Because most website owners would be interested, I have compiled a comprehensive list of what appears to have changed in the new Google Caffeine and have made a list. Since Google Caffeine is still rather new, this list is certainly subject to change as we go, so I will do my best to keep it updated as appropriate.

• The new Google Caffeine’s search results URLs are different. Therefore, third party software analytics may be effected. For example, the search results pages now use # in the URL.
• Some people are reporting that Google Caffeine seems to improve Wikipedia results. Personally, I think it depends on the actual search query.
• Some .gov websites got lower rankings for core keywords. A search for “Barack Obama” shows a drastic change: I’m currently not seeing Whitehouse.gov in the top 10 search results on Google Caffeine, yet Whitehouse.gov is 4th for “Barack Obama” in Google.com currently.
• Some are reporting that Google Caffeine is giving more weight to domains with no hyphens in them. Personally, I am not seeing a large emphasis on non-hypenated keyword rich domain names, I’m seeing about the same number of hyphenated versus non-hyphenated domain names in the search results. I think the jury is still out on this one, some are even reporting that “hyphenate-keyword-domains doing exceptionally well- much better on a side-by-side comparison than on mainstream SERPs.
• Google Caffeine seems to like good site structure and/or fast loading websites for top results. I personally think this has been the case all along, that Google rewards websites with a good website structure and sites that are fast loading. I am not convinced (yet) that this is a big change for Google Caffeine.
• I have seen people commenting on the fact that Google Caffeine search results seem to be similar to “allinanchor” search results. I have tested this and I do not think this is the case.
• There are indications that certain filters and “penalties” (if that’s what you want to call them) have not been applied to Google Caffeine.
• Some are reporting the existance of a time stamp under the snippet just in front of the cache link that has been changing every hour. I have been unable to confirm this yet.
• There were initial reports that the Google Caffeine image search results were not that great at all. It appears that Google Caffeine is now using the full, real image search results. I tested this and compared the image results for several searches and they appear to be exactly the same.
• Google may be treating 301 Permanent Redirects differently than they did in the past. This may very well be the case, although I have yet to see any direct evidence of this.
• Search is moving into real-time, with more of an emphasis on real-time search results. Google may have dialed up too much focus on Twitter according to Andy Beal.
• It appears that Google Caffeine is favouring the “authority web sites” even more than before, making them “harder to beat” when it comes to very specific keyword phrases (or the long tail keywords).
• Google Caffeine is indexing more of the web. Upon initial tests, it appears that Google Caffeine is indexing a lot more web pages. This is really only based on a limited number of “site:domain.com” comparisons, I have yet to confirm this. This may be a result of adding more “real time web” to the mix, if Google Caffeine is truly indexing the real time web faster then there will be more web pages added to the index.

Some additional tools that are worth noting:

• Google Caffeine Bookmarklet: http://www.googletutor.com/2009/08/11/google-caffeine-bookmarklet/
• You can search at Google.com and see normal search results and then hit the bookmarklet to see the search results using Google Caffeine.

Compare Google Caffeine and the normal or “old version” of Google: http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

Mark Jackson (no, he’s not related to Michael Jackson) was recently interviewed about Twitter search.

Lately, there has been a lot of hype about Twitter search being a rival for Google search. Twitter still has a lot of ways to go, and it’s very “gameable”. Twitter’s search is based on how fresh your tweet is. In there future, we expect that there will be more algorithmic changes to Twitter search. Twitter needs to address the holes in their search results if they’re ever going to be a rival for Google search and able to index the “real time web”.

When it comes to Twitter Search, for example, there are some indications lately that they are making some changes. For example, when it comes to profile searches, and you have a keyword in your profile,Twitter may be ranking your profile based on the number of followers you have. If someone else comes along later and establishes their account on Twitter and adds that same keyword to their profile, Twitter Search will show the profile that has more followers.

Twitter Search still has a long way to go until they can even think about being a rival for Google. But, certainly, if you want to know what people are talking about on Twitter right now, take a look at Twitter’s trending topics.

If you have not been keeping up with the latest Search Engine Optimization developments when it comes to Google PageRank, PageRank Sculpting, and the NoFollow Tag, then this blog post is probably for you. And even if you have been attempting to keep up with it all, then let this blog post serve as an “overview” of what’s going on, and the changes that you may or may not need to make to your website to improve its search engine optimization.

First, you will probably want to go over to Matt Cutts’ Blog (Matt Cutts is a Google Search guru, he works for Google) and read his recent blog post about PageRank Sculpting and how it can effect the Search Engine Optimization of your website. Well, at least that’s what he has titled his blog post. I believe that it’s actually not a very good title for that blog post, especially because it covers a lot more than “PageRank Sculpting”.

After reading Matt Cutts’ blog post, I’ve pulled out the most important points that you need to pay attention to, especially when it comes to search engine optimization and optimizing your website for the search engines:

– Google is doing a lot of very sophisticated link computation. And it is very different than what the original PageRank papers say.
– There is a decay factor. You could estimate that about 10-15% of the PageRank disappears even before it can be passed to an outgoing link.
– The Nofollow tag is a method to annotate a link to tell search engines “I can’t or don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, NoFollow links don’t pass PageRank and don’t pass anchor text. Matt Cutts says that Nofollow links definitely don’t pass PageRank and Nofollow links don’t help sites rank higher in Google’s search results.
– Google changed how they count NoFollow links, probably due to the fact that certain website owners were trying to influence how PageRank flows in their site.
– Matt Cutts does not recommend PageRank Sculpting.
– It is more important to create great content that will attract links.
– Use a website architecture that makes your site usable and crawlable for humans and for the search engines.
– Put the most important web pages on your site “front and center” so people and the search engines can see them.

I personally have never been a fan of “PageRank Sculpting” and trying to manipulate which web pages on your site the search engines should pay more attention to. If the page is important, and you’re adding it as a link on your website for a human to follow, then you have to assume that the search engines might follow it, right? Well, that’s what we’re hearing from Google’s Matt Cutts now: they have changed the way they deal with the NoFollow tag, so it appears that PageRank Sculpting is not necessary anymore. They don’t say it officially, but they may be ignoring the NoFollow tag, at least part of it.

What’s more important than knowing about how Google treats PageRank Sculpting and the NoFollow tag, though, are these points:
– Google changed other, larger aspects of how they look at links. They did it a while back and not too many people noticed.
– A better, more effective form of PageRank Sculpting is choosing which things to link to from your home page.
– Whenever you’re linking around within your site: don’t use the NoFollow tag.
– There are some cases where you might consider adding the NoFollow tag, like to pages that change often or require a login. Still, you might consider adding those URLs to the robots.txt file rather than adding a NoFollow tag to the links.
– Do not attempt to hoard your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

Make note of this: parts of Google’s algorithm encourages links to good websites. You will rank better in the Google if you link out to trusted, authoritative websites that Google already likes. In fact, I have been personally recommending that whenever you make a blog post, make sure that you do your research first and link out to a few trusted websites on the subject. Why not search Google and link out to a few sites that already rank well?

Linking out is a good thing for search engine optimization. That’s why, for example, I am linking out to a few sites towards the beginning of this blog post: note the wikipedia link and the link to the “Anatomy of a Search Engine” (Google PageRank paper) link.

So, what’s the bottom line? You need to take a look at your website’s internal linking structure and your overall site structure and consider that Google is probably ignoring the NoFollow tags on your website. Do you really need to link to that URL (internal or external)? Is that link good or bad for humans? By the way, did I mention that Vizion Interactive provides a complete site structure analysis?

Well, now one year and two months later there are reports that Rushmore Drive is closing, shutting its doors.

According to the AP article, IAC will close Rushmore Drive and the company named Black Web Enterprises will also shut its doors.

Spokeswoman Stacy Simpson said Wednesday that the Barry Diller-led Internet services company will close the site Friday after an unsuccessful effort to sell it. She also said that Johnny Taylor, the site’s chief executive, has resigned.

I have to admit it was a bold move by IAC last year to launch this search engine during the political campaign of Barack Obama. Apparently there were using “patent pending technology” that “increased penetration of sites heavily trafficked by the Black community”. I have yet to find a patent or patent application that talks about this technology, though.

I had performed several searches at Rushmore Drive and was confused over the search results, especially when a web design firm was “ranking well” for a phrase such as search engine optimization. But maybe I wasn’t the only one confused by their search results?

Everyone it seems is hanging out on Twitter and sharing their links and tweeting about not only the latest news and gossip, but they’re also talking about everything from aplusk to #unfollowdiddy.

It seems as though every few minutes there’s another “trending topic” on Twitter. So, how do you keep up with it all? How do you track your brand, your niche topic, your keywords, or even your own company name on Twitter?

There are several different resources available to follow and watch the trends on Twitter. Of course, there’s Twitter Search, but for many popular keyword phrases you just cannot get enough data to make it worthwhile. Some popular phrases, especially if they’re trending topics on Twitter, get mentioned several times a minute, leaving you to think that they’re hot topics right now but what about last week? Or even yesterday? As of this writing, Twitter only shows the top 10 trending topics. A lot more data exists out there, and luckily it’s pretty easy to get ahold of. One of my favorites right now is Twist, which will show you a lot more than the top 10 trending topics, they’ll show you the hot topics of the day and even of the week, which is pretty great stuff if you’re a marketing, webstats, techno-geek like myself.

If you’re really innovative, and you crave all sorts of data about your keywords and your niche, or you want to see which keyword phrase is more popular than another one, you can search for something like this, which is a search for “seo, search engine optimization, and search engine marketing”, to see which is more mentioned more often. What I particular find interesting is the chart below, which shows that “SEO” is incredibly more popular than the other phrases. I would bet it’s because we’re probably getting used to cramming words into smaller spaces, less than 140 characters, to be exact!

So, if you’re looking for keywords that describe your industry then you might try some searches of the Twitter data that’s out there to see what people are talking about on Twitter. Then, as you tweet more about whatever you tweet about, start using those keywords in your tweets to make sure that you’re using the “latest jargon” so to speak, the latest keywords that everyone else is using to talk about your industry. I have to admit that I thought people used the phrase “SEO” in their tweets on Twitter, but I never imagined that it was so much more popular than “search engine optimization” or even “search engine marketing”.

Another Twitter keyword research tool you might try is Twitscoop, a tool that bills itself as a way to “stay on top of Twitter”. I tried to look at the data that Twitscoop provides, and it’s rather limited, going back just 3 days and only allowing you to search for one keyword phrase at a time:

So, yes, the phrase “SEO” has been used a lot, but it’s difficult to compare that data with other keyword phrases, like “search engine optimization” and “search engine marketing”. I’m interested in learning about other keyword research tools that you may have come across, and if I find any new ones worth mentioning and writing about, I’ll certainly let you know right here by writing about it.

When it comes to organic search engine rankings in Google, one of the many factors that they consider is the “link text” or “anchor text” that is pointing to a web page. Anchor text is the “link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink.” Google has, for many years now, looked at what other people say about you, or, more specifically, what other web sites say about your web page. So, when you’re trying to “rank well” in the search engines for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, something you can do is to try to get links to your website with certain “anchor text”.

Over the years, we have seen an increase in people trying to buy links with specific anchor text in order to influence the search engine rankings. We’ve also seen a lot of people try Google bombing (also known as googlebombing), where pranksters try to get a certain web page to show up in the search results even though that phrase isn’t mentioned on the web page. Take a look at Google’s googlebombing blog post and you’ll see an example of it. In 2007, Search Engine Land reported that Google effectively “killed miserable failure” by making changes to the Google algorithm. So, since about 2007 or late 2006 (whenever they made the change to their algorithm), it has been important to note that when you are trying to get links to your web page for search engine optimization purposes, you need to “vary the anchor text” that is used. If you want to rank for “search engine optimization”, then you need to use different anchor text links to your website, like this:

Search Engine Optimization blog
Search Engine Optimization website
Search Engine Optimization services
Dallas Search Engine Optimization firm
Search Engine Optimization and PPC company

I know that the examples above don’t link to the same web page, but the anchor text shows the various versions of the anchor text. We know that Google is “looking for” anchor text that’s not natural, anchor text that appears to be “rigged” or “too exact”. Whatever the case, you need different versions of the anchor text. Different phrases. There are several ways to come up with different anchor text:

- Look at your keyword research and see what people are searching for
- Look at your web stats. Are there certain versions of the keyword phrase that you’re ranking for that you haven’t thought of yet? Perhaps you could use one of those.
- Look at your competitors’ websites. Are they using any keywords in their title tags that you aren’t using?
- Look at the Google Wonder Wheel.

The Google Wonder Wheel is a pretty new feature, which is “a graphical way to explore topics by clicking on related searches that go deeper into the subject of the main query.” In other words, it looks like this:

When you perform a search query at Google, you will see a “show options” link on the top left of the search results. Click on the “show options” link and then “wonder wheel” and you will see the Google Wonder Wheel. Above, that’s an example of the Google Wonder Wheel results for “search engine optimization”. What they’re showing here is a list of keyword phrases or anchor text links that you could use if you have a website related to search engine optimization:

search engine optimzation india
search engine optimization conference
search engine optimization cost
search engine optimization for dummies
search engine optimization forum
search engine optimization pricing
search engine optimization submission
meta tags

Certainly these links aren’t exactly what you would be looking for if you were to want exact link text recommendations, but for “search engine optimization” you could use it as a list for possible ideas for blog posts on your website or, if you’re a search engine optimization firm in India then you might use that keyword phrase. For other industries, the Google Wonder Wheel is a good way to find out what others are using as anchor text to their websites. For example, if you look at that Google Wonder Wheel for “search engine optimization company” you get “seo company” (a good alternative) and (seo services) also a great alternative.

So, if you’re looking for better search engine rankings and you’re having trouble with some certain rankings for some keywords or keyword phrases, you might take a look at using the “Google Wonder Wheel” to see what Google says about a keyword phrase. It might just be that the links to your website are too “close a match” and you need some additional variances of the link text pointing to your website.

So, what does the Swine Flu have to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Let me explain a bit more. I have the opportunity to watch the website statistics of a blog post that was made just the other day about the Swine Flu. The blog post is about how you go about determining whether or not you have the Swine Flu. Certainly, it’s a pretty hot topic right now.

But, what’s even more interesting, is the website statistics and the actual search phrases (keyword phrases) that we are using to find this particular website in the search engines. I’ve taken a screen shot directly from the website statistics so you can take a look at what I mean. Click on the thumbnail of the website statistics for more information.

Do you notice something rather peculiar about these search phrases? Or maybe it’s not very peculiar at all? What I’m getting at is this: we are now in an age where our search phrases are a lot longer than before. Since when is the top search phrase to a website nine words long? Well, apparently we have now crossed into a time where I can officially say that we no longer need to target short keyword phrases with our search engine optimization efforts. Let’s take a look at some of the top search phrases that is bringing thousands of visitors to this particular website, the one with the blog post about the Swine Flu:

how do you know if you have swine flu
how do you know if you have the swine flu
how to know if you have the swine flu
how do i know if i have swine flu
how to know if you have swine flu
how to tell if you have the swine flu
how do you know you have the swine flu
how do i know if i have the swine flu
how do you know if you have swine flu?
how to tell if you have swine flu
what to do if you think you have swine flu
how do you know you have swine flu
how do i know if i have swine flu?
how can you tell if you have swine flu
swine flu dizzy
how to know if i have swine flu
what to do if you think you have the swine flu
how do you know if you got the swine flu
how can you tell if you have the swine flu
how do you know if you have the swine flu?
how to know you have swine flu

What’s interesting to me, is that you have to go down to the 15th top keyword phrase in order to get to a three keyword phrase. The top keyword phrase that brings traffic (thousands of visitors), which is 9 words long, brings 6 percent of the traffic to this website.

When you start seeing the top search phrase to a website be 9 words long, you have to start thinking of the long tail keyword phrases, keyword phrases that describe exactly what someone is searching for: those are going to be the “money keywords”, the ones that bring in very targeted visitors to your website.

During the search process, when we start searching at a search engine, we may start our searches with shorter keyword phrases. But, as we continue to search and not find what we’re looking for, we tend to broaden our search phrase, and we our search phrases becomes longer.

In this case (of the swine flu blog post), we’re seeing thousands of visitors using over 1000 different keyword phrases: and the majority of the keyword phrases tend to be longer than 5 words in length. The website is seeing thousands of pageviews every day because of these long keyword phrases. Certainly, the blog post is informational in nature, and does not sell anything (in fact, it links over to the CDC.gov website for more information about the Swine Flu). But, this just goes to show that there really can be “lots of traffic” and lots of “targeted” traffic from people just like you and me who are now commonly using long keyword phrases to find information.

What does this have to do with Search Engine Optimization? Really, it does have a lot to do with Search Engine Optimization. When I started to see this much website traffic come from searches that were 9 keyword phrases in length, I said to myself, “Wow! I’ve never seen that before!”. I been optimizing websites since 1996, and while I have seen a lot of keyword phrases over the years, I have to admit that I have never seen so many people use so many words in a search phrase. Certainly we’re now in a unique time.

So, when looking at your website statistics, from a search engine optimization perspective, I suggest that you start looking further into the phrases that have more words in them. Don’t just look at the two or three keyword phrases. Start digging down further into the keyword phrases that actually may be easier to “rank for” because “the competition” is not targeting those keyword phrases. If you start looking at what people are “saying” in those long keyword phrases, you may be able to see what they really are looking for: and you can create content on your website around those keyword phrases that describe what they’re really looking for. And if you do that, you’re going to find a lot more conversions, a lot more sales.

Also, consider the fact that you can use your blog to answer people’s questions. For example, in this particular blog post, the author used a question as the title tag of the blog post. In fact, using some keyword research before the blog post was written, the author anticipated that people might be asking a question about this topic, the Swine Flu. So, the author of the blog post optimized the blog post so that it could potentially rank well in the search engines for a certain keyword phrase. I suggest doing the same, making sure that you are using your major “theme” of the blog post, the major keyword phrase or keywords, in the the title of the blog post. Certainly, the blog post can also mention those keywords in the blog post’s content (like in the first sentence or in the first paragraph) and elsewhere in the blog post, wherever appropriate.

If you take a closer look, you will notice that there’s a phrase there on the top right of the search results that indicates that the search results you’re looking at are “Customized based on recent search activity”. What? Yes, Google is learning more about us, and they are actually changing the search results based on several different factors: one of them being the fact that they watch what you’re searching for and then display different search results. So, oftentimes I will search for something at home, go to the office, and find totally different search results.

You don’t even have to be logged into a Google Account in order to receive the personalized search results. That means that they are looking at information such as your IP address and your location (my IP address at home shows that I’m about 250 miles where I’m actually located…so Google thinks I’m in a different location).

I have to be honest with you: as someone who likes to actually see where a web site is “ranking” in the search results, I find it annoying at times to always be served up “personalized search results”. If this is the case with you, then I have a great “tool” for you: I’ve created a Firefox Bookmarklet that you can click on that will remove the personalization from the Google search results for you. All you have to do is click on the link and it will remove the personalization.

Here is how it works:

1. Install or “add” the following bookmark. If you’re using Firefox, then all you have to do is click on the following link and hold down on your left mouse button. Drag it to your Firefox Bookmarks toolbar.

Remove Personalization

2. When you’re on the Google search results page, (like this one), and you see a statement on the top right of the search results that says “Customized based on recent search activity”, then click the Firefox bookmarklet. The Google search results will automatically be refreshed, with the same exact keyword phrase you just searched for: but the personalized search results till be removed, you will see the “non-personalized” search results.

In the future, we are going to be seeing Google deliver more personalized search results to us in an effort to improve our overall search experience. But, if you’re annoyed by this like I am, then here’s a way to actually remove the personalized search results.

In the interview Mark talks about how to effectively build a keyword list to best optimize your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Even big brands have begun to embrace this idea and Mark states that brainstorming plays a valuable role when choosing what keywords on would want to optimize for.

I’m crediting Barry Schwartz of SE Roundtable with coming up with the phrase “one way sitelinks”. What are they? If you look at the screen capture I show above, you will notice that there are four links right above the green URL in the search results. These are actually the first four Sitelinks that point to additional pages on a website. The one way Sitelinks are actually only the links that show up in the search results at Google. They appear to be taken from the normal

Like I’ve mentioned, one line sitelinks are the four links that appear in the search results. Google won’t tell us exactly how they generate the extra links and how they go about determining which links to show in the search results. But, they do appear to be taken specifically from Sitelinks and in most cases that I’ve seen, one way site links appear to be the first four Sitelinks–if your website is “worthy enough” to have them.

What does this mean for us? Google is trying to be more helpful for their users, they want to make it easier for us to get to the what we’re searching for. So, after their extensive testing of one way sitelinks, they appear to have rolled them out across all of the Google search results. This means that website owners should be seeing more traffic to the pages that are listed in the one way Sitelinks section of the search results, not just the actual URL that appears in the search results. This is actually a good thing. I believe that it’s better to have these one way Sitelinks in the search results when you show up: it’s an opportunity to have even more of your web pages in the search results rather than have just one page or even two pages (with the indented listing).

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

Google only shows sitelinks for search results that they think are going to be useful for their users. They talk about the structure of you website, so if you currently don’t have Sitelinks for your website, you might take a look at your site’s overall site structure.

Remember, if the links that are showing in Sitelinks for you site are not the most desirable links, you can always block the less desirable links by using Google Webmaster Tools. Log in to Google Webmaster Tools and go to the Sitelinks section. Here’s some information from Google about how to do that:

To block a sitelink, first ensure that you have verified ownership of the site. Then:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Dashboard, click the site you want.
2. Under Links, click Sitelinks. If we have sitelinks information for your site, we’ll display a list of sitelinks.
3. Click Block next to the sitelink you want to remove. Please let us know why you want to block the sitelink - it will help us improve the way we generate and display sitelinks.

Once you’ve blocked or unblocked a sitelink, it can take some time for your changes to be visible.