SEOpittfall

tips, tools & techniques to build a better website for visitors and the search engines they use.

Last build:: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:38:20 +0000
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Funding Interests in Cuill
From TechCrunch:

We got (at least) one thing wrong when we wrote about super-stealth search startup Cuill last week. We said we believed the company self funded after searching for venture capital. But we now have it from two solid sources that they actually raised a $4 million Series A round from Greylock Partners, with partner David Strohm taking a board seat.

Greylock is behind some of the biggest success stories of the new Internet, including Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn and others. Most of those investments are led by David Sze, however. Strohm only rarely seems to invest in the consumer sector.

This is very interesting since most of the research that I have found have stated that this is a “stealth” project. While much of the information being written around the company being relatively the same, it will be interesting to see what will come of this.

Is this another piece of monetary fodder for Google to gobble up from ex-Googlers like a prodigal son?

If you missed the information that I recently posted on this search project, you will find it here: Cuill - Have We Found a Google Killer?
Cuill - Have We Found a Google Killer?

Cuill Inc. (pronounced [kool]) is a startup company that is pioneering a new approach to Search.

What’s so special?

Cuill, the secretive search start-up — This is the latest start-up, started by two Google folks and two Stanford folks. Co-founders include Tom Costello, of Stanford, and Anna Patterson, formerly at Stanford and now at Google (described as a search wizard). They’re raising a VC round for the company. We’re told they claim they can crawl the Web at a tenth of the cost Google can. We’ve contacted Costello to find out more. We’re open to tips if you hear of anything.
from Venture Beat, Feb 12, 2007

The company’s main claim is that it can index web pages significantly faster and cheaper than Google can - Cuill has told potential investors that their indexing costs will be 1/10th of Google’s, based on new search architectures and relevance methods. In some ways Cuill is the polar opposite of Powerset, which has huge indexing costs because it does a deep contextual analysis on every sentence on every web page. Powerset’s indexing costs, therefore, should be much higher per web page than Google’s.

Cuill was also founded by highly respected search experts. Husband and wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson were joined by Russell Power. Patterson and Power are ex-Google search experts, and Google must be fuming that their inventions were not added to Google’s intellectual property library. Costello was the founder of Xift.

Cuill met with venture capitalists, but we’re hearing that Costello and Patterson eventually self-funded the company with a $5ish million injection of capital. They now have 10-15 employees and offices in Menlo Park.

Another rumor circulating is that Google already took a shot at acquiring the company with a very healthy offer, showing that they take this potential threat seriously. And the company may have enticed at least one other senior search scientist from Google to join them recently.
from TechCrunch, Sep 4, 2007

What would you do if you could do the same work as your largest competitor at 10 cents on the dollar?

Whether they can actually accomplish this remains to be seen, but if Google has taken notice it is for good reason. Two of the three founders have worked for Google and two out of three have a PhD in computer science (the other is on leave for his PhD).

They have released a very limited amount of information about their technology, in fact, they haven’t said much more than “Yup. We’re working on it.” (search that is). What they said is about their robot:

Twiceler is an experimental robot. The user-agent to block this is twiceler. It could take 24-48 hours for us to re-read your robots.txt file.

Apparently they are already indexing websites.

I look forward to the competition for Google. Could this be an answer for Yahoo, Ask or MSN search?

Little is known, but I am sure that buzz around Cuill will be heating up!
Google Searches Your Subscriptions - Finally!

Today, Google announced a new feature for their reader service:

That’s right, search is finally in Google Reader. Now you can find that that apricot recipe you came across a few months ago and now have a craving for. Or perhaps you’d like to search for “ipod” so that you can read at once all the posts in your subscriptions that mention today’s announcements.

More information from the Official Google Blog:

The fundamental problem with information is that there’s too much of it, and this is probably why we all go to our trusted sources to learn what we really need to know. Your sources filter out the noise and present the most interesting bits to you in a useful way. For many of us, these sources include newspapers, magazines, and of course blogs. We built Google Reader as a way for you to see all of your online sources in one place.

They have also done some minor tweaks to other aspects of Reader:

Along for the ride in the search release are a few other Reader tweaks. You can now hide the side navigation by clicking on the separator to its right. Unread counts now go to 1,000, so that you can know just how far behind you are when you come back from vacation. Finally, Reader now behaves like every other web page and lets you use the forward and back buttons to move between folders and subscriptions that you’ve navigated to.

Not mentioned is the actual number of unread posts in your folders list.

Seems trivial, doesn’t it? Search in a product from a search engine.

It may not seem like much, but it is a welcomed addition in my book!
SquidWhat? - Squidoo Builds People Search SquidWho

Squidoo has launched a new portal called SquidWho “A people-powered Who’s Who on the Web.”

Here is the basic info:

SquidWho is the first people-built who’s who. It’s an easy way to find out what’s what (and where) about famous (and not so famous) people around the world. If you’re a fan of someone, build a page about them. Point to their books, their blog, their wikipedia entry and their videos. Share your opinions but most of all, make it easy for people to discover the really good stuff.

Unlike traditional Who’s Who directories, SquidWho is open. Everyone gets a chance to share her opinion without worrying about what some committee of anonymous people have to say. So, if you like Norah Jones, built a page about her. Hate Mick Jagger? Go for it. It’s up to you.

So, what is it really?

Just another way to repackage content already online including:
- online poll
- at a glance (aka Wikipedia article)
- flickr photos
- Amazon products
- YouTube videos
- ebay items
- fan clubs
Of course it includes Google ads, lensmaster information and your basic list of services (RSS, email, print, del.icio.us, digg, stumbleupon and stats).

Here’s what Squidoo says:

Squidoo is also about being at your best, so when you do a search for your favorite rock star or cousin, you’ll automatically go to the best lens. Not seeing YOUR lens as the top lens? Add some more modules, dig up some great trivia, and beef up the links, and tell a friend. Find a fan forum on your person and see if folks there want to help. You might just make it to the top and become famous in your own right!

What’s so great?
Nothing much.

Yes, you have the ability to build a personalized page, but for what? Online reputation management is something that we should all consider when building your reputation or building a social presence online, but is this what we have come to?

What do you think?
Insight into MSN Webmaster Portal

Last week MSN announced Webmaster Portal should be available in late fall and offered a chance to apply to test out the beta and provide feedback.

I am not aware that the beta has actually started, however, I was sent an email to register for the beta. It was a simple form requesting information about me, the websites that I would include in the beta and some interesting questions about the tools and information that I would like to see. This included some insight into what they are planning to offer (they even categorized them):
- Troubleshooting - Site crawling
- Sitemaps - Ping
- Stats - Inbound links to other sites
- Troubleshooting - Site Indexing
- Stats - Top search terms for your domain
- Stats - Outbound links from your site
- Troubleshooting - Robots.txt
- Stats - Top search terms for other domains
- Stats - Outbound links from other sites
- Troubleshooting - Sitemaps
- Stats - Top keywords on your site
- Stats - Perceived site quality score
- Sitemaps - Creation
- Stats - Inbound links to your site
- Stats - Number of pages indexed
- Sitemaps - Submission (upload, autodiscovery)
This may not say much, but if you look at the categories you will find three consistent areas that they are concerned with providing webmasters with:
1. Stats
2. Sitemaps
3. Troubleshooting
Here are a couple that I thought they should add:
- vertical trends
- keyword trends
- top keywords in search
- notification of inbound links
MSN’s list looks really solid, the kind of tools that every webmaster would want.

Here is some more information from the request to sign up:

In order to provide the highest level of service to our Beta Partners, we will start off the beta program in September with a small number of participants, and incrementally increase the number until all applicants have been accepted by late November.

I eagerly anticipate the results of the new beta.

Do you have any more information about MSN Webmaster Portal?

Are there other tools or information that you would like to see come from MSN?
Labor Day 2007

Happy Labor Day Everyone!

Wow, what a wild weekend this has been!

I got a chance to catch up with some reading over the past few days, visited with my wife’s parents, my blog went down (the first time I didn’t have my laptop to get everything rolling)… OK, I am ready for the weekend to end (not really).

If you are like me, in-house marketing director, including online (SEO, SEM, SMO, mobile and others) and offline (print and others) to drive conversions across the Internet and over the phone, then you probably have some of the same aggravation of tracking metrics in these very different medias. I would like to encourage you to read “Offline Maneuvers: Improving ROI by Tracking Offline Conversions” by Natalia Vinokhodova in the Fall issue of Search Marketing Standard.

If you don’t currently have a subscription to this publication, I highly recommend it! I am not going to say that I subscribe to all that has been covered in the magazine, but the approach you might find enlightening. With almost every article that I have read over the past year, you will find a common sense approach that new and seasoned online marketers can relate to.

Oh, based upon recent comments, I have updated my Commenting Policy, please feel free to review these changes and let me know if you either don’t understand specifics or would like me to elaborate upon. I can get on tangents and miss the initial point!

So, Happy Labor Day and tomorrow I will be getting back to work!
MSN is “STICKIN’ IT TO THE MAN!” little guy

Microsoft AdCenter has updated it’s trademark policy, wait… in an email sent out today they state that their trademark policy remains the same, however, how they enforce the policy will change dramatically:
Microsoft adCenter is changing the way we manage our trademark policy starting September 10, 2007. While no change will be made to the trademark policy itself, this update aligns better with marketplace practices, speeds up editorial review to get your ads live faster, and ensures consumers see relevant ads.

Microsoft adCenter’s Trademark Policy
As stated above, we are not changing the trademark policy itself. You may still use trademarked terms in your ads when you, as the advertiser, are the owner of the trademark, an affiliate or reseller of trademarked products or services, or a site that uses the trademarked term in an informational, descriptive, or non-competitive manner. Infringing use of trademark terms by direct competitors remains a violation of Microsoft adCenter policies.

What’s changing?
It will now be the advertiser’s responsibility to obtain permission from the trademark owner to use a trademarked term in their ads. It will also be the trademark owner’s responsibility to address ongoing incorrect usage of their trademark term(s) directly with third-party advertisers. Microsoft adCenter will no longer intercede to obtain permission for the advertiser wanting to use a trademarked term.

What does this mean for my search advertising?
- Your ads may display next to other ads that contain your trademarked terms.
- Affiliates, resellers, and third parties may show up against queries for your trademarked terms.
- Competitor’s ads may show up in search results against queries for trademarks in certain scenarios, due to match types other than exact.
  For example, if a generic term is included in the overall search query, advertisers who bid on the generic term may show up in the search results.
If you are a trademark owner and you believe your trademark is being misused in Microsoft adCenter, you can submit a report by following the instructions on our Trademark Concern Form.

Visit our adCenter Blog post to read more about this change and if you have additional questions about these changes please contact our adCenter Support Team.
(in an effort to make sure that nothing was out of context, the full email has been posted here)
I can truly appreciate what MSN is trying to do by protecting trademarked words/terms, however, I don’t think that the advertising portal should be addressed by the owners of trademarked material, rather, it should be directly addressed by the trademark owners to the offending party.

So, what does this mean for advertisers?

You may have to prove your right to use trademarked words in your keywords and ads. I can understand addressing concerns for using trademarked terms in advertising for a defaming manner, however, the way Microsoft responds to claims will be the concern. If it is any way that they address keywords and ads currently then it will be another reason to leave the platform in the near future, this, of course if you haven’t left because of the lack of traffic.

No, I do not intend to bash Microsoft, they provide some great tools in the adCenter Labs, but I have yet to experience the kind of traffic that I expect from a heavily used search portal like MSN.

What are your thoughts on the changes to Microsoft’s trademark policy implementation?

Is MSN attempting to dodge some legal bullet?
GWC - Revival of the Penalty Notifications

Google Webmaster Central is a very valuable resource and looks to continue to give us important information regarding our websites in the Google index and actually gives us insight into how the Googlebot interacts with our websites and their contents.

In 2005 Google began sending notifications to webmasters to notify them that their websites were outside the published webmaster guidelines and because of this, some/all of their pages were removed from the index. Of course, this was used by others to spoof the notifications and get webmasters in a tizzy, so they stopped sending them and looked for a better way.

Back to the drawing board. In July 2006 they launched Message Center to help get the notifications to website owners without the threat of others sending “false notifications.”

So today they announced the new plan to help those not verified:

…we plan to resume sending emails in addition to the Message Center notifications. Please note that, as before, our emails will not include attachments. Currently, the Message Center won’t keep messages waiting if you haven’t previously registered, but we hope to add that feature in the next few months. We’ll keep you posted as things change.

Will this be well received, or is this an attempt to get more website owners to “verify ownership” with Google? That remains to be seen. However, this will probably get the pranksters back into their chairs to start up the fake emails again.

What do you think, should Google even be concerned with websites that are outside of their published guidelines?
GMail Fun
I wanted to share this great little video from GMail.
DMOZ - Still Sucks and Now with Extortion!

In one of my most popular posts in the short existence of SEOpittfall.com “Why DMOZ Sucks and Wikipedia is Nothing More Than a Blog”, I had some very direct comments regarding the Open Directory Project:

DMOZ is a wonderful idea, however, it is inherently flawed.

I must say that I would have to rephrase some of the remarks I made (changes highlighted with deletions with new responses bold):

Wikipedia and DMOZ are not the most valuable resource for research on the Internet, search engines are. I am not implying that the results returned are more relevant, however, there is much more information from other sources that is not included in Wikipedia and DMOZ, however, because the editors of Wikipedia and DMOZ choose what is, and more importantly, what is not contained in the listing, it should not be valued any higher than any other website on the given topic (or any blog for that matter)!

~~I am not saying that you should immediately request your listing from either be removed~~ I would recommend that everyone should request that their listings should be removed, ~~but~~ and I think that the search engines should consider the facts and devalue these sites because they are becoming less relevant and they do not ~~appear to be~~ work~~ing~~ on improving themselves in any way.

Do I have a strong, deep-rooted, opinion on this topic? ABSOLUTELY!

Case in point:
Shoemoney.com (if you are not familiar, I suggest you stop by), was removed from the “almighty” directory after being approached through an email expecting a payout of $5,000 to remain in the directory. The response, nothing, is something that I would have done myself. However, not long after, the website was removed.

Does Shoemoney belong in the directory? This may be questionable, however, the way it was done was nothing more than criminal.

You might say: What’s the big deal?

Here was Shoemoney’s response:

If any verifiable DMOZ META editor would like to come on my radio show live and discuss what happened contact me jeremy@ you know where. I have nothing to hide… what do you ? You can listen to my previous shows and see I have never sandbagged anyone and I don’t have my finger on a edit button (I have no more control of the show then you do).

Is this link-bait? Maybe, however, it doesn’t change my opinion that DMOZ should be removed from the Internet.

What do you think?

Is DMOZ relevant anymore?
Must Have for Social Optimization
Wow, that’s pretty absolute, isn’t it?

What makes something a “must have?“
I don’t mean this:
pittfall’s definition of must have:
n. “a valuable resource that should not be dismissed.”

OK, so what is this “valuable resource,” this “must have” for social optimization?
Social Media Daily - “a blueprint for marketing your website with social media, social bookmarking, social networking and other Web 2.0 fun.”

So, if you are looking for the traffic that can be leveraged through social marketing, then you should read this valuable report that includes:
- Tools
- Link Building
- Software
- Checklists
- Conclusion (overview)
This is the down and dirty guide to building a social campaign for your website. I don’t think that I can do it any justice by regurgitating it because it is very well written and detailed, no fluff! This is a great refresher for seasoned SMOs and a perfect way to get started in the social arena for the rest of us.
MSN Live Search Building Webmaster Portal

MSN Live Search has joined the race to provide webmasters with the tools and features that we expect with the announcement of Webmaster Portal. According to the announcement, the new service will be started in “private beta” and will test out some of the tools and commands that they intend on bringing to the public starting in late fall:
Shortly after that day in March when we had to take the “link:” operator offline, a small team was formed in Redmond. Its singular focus: to build the next-generation set of tools, content and resources for SEO professionals and webmasters (and get “link:” back in your hands). Creatively named Webmaster Portal (we’re really good at marketing), it will be a single, friendly place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO. Initially we’ll support these scenarios:
- Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
- Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
- Statistics about your website
- Consolidation of content submission resources
- New content and community resources
While we expect the tools to be available publicly in late Fall, we still have some polishing to do. In the meantime we’ve created a private beta program to let adventuresome folks get their hands on the tools sooner – and help polish things by providing feedback.
This is a welcome addition to the one engine webmaster show that has been Google’s Webmaster Central and I look forward to useful tools and information that MSN has been providing like AdCenter Labs. This is quite a surprise for me, after MSN had pulled (what I considered a basic tool) the “link” operator offline, I was concerned about their ability to return results (maybe a storage concern), but if they can turn tools and reports like they have done with AdCenter Labs, then this will be like Christmas!

Will this live up to the hype? That remains to be seen, however, if you are interested in getting into the “private beta” (in other words they have to accept you), then get over to the announcement and send in you request.
Microsoft Offers Content Ads for AdCenter in Beta

In an attempt to provide additional traffic from their AdCenter platform, MSN AdCenter will ~~offer~~ start showing your ads (if you are an adCenter advertiser) on “content-based pages on website owned by publishing partners such as MSN” beginning August 29, 2007.

Here is more information from the announcement:

Announcing the U.S. release of Microsoft Content Ads Beta
We are delighted to make Content Ads Beta available to all U.S. customers! On Wednesday, August 29, we will upgrade adCenter to include Microsoft Content Ads.

Microsoft Content Ads allows you to place content-targeted ads on the Microsoft network—connecting you to the right people at the right time for the right price. We’re excited about this release and the choices we are providing advertisers.

We realize that some of you may not yet be ready for content distribution. If you would like to upgrade without expansion (maintaining search-only distribution) please fill out this online form by August 26, or contact your adCenter representative.

OK, if you have been an advertiser using MSN adCenter, then getting additional traffic is a welcomed change to what is being produced currently from Live Search, but is the way to do this by forcing advertisers into the content arena. What about an opt-in rather than requiring advertisers to opt-out? This doesn’t make me feel better about what MSN is offering.

If you are looking for more information about this opportunity, you will find more information here:
Content advertising overview
AdCenter FAQ for Content Ads
AdCenter Webinar

What are your thoughts? Do you think that this will be profitable?

Is the best way to get more advertisers to test the new product by requiring them to request to be removed?
Social Bookmarking 101
The CommonCraft Show has released another useful video, this one is about Social Bookmarking and highlights del.icio.us.

This isn’t just about bookmarking but rather the integration of bookmarking as a social event.

Feel free to share with others or let me know what you think!
PeekYou.com - Online Reputation Management

PeekYou.com is a new way for you to manage and control your reputation online:

PeekYou is a new kind of online white pages.

A PeekYou profile helps other people find your websites, social-networking pages, photos, or anything else about you online. You can also create a profile for friends or relatives to ensure that they may also be easily found online.

What’s the point?
Well, the importance of online reputation management is becoming more important as potential employers are looking to online presence to find out more about potential candidates. So, this means that you need to be aware of what is online about you, or someone that caries the same name. Having a unique name, does not mean that you are the only one out there. Case in point, my name is pretty unique (more my last name), but there are others out there with the same or similar names. A political cartoonist, a programmer, a labor policy specialist at UC Berkeley, TV actor, an artist, chess master, another programmer that owns the domain…

Will the real Stephen Pitts please stand up?

So, knowing what is out there is only the first step. The second is setting yourself from your competitors, PeekYou.com can help with that!

The site allows users complete freedom to edit, add or remove information, links, photos, and tags (school, work, interests, etc.) associated with their profile or other PeekYou user’s profiles. In addition, PeekYou provides human created search engine results, reducing nonspecific and incorrect matches. Concerned with maintaining privacy, PeekYou empowers individuals with the opportunity to be “unlisted” (similar to the White Pages) as well as edit their profiles to ensure correct and accurate information.

If you are concerned about the privacy and terms of service, you will find them here: Privacy Policy Terms of Service

Here is more information about this new service (still in beta):

Looking for someone (or yourself)?
You can add people to PeekYou simply by clicking on a simple button after a search.

Finding too many people?
You can limit your search by location or tags (sorted by life, school or work)

Standard bio
Here are the items on the Biography Page:
- Name
- Geographic Location
- User names (known)
- Sex
- Age
- Life
- Work
- School
- Personal
- Business
- Social Networking
- Press & News
- Photos & Video
- RSS
This is also an opportunity to build links! This will also help you set yourself (and your online profiles) to outrank others with your name. This is the first step in stepping over others so you are more visible.

Just a bit more information from PeekYou about PeekYou.com:

Created by RateMyFace.com and RateMyTeachers.com/RateMyProfessors.com founder Michael Hussey, PeekYou aims to be an open source directory of every individual online. Hussey, who has been featured on CNN, NPR and BBC amongst others looks to bring his experience developing popular consumer destination sites to building PeekYou into the premiere people search engine. Each individual will have their own personalized page and a PeekYou profile that will include bookmarked links to all information available about the target person. PeekYou differentiates itself from other people searchers by the site’s ability to link and identify numerous Internet identities to a single individual based upon tags and online identities.

What are others saying?
Search Engine Journal
John Battelle

What are your thoughts?

Is online reputation management necessary?

Have you tried PeekYou? Let me know!

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