Yahoo!'s New, Faster, More Efficient Crawler

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

Yahoo! Search blog: Weather Report – The New Yahoo! Search Crawler (Slurp) Is Here!

This is great! I look forward to being able to see the results on Yahoo! of my optimization efforts sooner.

technorati tags:yahoo!, new, crawler, search

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By Courtney @ 9:19 PM

Using Flock for SEO

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Flock, a new, fantastic web browser for all your Web 2.0 needs.

I have been using Flock since then, and I have to admit, my first post about this magnificent piece of software did not do it justice. The built-in blogging capabilities have made blogging a lot easier and more efficient, hence why gridlock has been updated more often. The multi-item clipboard, called web snippets, with drag and drop capabilties shave literally hours off of what I have to do on a day-to-day basis, and the RSS reader helps me stay on top of all the new changes in the SEO world (which I can then share with you with a click of the mouse by utilizing the "Blog This" button after each item in a feed).

This browser is fully customizable with extensions as well. There are extensions to help you at work in almost any profession, and as an internet marketer, I can tell you the tools available in extensions for Flock are invaluable.

The first is the Google Toolbar. As I was using Apple's Safari before, I couldn't make use of the Google Toolbar and had a seperate Konfabulator (now Yahoo! WIdget Engine) widget telling me the PageRank of each page on the web I visited. Now I can use the Google Toolbar in a browser I like.

The RankQuest SEO Toolbar is absolutely incredible. A series of SEO analysis tools right in every browser window. A keyword finder, a keyword density analyzer, a meta tag analyzer, link viewer, code cleaner, an HTML validator all at the click of a mouse. You also have the option to click the "All Tools" button and have each tool analyzing the current page you are on in new tabs. Plus, there are buttons that will take you to your incoming links, site pages indexed, and domain links in each of the major search engines, with the option to open each in a new tab with one click. There are also a couple of drop-down menus that will take you to the most popular SEO forums and resources, and another menu full of other tools, including a whois, link popularity analysis, etc.

There is also the Web Developer Extension, which I haven't used yet but sounds great: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. And it must be great because it has a 5-star rating with 138 votes.

Anyone else had experience with Flock in the SEO industry? Are there any other tools or uses you have used and find invaluable? Post a comment! I'd love to learn what more this application can do!

• Visit Flock on the Web
• Browse the Extensions
• Read the Flock Blog
  

technorati tags:flock, browser, seo

Blogged with Flock

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By Courtney @ 10:19 AM

Google PageRank: Neither the Alpha or the Omega

It just doesn’t have a ‘measurable’ value that warrants earmarking any serious marketing dollars. It is being overvalued in today’s SEO landscape. Don’t spend time and money trying to get a higher Page Rank. Just love it for what it is.

The Google Toolbar PageRank Demystified

This is a great article written by David Harry. He talks about the Google PageRank phenomenon and how too much weight is put on this one number. I have to agree, wholeheartedly, that most people who have any interest in SEO tend to treat Google as the the be all and the end all of internet marketing and Pagerank is that expressed in a number.

The nature of SEO is more dynamic than just a rating out of ten. Google may have a majority of the search traffic on the internet, but if you focus only on that, you're missing out on a mass of potential customers who just surf in, look on listings pages, hear about your page from a friend, or use other search engines. And if you focus only on Google PageRank as opposed to where you actually rank on Google, you are truly wasting your time. As David Harry points out:

Pages with PR8 can be found ranked 20-30 positions below pages with a PR3 or PR4. Additionally, the toolbar numbers are updated only every 3-6 months, making the values even less useful.

There is also the nature of the internet and technology itself. There once was a time when the majority of web surfers used WebCrawler as their launching pad into the, then, not-so-vast expanse that is the world wide web, not Google, and there may come a day again when Google doesn't own internet search.

Bottom line: Cover all your bases, pay attention to where your traffic comes from and where your target audience is most likely to be. Offer a great, informative and user-friendly web site and you will be rewarded not just by traffic, but by Google, too.

technorati tags:google, pagerank, seo

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By Courtney @ 1:08 AM

Google Makes Reasonable Efforts Against Click Fraud

Those of you who follow news about online advertising closely are seeing plenty about the issue of "click fraud" lately. Since there's been a development in a case Google is involved in, you might like to hear about it.

As part of the settlement in the click-fraud case Lane’s Gifts v. Google, we agreed with the plaintiffs to have an independent expert examine our detection methods, policies, practices, and procedures and make a determination of whether or not we had implemented reasonable measures to protect all of our advertisers. The result of that is a 47-page report, written by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, Professor of Information Systems at NYU. The report was filed with the court in Texarkana, Arkansas, this morning.

The bottom-line conclusion of the report is that Google’s efforts against click fraud are in fact reasonable.

Official Google Blog: Findings on invalid clicks

technorati tags:google, click, fraud

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By Courtney @ 12:31 AM

New! Track Your Packages with MSN Search

MSN Search has added a new feature: tracking your packages from major courier services such as UPS and FedEx.

Now I can go to MSN Search to track packages from any of four providers, FedEx, DHL, UPS, and USPS.

Here are a few examples of searches you can do on MSN Search to track your packages; just plug in your own IDs for the x’s:

• Where is FedEx package xxxxxxxxxxxx?
• Tracking status xxxxxxxxxxxx
• DHL shipment xxxxxxxxxxx
• xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

MSN Search's WebLog : Expecting a Package?

technorati tags:msn, courier, package, track

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By Courtney @ 4:32 PM

Yahoo! Teams up With Motorola

Yahoo, Motorola: Together At Last

Yesterday the Internet powerhouse, Yahoo, announced a deal with Motorola that will embed Yahoo's data service into millions of mid-range and high-end Motorola phones. Yahoo data services include e-mail, web, address books, photo albums, Yahoo Messenger and more. At first this deal seemed a little ho-hum to me, but Yahoo has a lot of good services that will get even better when accessed on a cellphone. Expect to be mobile Yahoo'ing in early 2007. – Travis Hudson

Yahoo and Motorola In Multi-Year Phone Pact [Digital Trends]

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By Courtney @ 12:58 PM

Yahoo! Has a New Look

Check out Yahoo!'s new look:

After several months as a beta preview, the new version of the Yahoo home page went live on Yahoo.com today. The interface is heavy on the Ajax and filled with customizable, interactive elements. As we first reported in May, the new Ajaxified Yahoo front door has been live at www.yahoo.com/preview for several months. Today, the page was moved over to the frontdoor of the main site.

The most notable changes are the new tabbed news panels in the middle of the page and in the top right. The top panel holds featured content, and users can click through the tabbed categories (Entertainment, Sports, Life) without page refreshes. There's also a separate tabbed menu for news. The news menus and the featured content areas have extensive links to videos and photos.

Read more at Wired: Monkey Bites

technorati tags:yahoo, search, engine, new, look

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By Courtney @ 10:44 AM

Amazing New Browser - Flock!

Flock is a new Firefox-based, cross-platform web browser that seemlessly integrates an RSS reader, blogging, photo management services such as Flickr and Photobucket, bookmarks synchroniztion and sharing with del.ici.ous, a multi-item copy/paste clipboard and a multitude of extensions that are easily installed and add endless features to the browser.

You can view a video on how to use Flock at ScreenCastsOnline - a video tutorial site for all things Mac.

If you want to take a look at some of the extensions available to enhance your Flock browser, such as a Google Toolbar, a MyStickies toolbar, a media-player controller and my personal favorite, an SEO toolbar, just visit the Flock Extensions page.

Whether you use a Mac, Windows or Linux, give this browser a try, it's absolutely amazing.

.

technorati tags:apple, mac, broswer, software

Blogged with Flock

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By Courtney @ 10:15 AM