Indexing Web Pages & Discovery

I wrote a comment to Ann at SearchEngineJournal.com about her article on ensuring Google is indexing pages of your site found at the link below

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-google-to-index-your-site-deeper/7566/#comment-1084520

Ann seems to think there is a scientific method to having pages indexed. This is fine but SEO is not really a rocket science form of advertising online.

When I wrote one needs only to submit a valid xml sitemap to the search engines various Webmaster offerings to have your site or blogs pages indexed, Ann replied that a sitemap only helps with discovery, and not indexing.

I would like to explain to Ann and others that may be reading, that discovery and indexing go hand in hand with one another, as they are part & parcel.

In order to index a sites pages, those pages must be discovered. Once discovered, the pages would then be indexed. Pages that are discovered and not indexed are typically due to html errors, otherwise once discovered the page would be indexed. In fact it may be indexed many times especially if the content is changed and the sitemap has the proper settings to ensure continual crawling.

However pages cannot be indexed that are not discovered. If the page is not discovered, then there would be no way possible to have it indexed within the constraints of logic.

Hence it is best to submit a valid xml sitemap. Build a sitemap for your users as well, and then send high PR one way links from other relevant sites to your visitor sitemap page, and pass PR to your internals.

Made For Affiliates, By Affiliates. Pepperjam Network.

One of my favorite things is seeing others succeed. I like seeing others who started an online business quite a few years ago truly succeed and grow, and it is great to see a business near your own have great success so its great to see another Pennsylvania based business being recognized. Another is sitting on the Small Business Council of the company that recoginizes business achievement Fortune Inc.

Kris Jones President & CEO is the man who built his company into a Fortune 500 company. Pepperjam is a multi faceted company offering marketing services combines with technology services to assist businesses in meeting their online marketing goals.

Pepperjam has been featured on The Inc 500s fastest growing company list for the last three years and it is fun to see them on this list. What is amazing is the list is for 2007 and as such does not include earnings from 2008 and the launch of the PepperJam Network.

PepperJam Network brings together an impressive list of Advertisers with top quality publishers bringing the Internet community fantastic offers that people want. Top name brands turn to PepperJam to build their Internet business.

As an affiliate marketer and having websites built that feature many of the PepperJam Networks offer. PepperJam has top quality backend that is easy to navigate and feature todays hot Advertisers so your offers will convert and make you money. I encourage everyone to hook onto the rising star that is PepperJam.

Join Pepperjam Network today!

Introduction to Google Ranking -From GoogleBlog by Amit Singhal

Everyone who is interested in SEO should be salivating at the mouth on this news as Amit is part of the search rankings team and is blogging how Google determines which pages deserve to be at the top of the organic SERPs. Google says they are going to give us the information as to how they determine good webpages for upper results rankings in the Google SERPs.

Amit is a Google Fellow who has been working within the Search a.k.a. Information Retrieval (or IR) field for over 18 years. He has been with Google since 2000 and knows a great deal about how their search algorithms work.

Understanding how the Google Algoritm works has allowed me to dominate Google Front Page results and as such I feel it is a competitive edge that I have over other SEOs.

So if you want to compete in the SEO field it is critical you read what Amit has to offer and learn as much as you can about algorithms.

Today Amit covers three topics

1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention

I have written about each of these concepts myself and am glad to see that Google is going to touch on them as well.

I will run down my thoughts as to how each affects your search results and goals.

1. Best local results served internationally is really quite simple, I am in Italy and search Google.com for ‘Italian Pizza’ Google will typically know I am looking for a place to order pizza in Italy and serve me the most relevant local establishments first followed by regional results then national and then international.

2. Keep It Simple - Not much to go on about here - it is a derivative of Keep It Simple, Stupid! Google the term if you have further questions.

3. No Manual Intervention - No hand bans - I have said this a few times over the years, 1,000,000,000s of webpages prevents the company from manually placing sites at the top or other such non-sense accusing Google employees of nepotism.

Again it would be a logistical nightmare to manually try to manage the SERPs. Google seems to have a hard enough time keeping the Paid Search side under control.

They can hand ban those sites caught doing malicious or illegal acts. enough said.

So make sure to stay tuned to Googles Blog for the next installment.

Google Affiliate Network

I just received an E-mail from DoubleClick Performics that they are now Google Affiliate Network.

This should really be interesting as many affiliate marketers will want to join Google now as another way to further earn revenues.

Here is the E-mail

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great

To say the least this definitely gives food for thought as to what can be accomplished once all the pieces are in place!

I would really like to see comments on this and what others think of the new Network!

Microsoft has reported that talks with Yahoo are over and there will be no formal merger. Microsoft wanted to buy only Yahoo Search in the latest round of discussions.

The Yahoo Board of Directors felt that this was not the best deal for it’s shareholders and rejected the idea of selling off only the Search side of their business.

There are also reports of Microsoft wanting to have regulators look at the Yahoo Google search deal that has been stuck, based on Anti Trust laws.
Microsoft took this same tactic with Google / DoubleClick which only extended the timeline to get the deal done with the Government looking into the deal a bit more.

Ballmer is beginning to look like a baby with his actions.

More to come!

Microsoft Issues Statement Regarding Yahoo!

Microsoft on Sunday posted an announcement that it will continue to explore and pursue alternatives to improve & grow their online services and advertising business.
Microsoft is has reached out to Yahoo! With what they consider an alternative that would involve deal with Yahoo. This would not be an acquisition of Yahoo but rather an agreement to incorporate parts of Yahoo into the Microsoft family.

While it is not considering a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! they are reserving the right to reconsider an alternative which will depend on other future developments and / or discussions that might take place with Yahoo. This could also include discussion with shareholders of Yahoo, Microsoft or with other third parties.

Other third parties would seem to indicate Carl Icahn who has a great amount of money and has begun buying Yahoo shares to try to throw out Yahoos board but who does not have enough money or power to make a serious play by himself.

Joining Ballmer was almost cast in stone!