There’s been a lot of speculation about Google Caffeine. When will it launch? What will change? What will happen to my results?

The speculation needs to stop. Caffeine is almost certainly live right now—the next query you type into Google will probably reflect Caffeine’s changes.
(more…)

(photo source: Nima Badiey)

Mistakes are bound to happen! We all make them – but in life we try to avoid them. Sigmund Freud was once quoted:

“From error to error one discovers the entire truth.”

But when businesses are hard-pressed for time and money, mistakes are not an option. Even if you are a Fortune 50 company, you may be in greater danger to succumbing to SEO ignorance. Upper-level management may not understand what it is or why it’s even important. Here are five common mistakes to avoid at all costs:

1. Self-centered Marketing

Just because a landing page looks nice and has a lot of content doesn’t mean that it has any relevance. If your homepage is full of your “company”, chances are that relevance for your consumers as well as search engines is lost. Many companies make the mistake of adding too much of themselves on a landing page, without explaining to the user what they do, and how that will help the user. Make content relevant and straight-forward.
(more…)

New York clothing store, RAG New York‘s traffic from search engines continues to rise, months after search engine optimization by Blue Fountain Media was performed on the site from April to September 2008.

(more…)

It’s amazing how many poorly researched, poorly written, and poorly targeted paid search campaigns I’ve come across on the major search engines without even really looking for them. It’s obvious why Google runs those $25 free AdWords credit promotions for new users; if you don’t know what you’re doing, that money goes pretty quickly.

Whether they’re using Google AdWords, Yahoo! SEM, or Microsoft adCenter, here are some of the dangerous thoughts that seem to go through the minds of PPC users:

(more…)

With online sales at an all-time high, it seems Christmas has come early for RAG New York. The New York clothing company’s online storefront, RAGNewYork.com, continues to enjoy remarkable growth, even months after the conclusion of our search engine optimization efforts.  RAG has paid nothing for advertising since May, but they are still feeling the effects of SEO, in the form of ever-increasing website traffic, over 65% from search engines.

   (more…)

The NYT recently published a story, “Stuck in Google’s Doghouse,” about Sourcetool.com owner Dan Savage who sent a 4,000-word letter to the antitrust division of the Justice Department to fight against the Yahoo! – Google PPC deal.  Sourcetool is a free directory for industrial product websites. Mr. Savage was using Adwords to target relevant keywords and attract visitors who would then click on his Adsense ads to pay his bills. He used to make around $115,000/month from $653,000 in revenue.

(more…)

Now that the Olympics are over, I decided it would be time to take a look at how every nation did at the Games. Checking the 3 majors search engines for the word “Olympics”, it appears that Yahoo dropped the ball on this one. Live and Google produce relevant medal count “one boxes”, while Yahoo just gives news. Looks like Live Search did the best out of the 3 search engines on this one and overall for the Olympics:

(more…)

Last week we saw that Google had done a better job at serving up Olympics-related words with events listings in a one box format. However, now that the Games are underway, they appear to have fallen behind both Yahoo and Live Search who are giving users relevant results, not just algorithm-produced links. As Search Engine Watch noted, when searching for the name of an Olympic athlete, even for one as big of a deal as Michael Phelps, Google fails to deliver the results that users are looking for.

(more…)

As I looked up when the swimming events in Beijing were going to occur, I noticed that the first results that appear in Google are a one box with an Olympic swimming icon alongside the upcoming swimming events. This is one of the ways that Google remains useful: by being relevant. It is not enough to provide results, it is important to give the results that people are looking for.

Then I noticed that Yahoo had followed suit. Of course there was a paid advertising above Yahoo’s one box, making is a big less attractive to click on, especially since the events listed were not clickable. Score: Google 1-0 Yahoo.