Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Google BackLink update
Overnight Google updated its BackLink index. For the third update in a row there has been no change to PageRank, giving rise to speculation that either Google's trusted PageRank algorithm is either being phased out and that something will replace it, as soon as they have got it working, or we are in for "a big un".

Google IPO finally approved!
On the 18th of August Google's plan to IPO was looking as though it was to be delayed yet again. Hours later the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared Google's registration. The share price has been set at US$85 and went live on Nasdaq on Thursday 19th August under the ticker name GOOG.

Is your help system up to scratch?
Organisations are still failing to provide users with an effective range of help systems on their websites, writes David Miller, Website Analyst at North Square.

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

Google and Yahoo! resolve dispute.
In April 2002 Overture (now owned by Yahoo!) filed a lawsuit against search engine rival Google over an alleged infringement on Overture's patent on bid for placement search engine ranking and the tools to manage them. Overture has always been unhappy with Google's decision to provide its AdWords service.
Google and Yahoo! finally reached an agreement to resolve their differences. Under the agreement Google will licence a number of patents held by Yahoo, and hence Yahoo will dismiss the patent lawsuit. It is also understood that, as part of the agreement, Google will issue a "significant" number of shares to Yahoo!. With Google's IPO still looming in the background, resolving this issue can only help.

Rumblings in Google's Index
Over the last few days Google's Datacentres have been merrily chuntering away, so much so that 3 of them have gone off line. All this activity resulting this morning in a BackLink update. As with last months update, this would appear to have had no effect on PageRank leaving many in the news groups and forums speculating as to what Google is upto.

BackLink Update
Last night Google updated its Backlink index. For the second time there has been no change to PR. Many new sites are still not even on the radar as far as Google is concerned.

Doom and gloom for the Search Engines
A new variation of the MyDoom worm wreaked havoc yesterday when it triggered a small denial of service attack on a number of search engines, e.g. Google. The worm would infect a machine and look through the user's files for domain names. It would then use search engines to find email addresses within those domains. Many people will have noticed a server error was popping up or results appearing slower when they tried to search for something on the search engines. Anti-Virus vendors have now updated their virus definitions, so get updating.
C.P

RankMonitor goes live
Another of the internal XSEO software tools has been introduced for public download. The RankMonitor simply interrogates the top 100 positions across the four primary search engines, Google,MSN,Yahoo and AOL. These engines are reputed to provide some 90% of all search traffic.
What the RankMonitor also does is to identify the number of times the term is used in the previous month and cross references it with the search term and position in the same report. There is a 14 day trial version at Lemonpod.

Backlink update
Saturday morning Google updated its Backlink index, but no movement on PageRank. This is very odd and not like Google at all. On top of this the usual Backlink utility shows sites that are PR4 and above that link to a site, not any more, it would appear that the Backlinks are showing for site of PR0 to PR4. This has resulted in much speculation, has Google lost the plot, broken their Backlink utility or are we seeing another ground breaking departure into another algorithm (remember Florida).
The issue at the moment is that the Backlink update has not drastically affected SERPs (search engine results pages) or PageRank, whether the situation becomes clearer over the next week remains to be seen.

New Sensis Search Engine
Telstra Corp hopes to revamp their Sensis division and turn it into a search engine that could compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo. Sensis hopes to pull together all their existing technologies and turn it into a youth orientated search engine. These technologies include the white and yellow pages, and their recent acquisitions such as The Trading Post and the Australian assets of the search engine, Looksmart.
C.P

MSN to leave paid inclusion
MSN announced today they will no longer be showing paid inclusion results. This includes all URL’s entered into the MSN index from the previous Inktomi program, Overture Site Match or Site Match Xchange. This has been declared to be effective almost immediately.

DancerPro goes live
If you are familiar with optimising for search engines you'll understand how important it is to make your page changes and then wait for the results before making more changes. But when can you be sure the re-index/dance has happened? This internal product from XSEO has never been available, but it is now...

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