There were 83 participants in the Search For The Cure team, many familiar faces from the search community. Duane Forester, the team captain, raised $3,667. Matt Cutts raised $3,721. SEOs were exchanging photos as well as quite a few digs at each other all month via Twitter using the #seostache hashtag. We’ve been positing mustache progress throughout Movember on our Facebook page.

Duane, Mike and Matt sporting their final 'staches for Movember.

Along side the Search For The Cure team, Halvorsen also coordinated The Manta Moustaches, which raised $3,000.

According to Movember.com:

• 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
• 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer
• Every 15 minutes, a man dies of prostate cancer in the US.
• Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in men
• In 2010, there were only 64,927 Americans who participated in Movember, but they raised $7.5m.

Duane blogged about it on the Bing Search Blog saying, “Schema, Sitemaps and ‘staches: What do they have in common?” Nothing really, except that those involved in schema and sitemaps are participating in this competition, known as Movember. Here are the rules:

On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shaven face. For the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.

Mike encouraged Cutts and Forrester to compete and you can find each of their profiles and support their campaign.

For more details, see Mike Halvorsen’s post.

Original photo by Reuben Yau.

Before There Was Panda, There Was Florida

At the end of 2003, Google released what became known as its Florida Update. Now kids, if you think Panda was bad, Florida was a storm that seemingly blew the roofs off SEO homes everywhere.

It hit during the holiday shopping period. It caused confusion and havoc among many SEOs. Search engine optimization forums like Webmaster World, which gave Florida its name, lit up like crazy.

As with the Panda Update, there were plenty of people who actually did better after Florida than before. With any update, for all the losers that yell loudly about their pain, there are winners who silently smile over their fortune.

Still, there were lots of publishers that felt they’d been doing right by Google but then penalized for reasons they didn’t understand. And it came out of the blue, something they didn’t expect.

How About Some Warning?

As the industry cleaned up from the Florida mess, there was much discussion on how the search engines and SEOs could better work together.

While at times they can seem enemies, they are also part of the same ecosystem. Indeed, Google itself recommends that people follow SEO best practices.

I gave a keynote talk in August 2004, where I suggested a variety of ideas I’d gathered from an online discussion. One of these was from Nuttakorn Rattanachaisit, who said:

SEs should pay attention to webmaster or website owner by giving them the information when they are changing the algorithms or something which are affected to their site. Because they don’t know what happen about their site when they dropped from the listing. Sometimes it is not their fault. I see many website which has a lot of quality content but they aren’t ranked in Search engine.

I termed this a “weather report” and listed it at the top of ideas I discussed. The slide above is from my talk back then.

2005: Yahoo Issues The First Weather Report, Google Follows

On March 31, 2005, Yahoo granted my wish — and Rattanachaisit’s suggestion — by issuing its first algorithmic weather report. I got a nice call-out in Yahoo’s post, but more important, publishers across the web got a pledge that Yahoo would be keeping them updated about coming changes:

It is important to have a dialog with publishers who rely on our product to send them visitors and that these content providers provide us with valuable feedback on our search products.

So consider this our first weather report. We’re releasing a new index tonight. You should see a lot of new content in the index as well as fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches.

Google soon followed with its own weather reports. The first that I can track down was issued by Cutts on August 19, 2005, where he wrote:

In fact, I’ll issue a small weather report: I would not recommend using sneaky JavaScript redirects. Your domains might get rained on in the near future.

Weather Reports Die Out Toward 2010

The weather reports kept coming, in various ways, through early 2010. Here, you can see some of the many that Yahoo issued:

As for Google, weather reports continued to come unofficially through Matt’s blog, such as this one in 2006, in 2007, or a psuedo-weather report about new Toolbar PageRank coming out in 2008.

I’m not sure when the Google reports ended. Perhaps they never really have, as I know Cutts has continued to offer tons of unofficial heads-ups about various things through his blog. But certainly, I think it’s fair to say that the idea of search engines issuing regular weather reports kind of died off.

Bringing Back The Weather Reports

Perhaps good ideas always get reinvented. Two weeks ago, during the US Senate hearing about Google and competition, Senator Amy Klobuchar had one of the last questions to put to Google chairman Eric Schmidt. And what she wanted was weather reports. From my live blogging (the brackets show me exclaiming that hey, she wants weather reports!):

Klobuchar: Can you do more to explain when changes are coming [weather reports!]

Schmidt: We do some, we could do more. but if we’re completely transparent, we’d be heavily gamed by sites trying to spam us. Do believe we can do better job to describe the change.

After last week’s news about the Panda update was made official, I went back to Google and asked about bringing back the weather report concept. That’s because, despite what Schmidt said, lately Google hasn’t been issuing warnings before a change happens.

Google will confirm some updates if we or other publications ask, but this is after the fact. And we’d rather not be in the position of having to constantly be asking if Google would confirm if something that just happened was a Panda update, or another type of algorithm update or so on. Having regular official updates about updates (heh) through something like the Google Webmaster Central blog would be better.

In response, Google told me last week:

We’ve been reserving the moments to blog about changes when it’s a significant one.

Panda Weather Report Issued

That seemed pretty much like no, there aren’t going to be weather reports. But then early today, Matt Cutts tweeted:

Weather report: expect some Panda-related flux in the next few weeks, but will have less impact than previous updates (~2%).

Panda doesn’t constantly run. It’s a special algorithm that Google processes content through on a periodic basis. Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update explains much more about this.

What Cutts is saying isn’t that Panda “flux” will be happening during the next few weeks but rather to expect another Panda Update (Panda 2.6), a minor one compared to some past ones, to happen in the next few weeks.

That fits in with the regular cycle we’ve come to know, which so far has been this:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about  4 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)

Overall, I’m encouraged. Weather reports might be making a comeback, and that’s a good thing. I’ve asked Google again about this, and I’ll update if I hear more. And Bing, if you’re listening, we want weather reports from you, too.

Postscript: I received this further update from Google:

In general, we still want to be giving weather reports or advance notice where it makes sense. It can be difficult to decide when to talk about updates or algorithm changes, not only because changes are often not very noticeable to the general populace, but because we make over 500 algorithmic changes to our rankings a year.

The comic reads:

Employee: “Google found out that we use fake links to boost our search rank.”

Employee: “Now our website only shows up when someone enters the search string “dung for brains.”"

Boss: “They won’t get away with this!”

Computer [aka Google]: “Shut your pie hole.”

That is two in a row from the Dilbert cartoons on the topic of SEO.

Related Articles

• Dilbert Cartoon Says “No” To Black Hat SEO
• Those Special Google Logos, Sliced & Diced, Over The Years
• SEO Gets Dissed by CBS TV Series “The Good Wife”
• Thoughts On Web Developers, SEO & Reputation Problems
• 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques
• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO

The comic reads:

“I want you to use “black hat” methods to raise our website’s ranking on search engines.”

“What do you like best about that ideas – the fact that it’s unethical or the near certainty of getting caught?”

“That’s sort of a loserish thing to say.”

“Talking doesn’t work for people like me.”

Scott Adams: No Stranger To Google

It’s probably best that Dilbert decided to stay with acceptable practices. After all, creator Scott Adams depended on Google for good advice a few years ago to help treat his speech disorder. Our past article, Dilbert’s Scott Adams: Will Google Replace Your Doctor?, has more about that.

Plus, in 2002, one of Google’s most famous special logos — or “Doodles” — was a Dilbert one created by Adams that ran across multiple days.

It also later was placed on coffee cups. Here are some pictures of that from a cup that Search Engine Land editor in chief Danny Sullivan has:

Getting that strip drawn turned out to be quite the saga, one that former Googler Doug Edwards covers here. Edwards is also author of the new book with insider accounts of the life and times at Google, “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

Related Articles

• Those Special Google Logos, Sliced & Diced, Over The Years
• SEO Gets Dissed by CBS TV Series “The Good Wife”
• Thoughts On Web Developers, SEO & Reputation Problems
• 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques
• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO

Click2Rank published an outstanding infographic documenting the various facts gleamed from these videos. He named the infographic the Matt Cutts Webmaster Infographic.

Here is a low resolution version, but you can find the better quality version Click2Rank.

It has been a fun week for infographics. We had the Matt Cutts debunking flowchart and our SEO Periodic Table.

Mayer joins the company as its Chief Strategy Officer, and will oversee sales, marketing, product development and operations. Ben Wright, another ex-Yahoo, is also joining Trada as its VP of Service Delivery and Marketplace.

For Mayer, this latest position expands on a lengthy career that’s seen him work at several of the web’s early search engines. As Danny Sullivan detailed last summer when Mayer left Yahoo, that career began at RealNames and included stops at Inktomi, FAST Search, Overture and eventually Yahoo. He was one of Yahoo’s most public search employees over the past seven years.

Trada’s paid search marketplace matches advertisers and its community of more than 1,000 freelance search marketers. The company formed in late 2008 and launched its marketplace publicly last March.

Sitting in front with the laptop and yellow shirt is Google’s Matt Cutts. In the blue shirt in front is Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. In the back row, from left to right is Michelle Robbins, Director of Technology; Matt McGee, Executive News Editor; and Elisabeth Osmeloski, Executive Features Editor.

Here are the lyrics of the carol:

On the 12th day of Googlemas my Googlebot gave to me…

12 optimized titles,
11 local listings,
10 Sitemaps submitted,
9 bloggers linking,
8 sitelinks showing,
7 Google trends,
6 social signals,
5 followed links,
4 404s fixed,
3 301s,
2 indented listings,
and a first place organic ranking.

Durrani was killed in a London Underground accident last week, struck by a train, apparently knocked in front of it. That’s not hard to happen on the Tube. Platforms are often crowded, and except in some rare newer sections, there are no barriers.

He’s being remembered online right now through a Twitter tribute where thoughts are being sent along with the #jaamit hashtag:

A number of tribute blog posts have also gone up, including:

• Jaamit, from Rishil Lakhani (very nice one, 25 comments already)
• Jaamit Durrani Tribute, from the head of OMD Group
• We’ll miss you Jaamit at State of Search
• A tragic loss to the industry – RIP Jaamit, from Pete Young, collects some of the condolences sent on Twitter
• A Tribute to Jaamit from freshegg
• Jaamit Durrani, RIP, from Econsultancy
• Goodbye to My Good Friend Jaamit Durrani from SEOTops, which has also set up a memorial site where donations can be made.

SMX West will feature three jam-packed days with over 60 sessions of cutting-edge content on search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), social media marketing, local and mobile search marketing, landing page conversions and more.

The conference is programmed by Search Engine Land’s own Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, who have been educating marketers for well over a decade.

SMX West is an outstanding value! Register for an All Access pass today and pay only $1195 for all the exceptional content, invaluable online and off-line networking activities, and the essential conveniences like WiFi in session rooms and hot lunches that SMX events provide. You’ll be satisfied by SMX West, we guarantee it!

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