Many SEOs and SEMs have been noticing updates at Google, Yahoo and Ask.com this past week. I thought I catch you up on what has been noticed at each engine. On the Google front, as reported at the Search Engine Roundtable, many webmasters noticed their PageRank scores drop. After a lot of discussion, concern and debate, Matt Cutts of Google commented explaining that the PageRank scores are fluctuating due to the canonicalization updates Google is pushing through. He said, as long as you are not selling links, "Don't Panic." These things will work themselves out and your rankings should [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: General | Yahoo: SEO

The paid links debate is back, this time about whether Google wants all links in a paid post to have a nofollow attribute. Below, a look at the latest round, plus a recap of this year's "War On Paid Links" by Google and where the other search engines stand on the subject. The current round was sparked by an IZEA (previously Pay Per Post) post inviting the major search engines to clarify their stances on links in paid posts. Ted Murphy blogged that he talked to Matt Cutts at Pubcon, who told him that all links in a paid post should have the nofollow attribute, not just links to the [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Link Building: Paid Links | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Yahoo: SEO

If there's anything I particularly hate when it comes to SEO, it's the meta keywords tag. I so wish it had never been invented. It's practically useless, yet people still obsess over it. In this article, I'll explain more about why you shouldn't worry about it except perhaps for misspellings, as well as which search engines support it. The meta keywords tag is one of several of meta tags that you can insert into your web pages to provide search engines with information about your pages that isn't visible on the page itself. For example, my Meta Robots Tag 101: Blocking Spiders, Cached Pages [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | How To: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Flash | SEO: General | SEO: Tagging | SEO: Writing & Body Copy | Yahoo: SEO

Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com, has confirmed with me that Ask.com is working on Edison. Edison is the code name behind merging of Ask.com's two different search technologies they own, Teoma and Direct Hit. The name comes from inventor Thomas Edison, who worked out of New Jersey where's Ask's Teoma technology came from and where it still maintains a research base. Jim would not give me more information beyond that. I did speak with Apostolos Gerasoulis who leaked this information this morning, where he explained that they will be using Direct Hit's click popularity technology with Teoma's "sub [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Ask: Web Search | Channel: SEO

Last November, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo united to support sitemaps, a standardized method of submitting web pages through feeds to the search engines. Today, the three are now joined by Ask.com in supporting the system and an extension of it called autodiscovery. This is where the major search engines will automatically locate your sitemaps file if the location is listed in a robots.txt file. Announcements are up from Google and Ask now Yahoo and Microsoft. Information on how to create sitemaps files can be found at the Sitemaps.org site. Aside from the sitemaps XML formal, you can al [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: Site Explorer

In a comment left at the Stepforth blog, Jim Lanzone, Ask.com's CEO, has said that he considers paid inclusion a "dis-service". Jim explains that he finds it "hypocritical to charge for something we need to do anyway," i.e. crawl the web to find quality pages to present to the searcher. In addition, Mr. Lanzone explains that it "blurs the line" between "paid content and editorial content" making it hard for the searcher to possibly trust the search results. Lanzone does not go as far to accuse Yahoo of skewing the results in favor of paid inclusion results. Lanzone does say that "Paid Incl [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Employees | Ask: Promotions | Ask: SEO | Ask: Web Search | Channel: SEO | Yahoo: General | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: SEO

Last week, I covered a new command for the meta robots tag -- one to prevent search engines from using Yahoo titles and descriptions. In doing that, a number of questions came up about the meta robots tag syntax itself. Google Webmaster Central has now posted "Using the robots meta tag," providing some clarity from Google. In addition, both Yahoo and Microsoft have also sent me information on using the tag. I'll run through what everyone says below, complete with charts for easy at-a-glance comparisons. The meta robots tag was an open standard created over a decade ago and designed initiall [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | How To: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO

A reader emailed me today noticing that Google was showing a date next to his listing, which made me think this was a good time to revisit how, when and where search engines show crawl dates for pages. These dates are a useful way for site owners to understand how often they are being revisited or for anyone to "squeeze the loaf" of a search engine to see how fresh it is. Here's a search engine-by-search engine rundown on date display. I'll also cover how we've sadly lost crawl dates being embedded next to listings, over the years. But that's not all! Read now and you'll even [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Ask: Web Search | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Features: Dates | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Stats: Freshness | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: Site Explorer