Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)

MSN's tuning Search Technology.
With the introduction of MSN's new Search Engine in February it became apparent that it was suffering a little bit in the "relevancy" stakes. The engine was far too easily manipulated which made it a target for spam techniques.
Well, last week MSN released their latest update, based on a new revised natural search technology, internally the technology is being called "Ranknet" read more from MSN

Adv

Treble take
Google watching is taking on new meaning this week, first the PR released over the weekend is retracted, now the BackLinks visible yesterday have been reversed. We have also been seeing a great deal of spider activity, combined with recent page caches appearing.
The upshot of this...it's fair to say that Google's playing, but as usual they will no doubt reveal their hand when they are good and ready.

Double take
Eh!!!!????....for the more observant (or is it sad) there was a Google PR update at the weekend. But before you go into a blind panic to see how your site is doing, it wasn't visible for long and has now been reversed. Strangely whilst BackLinks didn't change at the weekend they did this morning. They would appear to have changed back to the results last seen in March.

XSEO Search Engine Tutorials Updated
Our popular series of FREE online SEO Tutorials have undergone some further amendments. Introducing new tools and revised concepts in the world of Search Engine Marketing.

Search Engine Relations

Search Engines are a tight knit bunch, sometimes it's hard to differentiate who are the result providers and who are actually buying in. This useful chart explains all. Search Engine Relations Chart

Google Backlinks.
The backlink update that we saw briefly on the 27th May in Google's index, has now been reintroduced. 2005 BackLinks Update to date.

IE has tabs!

Google hiring humans.

By now everybody knows that Googles strengths in search have come from their "algorithm". However try as they might they have not been able to overcome the antics of the "black hat" optimisers. Black hat is used to describe the tactics of spammers, the guys that get results by hook or by crook, hidden text, cloaking blog spamming. However Google has finally decided that enough is enough, the way forward is back to using humans - but not necessarily to go over the whole web clearing out the clutter, more to develop a means of teaching the machines on how to spot a black hat technique. .....white hat rules, or at least will do!

Adv

PageRank Returned

First and foremost whilst PageRank did disappear over the bank holiday weekend, there has not been an update. It is being widely speculated that the "out" was just Google playing. Some have muted that the best time to play is when nobody is looking- i.e. bank holidays!

PageRank Broken!

Reports are coming in from around the world that the Google Toolbars PageRank indicator is showing no results. At first people were worried that their sites had been "blacklisted" in isolation, this is not the case Google, Yahoo and MSN are all showing zero PageRank. It would also appear that the backlink update reported on the 27th has now been reversed...It's all fun with Google at the moment!

Google Backlinks.

For the last 3 days one of Google's Dataservers has been showing different results to all the rest. Today Google's main server adopted the results and updated its BackLinks.

Longhorn Release

At the D: conference, Bill Gates admitted that the long awaited new Microsoft operating system Longhorn has been delayed by a year due to security issues. Longhorn will be available Holiday season next year.

MSN's Virtual Earth

This week sees the third edition of the D: All Things Digital Conference, Carlsbad, CA D3. The conference is billed as "three days of unscripted, frank interviews with the leaders of the digital revolution." Yesterday Microsoft's founder Bill Gates showed publicly MSN's Virtual Earth. He started by showing mapping technology and satellite images, along with overlaying layers and how one pixel represents one foot. All this already seen with Google maps. However Gates then goes on to show having tied with a company that flies plane over cities, what was once a satellite image of a building taken from directly above, the technology will allow views of 45deg. giving real depth and feel to the images.

MSNToolbar empties desktop.

The new Toolbar from MSN has a few endearing, if not widely recognised features. One such feature is that it could enable users to remove their desktop icons completely, along with reducing the need to use the start menu. In its place a couple of key strokes and the return key can fire up most applications, files and web pages. Read

SERP's Update in Google!

The last couple of days we have been seeing some movement in Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This has been recorded in various forums, perhaps we are seeing the start of another dance!

MSN's new toolbar goes live

With the new Toolbar from MSN comes the new version of Desktop Search. MSN Desktop Search is only available on machines running Microsoft Windows 2000,2003 and XP with Internet Explorer 5.01 or later. MSN have added a preview pane to the Search box, whilst a little slow is does the job and is an improvement on the initial versions. Other features, in options, allows users to specify drives for indexing. One feature I particularly like is the ability to enter website URL's into the search. If you have a small selection of "Authoritative" sites you use regularly, the fact that you can search these sites at the same time as your desktop is very helpful. As standard the MSN toolbar is installed into Microsoft Outlook, another for Windows and Internet Explorer, and a third for the Windows taskbar. Read

Google's PR updates- outdated?

For years webmasters have looked to Google's PR updates as an indication that a change in the SERPs (search engine results pages) has happened and the result have stabilised. The last update however changed all that. The update wasn't even current, as far as we can see it related to the PR from around a month before it became visible. Read

Where's Da Vanzo?

Fellow V1 MSN Search Champ Pete Da Vanzo has decided to embark on a round the world trip from New Zealand to London the slow way. In true
Da Vanzo style, discounting the scenery, it's just an excuse for the mother of all pub crawls. If he'd done it on a motorbike he'd have had a couple of film crews following him, a mini series, DVD rights and book contract in time for Christmas. As it is his exploits are being blogged at Arrive Slowly.

Top 10 Search engines.

According to Hitwise the well known source of Online Competitive Inelligance data, for the UK Google.co.uk is by far the most widely used search engine with a 64% share of the search pie. MSN Search (.co.uk) are second at 7.9% with Yahoo at 5.5%. Languishing near the bottom is Ask.com with a 1.9% market share. Read more

MSN Search Champs- the pics.

Chris Pirillo, AKA Lockergnome, has released some pictures of the recent MSN Search Champs V2. .... thanks Chris, who was the good looking guy on slide 4, blue shirt and glasses? oh me!

Google PR and Backlinks update.

Fresh back from Redmond completely jet lagged and hey.... Google go and perform a major update while I'm half asleep. This one looks like both PR and BackLinks have been revised, something that hasn't happened since June 04

MSN Search Champs V2.

As of tonight I'll be off on my travels to the sunny state of Washington, Seattle. Redmond to be exact courtesy of Microsoft Search. This is my second invite to participate in MSN Champs, I'm sure there will be much discussion in the forums and blogs over the next week.

Google Backlinks, at last.

This time it appears to be clean, no erratic behaviour it would appear that there has been a BackLink update.

Google Backlinks indecision again.

Yet another curious oscillation of results in Googles BackLink status. For the last 2 days Backlinks have been erratic, changing between two sets of results, there is obviously some testing going on.

Great New Directory

Directories come and go, many are created and are critically flawed. So what's so great about this one, I know how it has been built and it is entirely search engine friendly, what you see is what you get .Red Reach Directory Enjoy!

Search Engine Marketing
Professional Organization

SEO News Archives

News April-June 05News Jan-Mar 05News Nov-Dec 04News Sept-Oct 04News July-Aug 04News Apr-Jun 04News Jan-Mar 04News 03