There is a supposedly reliable Google updates list on the Web, though its retainers are not affiliated with Google so can only make predictions. Among the updates included in this list:

• Toolbar PageRank Update
• Google Directory Update
• Backlink Update
• Algorithm Update
• Toolbar Program Update

ahoo officially offer delivery of search results as RSS feeds. They join MSN Search in providing this type of service. Is it possible that Google’s competitors are willing to proliferate as much bandwidth as it takes just to challenge Google and steal some of its avid users? No doubt RSS feeds of this nature consume a lot of traffic and get a very low clickthrough rate from feed subscribers. In fact, people with interest in such a service are often pre-occupied with SEO and keep track of SERPs or news of one particular niche.

The news is rather disappointing for Google enthusiasts. As they offer no analogous service (Google Alerts instead), I set up about 5 feeds from MSN search (no clickthrough though, ever), 2 from Yahoo! Finance (since February 2005) and 5 from Yahoo! News. Google appear reluctant to provide feeds so I ended up using a workaround. There are similar workarounds for eBay or even static HTML pages.

An insightful little article has been released to discuss changes in Google’s advertising strategy, which ‘chokes’ companies relying on Google AdWords.

…A simple description of the way the new algorithm works is that you bid for a position of 5. As it turns out, depending on the region your ad is shown in, you could end up in position number 1 or position number 20…

…The net result of this algorithmic change is that Google is getting richer and advertisers are getting taken to the cleaners with increasingly poor advertising results for their money…

Google’s advertising programme has recently reached the headlines. They are being sued for making no effort to prevent click frauds. Such frauds result in monetary gains for Google and affiliated sites at the expense of advertising businesses. What makes the story more severe is the attempts to turn such lawsuits into class action with potential for many millions in compensation.

ZDNet report that Google will release an official Google toolbar for Firefox.

Google is poised to release a version of its toolbar for the Firefox browser, according to information sent to developers of an open source toolbar alternative.

…

It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except of course for things like the popup blocker

Various other bars (using the same API) have indicated erratic PageRank recently and PageRank was sometimes greyed out for no known reason (see below). About a month ago it was greyed out globally for 2 or 3 days straight.

Until google release their own homebred bar for Firefox, the GoogleBar project will serve as a primary alternative. However, PRGoogleBar (formerly the PageRank bar) is much more powerful as it experimentally makes use of Google Suggest for search phrase completion. It also incorporates extra shortcuts and the ability to customise SERPs behaviour. This bar is definitely better than the equivalent from Google.

Another excellent search-related bar is SearchStatus, which additionally provides Alexa ranks and does not occupy much screen space (see below).

SearchStatus in action

Finally, also worth mentioning is Yahoo’s search bar which has been kind to Firefox for quite some time.

hen I first registered schestowitz.com, I registered it for 10 years — until 2014 — that is. At the time, I could not imagine that search engines would favour sites that are committed to a long-term future. But guess what? It turns out they do.

Paying your host for domain renewal annually is a poorer choice; furthermore, it is undesirable if your site has real potential. As unfair as it may seem, Google definitely favour sites which are registered for many years and will position these higher in the SERP‘s. This helps in identifying sites that are serious about their vocation and might rule out spam sites or scrapers (site that steal content for fast, artificial growth).

There are important factors when selecting a domain name, which is a very influential choice. A domain name needs to be:

• Short
• Memorable (to distinguish from “short”. For example, m3d4n8sm.com versus feedsync.com)
• Decent and trustworthy

If you struggle to think of a good name that is also available, have a quick look at the enormous list of deleted (i.e. registered, then neglected) domains in the ICANN-inclined whois.net.

Changing of a domain is far more problematic than people imagine. Change of bookmarks, loss of SE ranks, update of links (where still possible) and loss of identity are all involved in such transition. A domain change can be a bitter, cruel and highly effort-consuming process, which makes the initial choice of a name very crucial.

schestowitz.com: rising from ~20 to ~1,000 daily visits in less than one year

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

n item I have just come across (hat tip Justin Moore) speaks about excluding MSNBot based on poor performance. MSNBot (and Yahoo! likewise) consume a great deal of bandwidth, but are barely used as search engines by the Internet audience.

From Justin:

• Exhibit A – MSNbot Crawl hits = 9561
• Bandwidth used = 124.43 MB
• Visits to wantmoore.com as a results from searches @ Google = 683* [sic.*]

• Exhibit B – Googlebot Crawl hits = 3415
• Bandwidth used = 51.74 MB
• Visits to wantmoore.com as a results from searches @ MSN = 41 [sic.*]

…

So, effective immediately:

  User-agent: MSNBot
  Disallow: /

* Order of the visits is wrong and should be reversed.

I spotted similar statistics on my domain, with Google as the top referrer at almost 20,000 visits/month. MSN remain at a miserable 200 and take almost as much bandwidth as Googlebot. I have plenty of bandwidth to spare; So, I might as well let Microsoft spend crawling time in vain.

he great news to Webmasters is that Google have filed a patent and, in the process, exposed some secrets. One of the interesting revelations, for example, is that Google prioritise domains which have been registered for a long time. Google also maintain a link ‘sandbox’, which prevents quick growth of sites with spam content.

…Gone are the days of pages and pages full of link farms. You must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics…

Webmasters, read the site carefully. Many valuable tips are listed.