Web Earnings

With the increasing problems of the overture keyword research tool and building rumors that it is to be pulled completely, wordtracker have released a free version of their keyword suggestion tool. This returns 100 results and seems alot faster than the overture tool. Having tried a few searches, the accuracy is questionable, as was the overture tool however it seems to be a good indicator and a definite first stop for an overview of a given keyword so well worth bookmarking. The paid version offers a lot more keywords and drills right down to the long tail, but for free the free version this aint bad. What I like about the overture tool was the option to change the language, this was great for working on foreign language seo/cpc when you don’t speak the language - this is one feature that the free wordtracker tool seems to lack. You can also try the Trellian tool which is a little slower but seems to dig further. It also returns alot of results for foreign language queries. There are hundreds of others on the web but now that Overture seems to be taking (what could be a permanent) vacation - these are my 2 favourite alternatives.

I sat down at my desk this morning and booted up my pc, and conducted the usual routine of checking a few search terms while my other programs loaded up and I was hit with something quite strange. It seems that Google has integrated ‘local’ results above the organic listing when you search for a service in any location. A search for hotels in Manchester produces:

After google’s algorithm update last week, this is a major step forward in search - meaning that actual businesses will be returned before the organic listings, This will have repurcussions particularly in the travel industry, as it will make it more difficult for brokers and consolidators to rank highly for location specific searches, as they don’t physically have a hotel/car rental depot etc in that location. Also significantly, on an average monitor, a search for ‘hotels in manchester for example will now only return 1 organic result above the fold! Another concern is that it takes the focus away from the adwords ads whicch may have a small impact on Google’s own revenue. This undoubtedly presents a relevant experience for users, (as long as they can keep the local results ‘clean’) - but this will reignite the debate about Google’s motives. If people use Google to navigate the web, do they really want ‘Yellow Pages’ type results?  I’m very interested to know what people think about this, will it stay? Will it work? And more importantly, how long before people find out how to spam these results? Is this the start of the end for SEO? Want more reading, try the offical blog here.

Google yesterday announced a change in their algorithm that they say will reduce the effect of ‘googlebombing’. Google’s webmaster central describes a Google bomb as “a prank where people attempt to cause someone else’s site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query.” For example, before yesterday, a search for ‘liar’ would bring TonyBlair’s biography in number one position, and Miserbale Failure would bring up George Bush’s government homepage in number one position. Google’s algoroithm has traditionally been weighted towards the inbound links to a page, and one aspect of this is the ‘anchor text’ of the link (the text that you click on to navigate to the page). A googlebomb, is created by creating links to a specific page with the target keyphrase in the anchor text.

Google’s new alogrithm ensures that this can’t happen. It should also have a large affect on sites that use automated tools to generate inbound links. There are some concerns that this may affect innocent websites, something that Google will no doubt have to look at over the next few days and weeks. For more interesting reading try this and this

Just incase anyone doesn’t know, DMOZ is now back online and accepting submissions.

Wow, must be the shortest post ever!