As many of our readers know, Web Position Gold (WPG) is a tool used to check search engine rankings. It does other things, but its reporting feature is all we use. It does a good job of managing multiple accounts and reporting rankings compared to many other choices on the market.

Some SEOs believe that position reports are useless, and while I understand their arguments, there is no denying that clients want to see this information. I am not going to argue the pros and cons about position reporting; this post is not about that. Here I am going to explain a specific chart that appears on the WPG reports, and my advice to WPG on how to improve on it.

One of the most common questions clients ask about position reports is the purpose of the “visibility index” graph that WPG displays, and how it is calculated. Read more…

Google announced yesterday morning over at the two improvements they have made to the search results. These improvements include more refined results for specific searches, and longer snippets for long tail searches.

Search Refinements

This refinement will allow Google to offer more “related searches” for various queries that users perform. Now when you do a search in Google, at the bottom of the results there is small section of links titled “Searches related to:” These are links to other related searches. Read more…

A new search engine, Newssift beta was recently launched by the Financial Times Group in an attempt to attract business users to search. It allows users to build incredibly specific queries to help return very specific and relevant results. Newssift also tend to focus on business oriented sources, including magazines, blogs, newspapers and other credible sources to help maintain higher quality results.

The site will be supported financially by the sale of ad space down the right hand side of the search results. Currently these ads are not contextually driven based on a user’s search, but plans for the change are in the works for a future release. Read more…

Thursday, Yahoo announced a new Search Monkey feature that allows Flash video and documents to be embedded right on the search page. What does this do that’s out of the ordinary? It allows searchers to view embedded content without leaving the search results page they found it on.

To illustrate the difference, I’ll use an example similar to that in the Yahoo blog. We’ll compare the difference between Google and Yahoo.

Performing a Google search for hulu simpsons yields the following result:

Notice there is an image in the ad, but when the video is clicked, it opens to the site page for viewing away from the search results page. Read more…

From what I can gather RedZee should change their mascot to an animal more identified with shiftiness than a cute Zebra. Ever since I wrote “Seeing Red – Search Engine RedZee Reviewed” I have lost count how many people have either thanked me for saving them from spending money fruitlessly at RedZee or have told me they wished they saw my article before they paid for advertising there. But what brings me to mention RedZee today is an email I received from “Abe” (his name has been changed to protect his identity), a RedZee victim who is asking me to help him recoup nearly $1500 USD he spent on the search engine. Interesting, well let’s dig deeper here:

Abe, why are you trying to recoup your spend?

“After a week and several hundred “hits” I realized the service was a scam because I had no conversions and my tracking software showed that all my the “visitors” from RedZee landed on the same page and stayed less than 1 second.”

And what can I do to help?

“I was wondering if you can help me by providing your expert opinion to my credit card company regarding RedZee’s Referral Spam practices that have resulted in my receiving thousands of ‘hits’ but no conversions over the past 6 weeks.” Read more…

It’s no secret that a continually updated website with new content being added regularly stands a good chance of doing well in Google. One of the long standing methods to regularly expand a site’s content is through the use of a blog.

While there are numerous platforms to choose from for managing a blog, few can compare with the immense flexibility offered with WordPress, and at a cost of free, the price can’t be beat either.

Google likes fresh new content, and setting up a blog on your site, assuming it is updated often with interesting and relevant material, can be one of the best things you can do to help out your search rankings. The beauty behind WordPress is that there is a wide array of totally free plug-ins you can easily install that will make your blog totally search engine friendly. Read more…

In the following video Google’s “Business Product Manager for Trust and Safety” (phew what a title) Shuman Ghosemajumder discusses Google’s interest-based advertising, how to opt-out of it and some of the misinformation that may make the technology seem invasive.

I think this video may be helpful to you if you are curious how Google targets you with advertising content based on your online activities.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google was interviewed by Charlie Rose this week.

In the interview Charlie Rose got Marissa to discuss the expected advancements Google will have within 10 years Read more…