
Reid

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Reid

I've known Jill a long time and I get where she's coming from. Basically, she means you shouldn't follow a particular formula for optimizing web sites. There are no strict rules, don't get bogged down counting keywords or the number of characters in your META Descriptions. Don't stress about having keywords in your ALT IMG attributes or using H1 tags on every page. Just improve the compatibility of your pages with searchers and visitors.

I don't agree with her idea that Google may penalize any sites they think are optimized, but I do agree that Google probably looks for over-optimized sites, especially those that use keywords in their domain names and things like that. I also agree with this statement:

"If you've done it right, an everyday user should not have any idea that a page has been SEO'd."

It's quite true - a beautifully optimized and copywritten web site should no show obvious signs that it has been SEO'd. As I say in the SEO courses I teach, I don't recommend you obsess about keyword density or backwards engineering the search algorithms. Just design and optimize a web page with your visitors in mind and the rankings will usually follow.


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Q and A: Has Universal Search come to Australia yet?

Dear Kalena...

Has Universal Search come to Australia yet? If not, do you know the timeline? I'm explaining Universal Search to someone in the library system in Australia, and cannot determine if it is effective yet in Australia. Thank you!

Keri

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Keri

Yes, Google's universal search is alive and well Down Under. To see it in action, simply go to www.google.com.au and conduct a search for Darth Vader.


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Q and A: What's the difference between these two Google backward link searches?

Dear Kalena...

As always, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Much appreciated! Here is yet another question: I have been recently mystified by Google's link:www.yourwebsite.com search feature. If you do the search with a space between the colon and www you get different results. Example link:www.yourwebsite.com vs. link: www.yourwebsite.com

Can you explain the difference?

Thanks!
Marco

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

That's easy. The first search is the correct query to use for determining the number of backward links pointing to your site that Google considers significant (note this is not your *true* number of backlinks. To see a more accurate list, you need to view your site within Google's Webmaster Tools).

The second search is a malformed query. What you're actually searching for with that query is all documents that have references to the word "link" and "www.yourwebsite.com" on the same page. Look at the cache for one of the listings for the second version and you'll see both items highlighted.


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Google can't index the entire web

It's sometimes hard for people to think about the Internet without automatically thinking of Google. But Dan Crow of Google's Crawl Infrastructure Group gave this sobering message last month in his interview with Jonathan Hochman:

"...the World Wide Web is very large, and Google is not even sure how large. We can only index a fraction of it. Google has plenty of capital to buy more computers, but there just isn't enough bandwidth and electricity available in the world to index the entire Internet."

That leaves Google with a massive dilemma: which pages should they index and which should they ignore? According to Dan, PageRank plays a large role. If your site has relatively few pages and they all have high PageRank, it's likely they'll all be indexed no problem. However, if you have a large number of pages with low PageRank, you probably find that they don't make the cut.

So that just leaves the $64,000 question: what can you do to give your web pages the best possible chance of being indexed? Jonathan was convinced that the following aspects have an impact on a page's indexability:

- Clean, valid HTML code
- Use of external CSS and external Javascript files
- No code bloat

During his interview, Jonathan asked Dan outright if these things would help a page get indexed and Dan agreed that they would. Pages with clean code load faster and use less bandwidth to index.

Looks like it's time to go clean up that sloppy code!

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Hide and Speak Article Updates

You might remember that I recently blogged about Jennifer Laycock's latest article series, where she set herself the task of building an e-commerce site and hiding it from the major search engines to prove a point.

Well Jennifer's site Bento Yum has been performing amazingly well, despite the lack of search engine love. The site has attracted a wide range of fans and customers (including me!) and despite some social networking hiccups, the experiment seems to be working a treat.

Jennifer has been busy updating her article series about the challenge and you can read her latest installments below:

Stumbling Into Opportunity

Have a Unique Selling Proposition

WordPress for Content Management

Becoming Part of the Community

Develop Very Thick Skin

Congrats to Jennifer and Abigail for developing such an inspiring site and for having the guts to kick Google to the curb!

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Q and A: How long will it take our new page to rank on Google?

Dear Kalena...

I've added a new page to our site, what is a realistic expectation of timeframe when this page will rank organically on Google? The old page ranked about 78 so we change the page URL and content hoping it will help it rank better. It has been indexed.

May

Kalena's Answer:

Dear May

What makes you think that changing the URL and content will make it rank better than before? Google has to consider the page to be highly relevant for certain keywords and phrases to rank it highly for related search queries. The URL of a page has very little to do with this.

The content of the page should certainly be optimized for any search queries you are trying to rank for, but it's how relevant other sites consider the page to be that will most impact the page's ranking on Google. Unless there are other sites linking to the page or other pages on your site linking to the page, it is unlikely to rank highly. The anchor text used within the links to the page is also important. If the anchor text contains keywords or phrases relating to the search query, that will boost the page's relevance for such search queries. Unless you cover all these factors, the page's search ranking is unlikely to change.

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RUMOR: Google to allow AdSense publishers to specify own ad formats?

I don't usually like to take part in surveys. My time is pretty valuable and I find them tedious. But when Google asks, I ALWAYS take their surveys. Why? Because I get an insight into what features they're planning to roll out by the questions they ask.

Take the latest AdSense Publisher Feedback Survey for example. Under the question "Which of the following AdSense features would you like to see Google implement in future?", they listed:

1. Selecting ad categories to appear on your site
2. Selecting the types of advertisers that appear on your site
3. Managing other publishers' AdSense accounts for them
4. Specifying your own ad formats and sizes
5. Paying for phone support
6. Applying AdSense earnings towards AdWords marketing
7. Gathering information about your visitors

Wow! Some of those made me sit up and pay attention, especially # 3, # 4 and # 6. I manage AdWords accounts for clients now so it makes sense to offer a similar service for their AdSense accounts. The ability to choose your own ad formats would be awesome, as would the ability to transfer AdSense earnings to an AdWords account.

Now this is all speculation on my part. But if enough publishers request these features, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google roll them out quite quickly. Watch this space!

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Q and A: What can I do to improve ranking results on regional Google sites?

Dear Kalena...

I am doing some very basic SEO work for a South African website that targets the local market only. The majority of local searches are done on google.co.za, not google.com. What can I do to better my results on google.co.za for popular keywords?

Marco (a happy subscriber of the Search Light Newsletter)


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

Glad you like the newsletter. Re your question, the best thing you can do is ensure the site is published on a regional domain ending in .co.za. This is because Google gives ranking priority to regional sites where available on their local search engines. It would also help if the site was hosted in South Africa as sometimes Google will check the physical location (IP address) of a site to determine its relevance to a regional search query.

Apart from that, try to use regional keywords in the visible content of the pages to ensure Google recognizes the regional market you are targeting and will match it to related search queries. And of course make sure the site is submitted to and indexed by the most popular regional search engines servicing South Africa.

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Interview on Pandia

I was interviewed by the delightful Per Koch of Pandia this week about, amongst other things, Google's Universal Search and how it will impact the future of this crazy industry. We even discover a mutual adoration of Kate Bush. Check out the interview here.

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Breaking news: Google Rolls Out Predictive Search

Just got the scoop from Marketing Pilgrim that Google has rolled out what they're calling a Universal Search Model that incorporates web search results with related results from Google Images, Google News, Google Video, Google News and Blogger in the one search interface.

Why is this important? Three reasons off the top of my head:

1) It is the first step towards a true predictive search model, based on a new algorithm integrating user search patterns and predictive formulae.

2) It will change the way people search as a whole, therefore impacting the existing business models of SEO and SEM firms.

3) It will boost the importance of non-text content within web sites - image and video content will become a major marketing channel in it's own right, rather than a tool to attract visitors to text content.

Wowsie!

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Q and A: How do I change my default search language in Google?

Dear Kalena...

When I go to write in Arabic language in Google search or any other search, it shows different language, but English language is ok. Please tell me the solution.

Thank you
Shahana

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Shahana

I'm going to rephrase your question as follows: "how do I change my default search language in Google?" If I've misunderstood your question, my apologies and please email me again.

Now, it sounds like your Google searching preferences have somehow been changed. Next time you are at the Google home page, click on the preferences link next to the search box. This will take you to an area where you can choose your default Google interface language, as well as the language/s of web pages you'd prefer to be shown when you are searching. You can see a full list of Google's supported languages here.

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Website vs Web Site

When I'm grading student assignments for our Search Engine Optimization courses, I often come across alternative spellings. Some are regionally based, such as "optimization" versus "optimisation". But today I want to comment on "website" versus "web site" which I'm seeing a lot of confusion over.

There are conflicting arguments about this, but in academic circles, the correct version is considered "web site" as two words in support of W3 standards. Sites such as the Chicago Manual of Style Online insist that the two word version is correct formal usage. Then again, a search for "web site" on Wikipedia.org redirects to their definition article for "website". Dictionary.com also suggest "website" is the most commonly used form as it has developed in usage:

Usage Note: The transition from World Wide Web site to Web site to website as a single uncapitalized word mirrors the development of other technological expressions which have tended to take unhyphenated forms as they become more familiar. Thus email is gaining ground over the forms E-mail and e-mail, especially in texts that are more technologically oriented.

But perform a Google search for both versions and you’ll see that web site is much more common than website.

Personally, I believe you should always use the two-word version in your site, particularly in your Title and Description tags, because search engines won’t be able to distinguish the two words if you bunch them together as "website" and you might not capture as many searchers. If you use "website", you might also isolate pedantic readers who feel "web site" is the correct spelling. Consistency is key, no matter which version you decide to use.

So readers: which version do you prefer? Tell us via comments.

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Microsoft and Yahoo Plot to Beat Google

I am toooo tired to process a reader question tonight, so I'll leave you with the latest eye-opener circulated by the rumor mill: Rumors Fly on Microsoft and Yahoo.

A choice quote:

"Microsoft officials said Friday that they would not comment on speculation about an acquisition of Yahoo. But a person briefed on the companies’ discussions said one option that had been considered was the linking of advertising networks to generate additional Web traffic."

Can you imagine Yahoo Search Marketing combined with Microsoft adCenter? It would be PPC on steroids. Might explain the continued delays with the new adCenter rollout.

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Q and A: How do I push offensive content about me off the front page of Google?

Dear Kalena...

On my personal Google page I have noticed some defamatory posts about me from an obscure chat room I was involved in 5 years ago. I'm being accused of posting there now as someone else. I have contacted the webmaster of the relevant site but he refuses to delete the offending posts. Any idea how to adjust my 1st page Google index to push these ugly things out of the way?

Thanks David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

That's not too difficult. If the information is offensive and/or defamatory, you can always threaten the Webmaster with legal action unless they remove it from their site.

If the Webmaster does not believe the information warrants removing and you have no legal options (e.g. the information is protected by freedom of speech or similar), you will just have to optimize some pages on your site for your own name and/or build some links from popular sites to your site using your name in the link text to ensure you rank higher than the offensive content. If you have an unusual surname, this should be easily achieved.

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Q and A: Why are my Google searches defaulting to German?

Dear Kalena...

Sometime ago, my google searches have been returning results as if my geographical location is in a German(?) speaking country. I don't know what happened or how to correct it. Pls. advise.

Thank you,
Ruben

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ruben

Google tries to customize search results to a searcher's personal preferences or regional location. You don't say where you are located, but I assume it is NOT in a German speaking country. When you enter a search query, Google will try to determine your location by IP address, search query content and/or search URL used e.g. google.com.au or google.com etc.

It might be that your ISP is assigning you an IP address that suggests to Google you are based in Germany. Make sure you go to www.google.com to conduct your searches and if it redirects you to another version of Google, click on the small link on the bottom right that says "Go to Google.com".

Have you (or someone using your computer) used Google Advanced search or Toolbar search recently? This may have changed your default search preferences. Try re-setting those by going to the Advanced Search page. Try dumping your browser's cache and temporary Internet files too. It might be a caching issue.

If none of this works, it might be some type of spyware that has invaded your system. Best get a reliable spyware removal tool such as AdAware or Spyware Doctor.

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Gmail Paper Fools Some

Google launched a brand new service yesterday. Or did they? Gmail Paper was pitched as Google's new service for net-phobic individuals who prefer to keep hard copy versions of all their emails. The service offered to print hard copies of any and all emails stored in your Gmail account and deliver them via post to your door, all for free. Here's some blurbs from the promotional page:

"The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica..."

"Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier."

The April Fool's gag cleverly played on the current high profile of global warming and environmental issues by promoting a service that was obviously detrimental to both.

When I first read about Gmail Paper from within my Gmail account, I was quite alarmed and it took about 30 seconds for the joke to kick in. But judging by this Google search for "Gmail Paper", a lot of people were fooled into thinking it was a real service.

Cute Google, very cute. In other April Fools news, Matt Cutts' blog may have been hacked.

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Google To Make Search Data Anonymous

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has reported that Google intends to “anonymize” the search data it collects after a period of 18 – 24 months. This move is intended to protect the privacy of its users. Until now Google has kept user search data indefinitely, making it possible for anyone who has access to the logs to track queries back to users.

Danny Sullivan in his article Google Anonymizes Search Records To Protect Privacy explains that when we visit any web site, the web server records certain information about our visit. Below is a simplified version of what Google records if we enter the search terms 'laptop broadband':

67.42.6.24 – 13/Mar/2007 00:44:15 – http://www.google.com/search?g=laptop+broadband – DQG4AADOkAAAAB_kWnOFCUZ15

There are four main segments:

IP Address – An IP Address is like an internet telephone number, and can be used in a similar way to trace a call back to the person who made it. The address can also tell what sort of connection was used and what location the request was made from.

Date & Time – Date and time request was made.

Query Terms – This is termed referrer information and describes the search terms entered.

Cookie – This is a unique code that is assigned to a particular computer by Google. This allows Google to record requests from each computer even if the location of that computer changes.

Google’s plan is to change the IP address and cookies, thus making it extremely difficult to trace a query back to a particular computer or user. Google is still working out the finer points, so stay tuned for more information!





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Another new "Ads by Google" format

Remember earlier this week I spotted a new "Ads by Google" format for AdSense ads? Well today I spotted another one. Check it to the left. This one has the Google's "G" symbol next to the traditional "ads by goooooooooogle" text by-line.

Anyone else seeing it? Or seeing other versions?

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Google testing new "Ads By Google" format

While updating some web pages tonight, I noticed that Google seem to be testing some new AdSense formats for their "Ads by Google" by-line so I took a screenshot (see the example on the right). Lucky I did because I haven't see the new format again since I grabbed it.

It appears they are testing an image integrating the Google logo to replace the plain text previously used. I knew they were rolling out new Google Checkout badges for AdSense, but I've never seen the new "Ads by Google" format before. Have I just missed them until now?

Anyone else seeing it? Is this a new thing?

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According to Google, I am incapable of romance

Google's Doodle artist responsible for their Valentine's logo has posted an official response to the whole Googe scandal on their Official Google Blog. Dennis Hwang claims that true romantics would have recognized the strawberry stem as an "L" immediately. Here's a quote:

"When you look at the logo, you may worry that we forgot our name overnight, skipped a letter, or have decided that "Googe" has a better ring to it. None of the above. I just know that those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately. And if you're feeling grouchy today, may I suggest eating a strawberry."

Phleeeaaazzze! First Dennis calls poor design "subtlety", then he insults a large majority of Google users (yes, thousands of people thought the logo was misspelt), by saying we are incapable of romance or poetry. On the plus side, my Digg post on the subject was promoted to popular overnight.

What do you think people? Do YOU think the logo looks like GOOGE? And if so, are you a non-strawberry eating, unromantic grouch? Please leave your comment.

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Google Misspell Their Own Name on Their Home Page

It appears that Google can't spell their own name. Check out this screen grab showing their latest logo for Valentine's Day. Yep, it spells "GOOGE". Oops!

[Added: a reader has informed me that the stem of the strawberry is meant to represent the missing "l". But it's pretty ambiguous if you ask me].

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Q and A: Should links from pages with zero PageRank be avoided?

Dear Kalena...

I'm working with a customer to get some better rankings for their site for a particular keyword phrase. In my analysis I noticed that the number of available "high quality" link sources for their business is small, but there are a lot of low quality sources (sources with 0 page rank, et.)

My question is this: Should links from pages with no page rank be avoided, or does every link count to some extent and high quality links just count more?

Also, another issue we're having is that the businesses competitors are all in DMOZ, but, given that right now you cannot submit sites to DMOZ, we can't get in. Have you heard any news on when this feature might be restored? Any tips on working around not being in DMOZ?

Adam

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Adam

Re the first part of your question, it all depends on what you mean by low quality. Are you assuming the links are of low quality because they have a zero Google PageRank? Not all sites with a zero PageRank have that status because they are of low quality. They could be quite new sites with few links pointing at them yet.

If by low quality you mean the sites are barely disguised link farms covered in AdSense ads, then yes, I would avoid them like the plague or else be tainted by what Google calls a "bad neighbourhood". When link building for your clients, try looking for niche directories, regional directories and industry portals relating to your client's business as a source of one-way incoming links. Or seek out sites with a similar theme and offer to do a reciprocal link swap if the return link would benefit your client's visitors.

Re part two of your question, you'll be pleased to know that DMOZ resumed the editing and submission functions last month.

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Q and A: When will Google Checkout be available to merchants outside the US?

Dear Kalena...

I was just wondering if you knew when Google was going to roll out Google Checkout to merchants located outside the US?

Impatient

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Impatient

I wish I knew! I too would like to set up a Google Merchant account and give our buyers the option of purchasing Search Engine College courses via Google Checkout. I'm so jealous of merchants who currently pay zero fees via Google Checkout. It would be nice not to have to pay the huge chunks of commission we are currently paying 2Checkout.

Can anyone suggest a reliable, alternative payment processor to 2Checkout where you don't need a merchant account?

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Q and A: How can I get a top position in Google for my site?

Dear Kalena...

I am Verma from Mumbai. I submitted my site several times on GOOGLE. But I don't have any good results even my site is not listing on top 10 in google. So please can u send me some comments & Solutions . How can I get my site in google on top position...Please?

Verma

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Verma

Tsk Tsk. What a naughty site you have. And I'm not talking about the fact that it's advertising an escort service. I'm talking about the obvious spam techniques and search engine incompatibilities listed below:

• Keyword-stuffed, over-utilized Title Tag
• Excessive keyword repetition in META Keywords Tag
• Duplicate content in the both the Title Tag and META Description Tag
• Incorrect formatting of the Title Tag
• Multiple keyword-stuffed comment tags
  
• Multiple, keyword-stuffed nonsense META tags that are unsupported by any search engines
• Use of Flash in your HTML code placed above important text content
• Use of keyword-stuffed tiny text
• Hidden 1 x 1 pixel links
• Graphic navigation menu instead of text-based
• Use of low quality link farms to inflate link popularity
  
• Excessive use of flashing titty banners (ok this is not technically spam, but it should be!)

I could go on but I'd have to charge you a consulting fee. Nearly all these things go against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Still not sure why your site isn't ranking? You might also want to check out this post for info about recent changes to Google's algorithm that has affected sites containing adult content.

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Q and A: Is my site in the Google Sandbox?

Dear Kalena...

Hello, I have read some of your comments with great interest. Like others, my site keyword listing on google have been dropped (am I in the "sandbox"?). This accounted for quite a bit of traffic for me hence my desire to do everything possible to rectify the situation.

I would be grateful for any help you might be able to provide.

Regards,
Nicholas

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Nicholas

The fact that your site was ranking for certain keywords and is no longer suggests that the problem is not sandboxed-related. Nor does it seem to be Google's aging delay. I think your ranking issues are due to a new algorithm introduced by Google in November which particularly affected sites containing adult-content.

Learn more via this site and this FAQ.

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Q and A: Why doesn't Google index my site any more?

Dear Kalena...

My client's site (www.coaching.uk.net ) has been recently converted to Joomla (around 6 months ago). The content is the same as previously. However Google no longer indexes the site.

The other search engines pick it up with no problems, and all my other Joomla sites are picked up by Google.

Can you suggest any reasons why this one should be an exception??!

Carrie

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Carrie

I've taken a look at the site and here's what I see:

1) You've got a Google Toolbar PageRank of zero.

2) You've got zero backward links listed on Google.

3) Google last cached your site on 7th November.

4) According to their Site Status Tool, Google does not know about all your site pages.


Seeing this, I doubt that Joomla that is causing the problem, it is more than likely that the re-design has triggered the site to get stuck in Google's Aging Delay. This delay can impact new or existing sites and can last up to 9 months. You're not the only one with a Joomla site facing similar problems.

Something to keep in mind when working with dynamic technologies and CMS's like Joomla: Google has stated in the past that they don't index pages containing session ids. I've seen such sites indexed before, so perhaps Google is getting better at this. But why take the risk? Make sure that your site either doesn't use session ids or contains a way for searchbots to grab the data via a parameter-clean URL. You can check how a search engine robot would see your site by downloading a text-based browser like Lynx and running your URLs through it.

See this post for advice on what to do while you're waiting in Google aging limbo.

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Click Fraud on Google Less Than 1%

While interviewing Shuman Ghosemajumder of Google today, Andy Beal was able to expose the fact that the undetected click fraud rate on Google AdWords is less then 2%.

Ghosemajumder showed proof to backup his numbers and then later clarified that those figures included "invalid clicks" so he claims the true undetected click fraud percentage was more than likely a fraction of 1%.

I wonder. I see a lot of "click quality adjusment" credits in my account on a monthly basis. If they are catching this much click fraud, I doubt the stuff they miss is such a small fraction.

Q and A: Have we been penalised by Google?

Dear Kalena...

Hi, what a useful website you have.

Our site has dropped from the first page of results in google to page 5 and upwards, resulting in thousands of pounds worth of business lost per month. Have we been penalised for something?

Wayne

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Wayne

Thanks for the backslap! I've taken a look at the site and checked it using Google's Site Status Tool. I don't see a penalty of any kind. Why? Because:

1) You've got a healthy Google Toolbar rating of 5 out of 10.

2) Over 4000 pages from your site have been indexed by Googlebot.

3) Googlebot last indexed your page on 1st December.

When you say your site has dropped to page five of search results - is that for a particular search term? Or for all of your major search terms? If it is only for a single search phrase, that is a fairly common occurence as Google changes their algorithm and adds more and more new sites.

Your site is in the highly competitive adult industry, where search rankings change much more often than in other industries. You simply have to optimize the site for a wider range of keywords and phrases (the long tail).

If you are seeing your site drop consistently for ALL your major search terms, then that may indicate the site has been sandboxed. Have you done a major design overall or content change recently? Sometimes this can trigger a site to be placed in the sandbox.

My advice is to keep optimizing, build quality links and start concentrating on your exposure on other search engines so you don't sweat Google's algorithm changes.

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Q and A: I've cleaned up the site spam so why isn't our home page being indexed by Google?

Dear Kalena...

Hope you're happy and healthy. Thanks so much for your help last time. I cleaned the hidden text off the page and we got re-indexed quite quickly.

But now we seem to have dropped out again. Although some of our subsidiary pages are indexed, the homepage does not seem to be, unless I'm searching incorrectly.

Any ideas?

Best wishes
Robin
www.breatheonline.com/

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Robin

Ok, a couple of things:

1) You obviously have two domains pointing to the same content (www.breatheonline.com and www.breatheyoga.co.uk). If you view the cache of your .com home page, you'll see that Gooogle produces the cache of the .co.uk home page. It seems that Google has decided that your UK domain is the main one and seems to be caching only that site.

2) A "site:URL" search for each domain shows that 22 pages from your .co.uk domain have been indexed while 4 pages from your .com domain have been indexed. To have Google index two domains with identical content is a dangerous thing because one will usually be suppressed and you rarely have the control over which one. I'm not sure about your DNS and IP setup, but you need to decide which domain you wish to promote in search engines and park the other domain to the same IP as the main one. You can also inform Google which site is your main domain via the Sitemaps Protocol. Check out the free XML sitemaps creator that I recommend.

3) Google is indexing and caching your home page at www.breatheyoga.co.uk just fine, from what I'm seeing. You simply need to do a search for your full URL. The last cache of the page was taken as recently as 26 November.

4) Once you've sorted out your domain issue, it might be a good idea to prepare an XML sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemaps as explained in Google's Webmaster Tools area.

5) Some of your incoming link partners are pointing to the .com site while others point to the .co.uk site. This is diluting your link popularity. Decide which domain is more important to promote via search engines and ask all your link partners to change their links to point to that site. Make sure you do the same thing with all your internal site links.

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Google Sitemaps Gains Support from Yahoo and MSN

The uptake of Google Sitemaps by webmasters has resulted in an unexpected alliance between Google, Yahoo and MSN. The three search giants have joined forces to launch Sitemaps.org, a new webmaster protocol to encourage a web standard for sitemap creation and submission.

Included in the protocol is:

• an XML schema format recommended for sitemaps
• definitions of the various XML tags
• detailed instructions for sitemap creation
  
• sitemap validation tools
  
• instructions for alerting search engine crawlers about your sitemap

Looks like paid trusted feed services are dead and buried! Good riddance. And if you're looking for a free XML sitemap creator, check out this one.

Q and A: Has our site been penalized by Google?

Dear Kalena...

An excellent website! have found many useful articles in the "ask kalena" section.

I was curious as to whether our website www.simondelasalle.com has been penalized for some reason. We have recently changed our navigation from image based to text links to increase the amount of keywords on the page. Is it possible this website has been "sandboxed"?

It looks like Google's indexing of the site is weak compared to MSN. Any feedback you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time and have an excellent day.

Simon

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Simon

Thank you for the coffee! The caffeine is greatly appreciated.

I've had a look at your site and the first thing that strikes me is that there is no Google cache for many of the pages. Your home page has a healthy Toolbar PageRank of 5 out of 10 so there is no penalty. Next, I entered your URL into Google's new Site Status Tool. Bingo! I found two problems:

1) Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Jul 29, 2006 (which explains the caching issue).

2) Google does not know about all the pages of your site.

I'm not sure when your major re-design occurred, but if it was around the end of July, then it's highly likely the site has since been sandboxed, as you guessed. Best course of action is to prepare and submit an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps using a free XML sitemap creator and wait till Googlebot travels your way again. After verifying your site with Google, you can check if Googlebot struck errors during his last crawl.

Good Luck!

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Q and A: Has my site been dropped by Google?

Dear Kalena...

My site was in the top 5 on google for about 8 different keywords. Two days ago we a uploaded a new sitemap following changes in the site. This site map had errors as pointed out by Google. The errors were then corrected. But now I find that the site does not figure anywhere in the results and if it does, it is on historical data, not from present crawl. Is this a temporary problem because of the erroneous sitemap or has my site been dropped? My account with google sitemaps still shows that over 1500 pages are indexed. My site is www.allindianewspapers.com

Thanks a million

Oliver

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Oliver

I wouldn't worry too much. According to Google's Site Status Wizard, pages from your site are indexed by Google but Google does not yet know about all your site pages. Googlebot last crawled your site on November 1.

The site may have been indexed incorrectly via that problem site map, but provided your HTML code contains links to all your pages and your site map is now up to date, Googlebot should gather all your pages on his next crawl.

You might want to think about dumping that pop-up ad though. Google has taken a stance against home page pop-ups in the past.

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Q and A: Why is Google only indexing my home page?

Dear Kalena...

I have a problem. My site is http://www.info-junction.net.

I first made the site in Joomla, 3 months back. At that time Google just indexed my home page. I was using opensef - a module that changes your dynamic page into a static html kind of looking page which is search engine friendly.

But no use - only the first page got indexed. I have seen numerous sites that use Joomla and are higly ranked with 6 PR.

So I thought may be I am doing something wrong, so changed the whole site to plain html, also added a xml sitemap, the site map was picked up by Google with no problems. Now when Google last indexed it again, it indexed only the home page. So I am Pissed Off once again :) .

Please take a look and advise me what to do in order to get the whole site indexed.

Abu

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Abu

I hate to tell you this, but you probably wasted a lot of time redesigning your site. Sites made with Joomla CMS are usually indexed with no problems. The issue wasn't your site design, it was the age of your site. When you launch a new site (or extensively re-design an existing one), Google generally places the site in a limbo area for a period up to 9 months. This is called the Google Aging Delay and during this time it will seem as though only your home page is indexed.

During the aging delay, you usually can't find your site on Google for anything apart from your site name or URL. Googlebot will visit your entire site though and release all the indexed pages into the datacenter after some time has lapsed. Although this is frustrating, it is perfectly normal and helps prevent spammers from manipulating the SERPs. Just be patient and build up incoming links to your site while you wait.

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Q and A: How do you compare Google Analytics to ClickTracks?

Dear Kalena...

Do you have any feedback on comparing Google Analytics to ClickTracks? Do you use ClickTracks Optimizer?

Just curious which one you'd rather use.

Thanks
Sarah

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sarah

I use both Google Analytics and ClickTracks Optimizer to track the visitor metrics of my sites and those of my clients. While it's good that Google Analytics is free and the depth of data is impressive, I personally find the interface clunky to use and not very intuitive. The reports and graphs also seem to take a long time to load, even on broadband.

While ClickTracks Optimizer is a bit expensive, the depth and accuracy of data just can't be beaten, in my opinion. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can't compete with. The WYSIWYG interface is simple to use and gives you true "at a glance" stats. The ability to export reports into Word, PDF or Excel is another plus. I should make it clear that I use the stand-alone version of ClickTracks, not the hosted version so I can't comment on that one.

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Q and A: Why isn't my site in the top 2000 results in Google?

Dear Kalena...

I just created a new site, its dead basic and mainly an affiliate site. I have linked to it from a couple of my other sites that have a Google PR of 4 & 5 but of course I need loads more links yet as it's in a very competitive sector (www.autoinsurancedeals.co.uk).

Its been indexed by Google this week but of course its not even in the top 2000. In your opinion Kalena, without a ton more links is that where it's likely to stay, outside the top 2000?. It seems to be a catch22 situation, if I don't have a decent PR, why would another site want to exchange links? I seem to find this concept of asking other sites to exchange links akin to begging :-)

Graham

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Graham

If your site is brand new, you won't be able to find it for your target keywords for up to 9 months. Why? Because nearly all new sites are subject to Google's aging delay. That explains why you can't see it in the top 2000 results right now.

As for exchanging links - reciprocal linking is soooo last year. Every link you place pointing away from your site is diluting the value of your incoming links somewhat. That doesn't mean you shouldn't link to other sites or swap links - as long as the outgoing links are useful to your own site visitors. But you shouldn't pursue reciprocal link exchanges solely for search engine value.

The most valuable links to build up your site's PageRank are non-reciprocal links from high-quality, high-traffic sites that have a similar theme to your own. How do you find these? Do a Google search for backlinks pointing to your competitor's sites by entering "link:http://site.com" in Google's search box. Take a look at the type of sites linking to your competitors and see if you can get those same sites to link to you.

Look for niche directories, portals and search engines in the insurance industry. Submit your site to those. Write some articles about auto insurance and submit them to ezines and article annoucement lists for re-publishing on other sites. Make it a condition of re-publishing that they include a link back to your site in the Author Resource box.

Hope this helps!

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Google Buys Garage That Conceived Them

Google has bought the property in California that houses the garage in which Sergey and Larry first developed the world's most popular search engine. When they weren't building Google, the two apparently liked to spend time in the hot tub and eat other people's food.

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Google Code Search Engine Reveals SEO Blunders

I've been waiting a LONG time for this. Google Code Search is now live in the Labs. You can now search any published HTML code for keywords, HTML syntax and SEO tricks.

Want to see who is still using the mythical "revisit-after" META Tag? Try this search.

Fun for all the family.
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Q and A: Why did my site have a better Google PR when it was on another domain?

Dear Kalena...

Thanks for your answer to my last question. What's curious is how my *other* site (tony.thehungs.org), where my content resided before I transferred evreyting to its current domain, got a PR in the SAME amount of time (and still does).

Sure, its a PR of 2, but at least its not zero.

Have any idea why this is?

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tony

Ok, couple of explanations:

1) The old site content was actually on a sub-domain and that site would take it's Google PR from the main domain http://thehungs.org. Although I see that site is password protected so it can't be indexed by search engines - has it always been this way?

2) The old domain was .org. Some people swear that .org and .gov sites are given a slight boost in the rankings and/or are not subject to Google's aging delay. No idea if this is currently true.

A final comment - If you have moved your blog to a permanent location, you should get rid of that old blog content or use Permanent Redirect 301s to point it to your new domain, because it *may* be considered duplicate content (same name, titles etc) and might be affecting your PR at the new site or causing Google to ignore the new site.

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Q and A: Why does my site have a Google PR0?

Dear Kalena...

My site (http://www.deepjiveinterests.com), after being live for a month and a half, still has a pagerank of zero. I know that there's recently been an update, but still -- nothing.

Its gotten some pretty good inbound links from some pretty reputable sources (mostly tech related) -- Cnet news, the guardian unlimited (a british newspaper), techmeme, blogherald, valleywag, and most recently crunchnotes, for example, all with decent PR, in the short time its been up.

Now, I was wondering if this was all because of the "sandbox" effect? If it was, I thought it had to do with how well the site ranks in the actual searches -- which it doesn't do too badly for, I suppose.

That is to say, I don't purposely target keywords / phrases, but I do get traffic from google, and for some phrases, like "digg history", which has over 26M results (if it means anything), I do rank #3 .

Anyway, its a bit of a ramble, but the question is straightforward enough -- why the PR0 still?

Thanks!
Tony

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tony

the answer is simple: Google's Aging Delay for new sites. Best explanation is here. It can last up to 9 months, if any of my recent client sites are a good measure.

This is often incorrectly referred to as the Sandbox but the Google Sandbox is applied to sites that build links quickly rather than new sites. A good explanation of the difference between the two is here.

More info on both phenomenons can be seen here. A good way to avoid the aging delay is explained here.

Nothing for it but to wait in limbo and work on your links while you wait.

Hope this puts you out of your Google misery!

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Google Makes Mistakes Too

I don't know about you, but pay per click campaigns have dominated my time this month. In a single day, Google made 4 unique (large!) debits to the credit card associated with our AdWords account, practically draining our entire business credit flow for September.

Due to an internal technical error with Google's billing system, (revealed to me by a Google staffer), our AdWords campaign had not been auto-charged for 3 full months, meaning we were racking up huge amounts of click-debt, which they attempted to clear in a single hour via multiple debits.

They would've charged even more on our card, but it was eventually tapped of funds and declined. THEN, Google had the hide to switch off all our ads and send me an email telling me that our credit card had been declined and we should arrange payment via alternative methods.

As you can imagine, I was confused and very pissed off. I sent a long, detailed complaint to Google and first I received a standard reply defending their decision to switch off our ads and explaining how I could add a backup credit card to our account so it didn't happen again. I replied that my complaint had nothing to do with our ads being switched off, but their inadequate billing cycle and their failure to follow their own published billing protocols and that perhaps they should re-read my complaint.

That seemed to do the trick. Next thing I knew, my complaint was escalated and I had received an apology and a substantial offer of click credit to be applied to my account immediately.

It just goes to show that Google can get it wrong. Their staff are only human and they make mistakes. They also program the software, so it can make mistakes too. If you run pay per click campaigns, don't trust the search engines to always have your best interests at heart. Mistakes can be made and click fraud is apparently rampant. Keep a close eye on your campaigns for errors and don't be afraid to complain if you notice something suspicious!

Q and A: Why has our site disappeared from Google?

Dear Kalena...

I run a small ecommerce website for disabled people in the UK called essentialaids.com and suddenly it has disappeared from Google.

You can't even find its pages when you search for the URL itself. I haven't deliberately done anything underhand to improve rankings so I'm not quite sure why what's happening.

If you can help shed some light on this I'd be eternally grateful because I'm scared stiff and I'm not sure what to do.

All the best,

Alex

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Alex

Don't panic! Your site is still in Google. In fact, Google has indexed 138 pages on your site so far and Googlebot last visited on September 8.

What you're probably experiencing is Google's aging delay for new or re-designed sites. This can result in your site not appearing in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for any of your target keyword phrases. This is all perfectly normal and part of Google's process for reviewing sites before adding them to the main database.

I'm afraid you just have to wait it out for 6 to 9 months. You can still find your site in the meantime by conducting a domain search in Google.

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Q and A: Why isn't Google displaying our product page for related searches?

Dear Kalena...

A client of mine has a site with many different pistol holsters. He was ranked with a certain holster (galco holster), and when you click the site, it takes us to the home page and not the sub page where that particular brand is at. Is this normal? I would give you the link but he is buried deep in Google, page 41 or so, but shouldn't it bring up that subpage or are they only posting the main page?

I have always thought the subpage would be categorized as per the keywords on that page.

Let me know if I am dumb or if they changed it or if it is just a freak of nature :)

Thanks,
Chris

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Chris

Google displays whatever page/s on a site it believes is the most relevant match for the search query. Although it sounds logical that a page dedicated to a particular product or brand should be automatically displayed by Google for related searches, it doesn't always work this way.

This is because Google uses a complex algorithm made up of over 100 factors to determine which page is the most relevant match. Important factors include the density on a page for the search query in question, the number of links pointing to that page with anchor text containing the search query and the reputation of those linking sites. My guess is that your client's home page probably mentions "Galco holster" and has less text on it than the page dedicated to "Galco holsters" so the density would seem higher, plus the home page would have more incoming links from trusted sites than the sub-page does.

You can learn more about how Google collects and ranks pages in this article by Matt Cutts.

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Q and A: Why aren't all my site pages being cached in Google?

Dear Kalena...

Our website is in the top 100,000 websites (Alexa Rank) and i find that Googlebot has crawled almost all our webpages but when i click on "show cache" in Firefox, it is not showing for a lot many pages.

I hope that you would have seen such incidences earlier and would like to know the reason why it happens and what can be done to better it?

Waiting on you!
Rishi

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Rishi

I've checked a few pages of your site and most are showing up as recently cached in Google. There were a couple uncached and quite a few showing a very old cache.

Usually caching errors are caused by:

1) Googlebot abandoning the indexing of your site due to a problem it struck in your code.
2) Googlebot abandoning the indexing of your site due to reaching the maximum site data quota set by Google.
3) A no-cache tag appearing in the code on your page.
4) Googlebot avoiding certain areas of your site by obeying the contents of your Robots.txt file
5) A lack of internal / external links pointing to a particular page on your site (Googlebot being unable to find it).
6) Failure to include all site pages in your navigation structure and/or your Google Sitemap.
7) Incorrect formatting or uploading of your Google Sitemap XML file. Try creating an XML sitemap from scratch.

You should check all these possibilities and monitor your site's indexing via Google Sitemaps.

Hope this helps!

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Q and A: Why does our site show different Google ranks in different locations?

Dear Kalena...

My tech can not explain and I thought you may. When searching specific terms on my computer at work, we come up like on the 4th or 5th page. When I do the exact same search at home, same terms and same settings, we come up on the first or second page. Why is that?

David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

You don't say how far geographically your home is from your office, but it sounds like your different IP locations are triggering searches on two different Google data-centers. Google shows slightly different results, depending on the IP address of the searcher and the data-center the query is sent to.

It's not uncommon for the same search to trigger different results for searchers in different locations, particularly if they are undergoing a major data-center shuffle (historically known as the Google Dance).

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What do YOU love / hate about Google?

The Godfather of search, Danny Sullivan (hope he doesn't mind that title), has come up with 25 things he loves about Google and 25 things he hates about Google.

Interesting to see so many things to hate, given Google's self-imposed mission to "Do no evil". But there are a lot in that hate list that I was nodding to and saying "yeah!", particularly numbers 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 21, 22 and 25.

What about you? What do YOU love or hate about Google? Did Danny miss anything important? Add your comments to this post and let me know.

Q and A: Which is the best Google Sitemap creator to use?

Dear Kalena...

I have been searching for an online tool that will create an XML sitemap for Google automatically and I've found quite a few. But they all seem quite complicated and some of them charge a fee.

Do you have a favorite or can you recommend a good one to use, preferably a free one?

thanks
Akita

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Akita

Funny you should mention this. To create my Google Sitemaps, I had been using SiteMaps Pal, but I haven't been completely happy with it because it seemed to skip sub-directories and pages quite often.

But just this week I came across the free XML Sitemaps Generator and I'm now a big fan. It not only trawls through ALL levels of your site, but it gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site, plus it generates the XML file for you in both compressed and un-compressed versions. Sweet! If only the free version gave you the ability to manually edit page priority and index dates and re-generate the XML, I'd be an even bigger fan (hint hint!)

There is also a low-cost script-based version for sites with thousands of pages. It can be set up to index your site on a regular basis and produce an updated XML file for automatic upload to your site via FTP. The XML Sitemaps Generator is also included in Google's List of 3rd Party Plugins for Sitemaps.

Google Defies Bush Probe

Just in case you've been living under a rock, Google is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with the U.S. Government over the release of search history data.

The Bush Government is demanding that Google hand over detailed records of recent Internet searches conducted by the American public. Google is resisting while other engines have capitulated (read as: rolled over, let themselves be intimidated, chickened-out, taken the coward's way out...).

Discuss here.

A Google Christmas Carol

In the spirit of the season, and inspired by Google's milestones throughout 2005, I've written a special tribute called "The Twelve Days of Christmas, Google Style". To be sung along to the tune of (duh!) The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Play the midi (a new window will pop up) and enjoy:

The Twelve Days of Christmas, Google Style

On the first day of Christmas, Google gave to me
an AdWords API.

On the second day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the third day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the sixth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the seventh day of Christmas, Google gave to me
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the eighth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the tenth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Content Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Froogle Local,
Content Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

What do you think? Gotta be worth an AdSense Holiday Booty Case eh Google?

Murderers use Google too

Those conspiracy theorists who label Google "Big Brother" will love this one. It seems you should be careful what you search for. A Google search has led directly to the conviction of a man for the murder of his wife.

Former computer consultant Robert Petrick was sentenced to life in prison this week after a computer he owned was found to contain records of multiple Google searches for "neck," "snap," "break," and "hold" as well as a document titled "22 Ways to Kill a Man With Your Bare Hands". Mr Petrick's wife was found strangled and dumped in a Raleigh-area lake in January 2003.

Google Base

It's been a long day and there's only 3 minutes left of it. I should be in bed but thought I'd make a quick post. I've only got two more words to say: Google Base.

A: How do I optimize my site so it appears on Google News?

Hi Aimee

News services such as Google News and Yahoo News use popular news sources and newswires to provide their content, rather than general web site content.

The best way to get your news listed on these services is to publish newsworthy information via a press release and then use a press release distribution service such as PRWeb and PR Newswire to circulate your news to their subscribers. PRWeb use a newswire service called eMediaWire to deliver your news direct to relevant search engines, media outlets and portals. You can join PRWeb and have them circulate your news for free, but you can have your release circulated to a larger audience if you are willing to pay a small sum. You can also join PR Newswire, but I believe they charge for membership.

If you have your own RSS newsfeed or blog on your site, you can distribute your news that way, by making sure your feed is listed with as many feed readers and blog channels as possible. How do I know this? Because apparently blogs are the new press releases.

Q: How do I optimize my site so it appears on Google News?

Dear Kalena...

May I ask you a question about how to optimize information for Google news? I handle a big information site so want to let our site show up when people search keywords from Google news.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks & Regards,
Aimee