August 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from August 2007: 1) Google Universal Search Means Looking For Raccoons Is No Longer Family Friendly – A reader tipped me off to this. Search for raccoon, and Google Universal Search puts some pictures up at the top of the page: See it? Third one over? […]

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Below are
Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular
stories from August 2007:

1) Google
Universal Search Means Looking For Raccoons Is No Longer Family Friendly

– A reader tipped me off to this. Search for raccoon, and Google Universal
Search puts some pictures up at the top of the page: See it? Third one over? I
didn’t know a dog and a raccoon could, well…

===================

2) The Right Way
To Fix Inaccurate Wikipedia Articles
– Suppose your company, boss or
political candidate discovers that their Wikipedia article is wrong, or has
subtle inaccuracies that nonetheless paint them in an unfavorable light? Most
people unfamiliar with how Wikipedia works consider only two solutions: edit the
article or sit on their hands. Unfortunately, neither approach typically results
in the optimal outcome: a factually accurate profile containing trustworthy
information. Search marketers and reputation management professionals should
know that there are legitimate ways to correct errors in Wikipedia. Knowing the
right way to fix things is even more important now that Wikipedia results
frequently appear in the top listings of Google search results. The good news is
that Wikipedia actually offers a broad range of options for correcting
inaccurate or negative entries, and even better, all are easy to use and take
little time to implement.

===================

3) How To Win
Friends And Influence People In Social News Networks
– Still wondering
why you submit an article on Digg or Reddit and it goes nowhere? The key, as
with most things in life, is who you know. But as with links, clients or
affiliates: you want quality over quantity. You want people who are active and
have strong profiles. So how do you go about building your network? Here are
eleven ways to get started.

===================

4) Twelve SEO
Mistakes Most Bloggers Make
– Since I’m speaking this week at Search
Engine Strategies on the topic of SEO through Blogs and Feeds, it seems fitting
that this issue of "100% Organic" be related to blog optimization. Even the top
SEOs make mistakes with their blogs (and yes, I make some of them too). What are
they? Here’s my list:

===================

5) The Promise &
Reality Of Mixing The Social Graph With Search Engines
– I’m having a
bad day. Aside from my desktop crashing, we get another spate of "let’s blame
SEO" to start my morning off. Robert Scoble uses that theme as a launching pad
for a series of videos on how Facebook potentially could be a killer search
engine — regardless of the fact he seems to have no clue that "social graph" or
social networking mixing has been tried and abandoned with search. Having
watched his videos, which have sparked much discussion, I’ll do some debunking,
some educating for those who want more history of what’s been done in the area,
plus I’ll swing around to that New York Times article today that ascribes
super-ranking powers to SEO. Plus, I’ll use the F-word along the way. I said it
was a bad day.

===================

6) Want That Top
Ad Position On Google? The Rules Are About To Change
– In the upcoming
weeks, Google will be releasing an updated algorithm to determine the ads that
are displayed in the top ad spot, above the organic search results. The updated
algorithm will continue to use the quality and cost-per-click (CPC) figure but
will be slightly tweaked for that top ad position. Instead of using the actual
CPC, Google will use the advertiser’s maximum CPC in the overall equation. In
addition, Google will be applying a stricter threshold on the quality component
for the top ad positions.

===================

7) Search In The
Year 2010
– If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely,
the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring
together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and
speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these are the
names that immediately came to mind: Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known
usability guru; Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of user experience and interface
design; Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask’s unique user experience;
Larry Cornett, the VP of search experience at Yahoo!; Justin Osmer, Product
Manager for Microsoft Live search; Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search
Engine Land and always thoughtful industry observer; Greg Sterling, another
industry analyst who always has interesting insights, particularly in the local
and mobile world; Danny Sullivan, the Go To Guy of search.

===================

8) Top Ten Organic
SEO Myths
– SEO myths get crazier every year. Some are based partially
in reality, and others have spread because it’s often difficult to prove what
particular SEO action caused a resulting search engine reaction. For example,
you might make a change to something on a page of your site, and a few days
later notice that your ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase has
changed. You might naturally assume that your page change is what caused the
ranking change. But that’s not necessarily so. There are numerous reasons why
your ranking may have changed, and in many cases they actually have nothing to
do with anything that you did.

===================

9) Google Sky:
Search The Stars With Google Earth Sky
– Google Earth has released a new
version that allows you to look up at the sky and see the galaxy. The feature is
described more here. The new feature will let you virtually look up at the sky,
from any location and zoom in and fly around to other locations. The images come
from Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California
Institute of Technology and the NASA-financed Hubble.

===================

10) Geolocation:
Core To The Local Space And Key To Click-Fraud Detection
– Geolocation
is bandied about quite a bit when discussing aspects of online marketing with
location-specific components, but many are blurry as to how it works and how
it’s being used, so I thought it’d be helpful to outline the basics of it, and
to highlight some of the recent developments brought via the expansion of wifi
and mobile device use that have improved its precision. With all the enthusiasm
surrounding the use of geolocation tech, few people really speak to the
questions of accuracy with the technology as well— a point that is odd,
considering just how integral the technology is to the highly-publicized
concerns surrounding the reliability of fraud detection in the paid search
marketing industry.

To see all of our most popular stories over time, visit our
Most
Popular Stories
page.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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