“Google is not ahead of us,” he told reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “In the area of search specifically, Google would lead.”
On Monday, Google Inc., which already offers similar services online for personal computers, said it will offer a new free software package for mobile devices called Android, scheduled to hit the market during the second half of next year.
Google is offering its technology to handset manufacturers so consumers will be able to use Google’s search engine, e-mail and maps on mobile devices as easily as on personal computers.
Ballmer said it was difficult to comment on Google’s mobile plans because they were still “just words on paper” that had yet to begin.
Ballmer expressed hopes for Microsoft’s business in Japan, noting that Japanese consumers were ahead of the rest of the world in accessing the Internet on cell phones because of the popularity of the “i-mode” Net-linking mobile service that NTT DoCoMo launched in February 1999.
But Ballmer acknowledged Microsoft expects to continue to lose money in its global online business for some time. Although online advertising revenue is growing, Microsoft is still “in an investment mode” in online businesses, he said.
A Microsoft Japan official demonstrated some Windows Live features, including how 20 digital photos of a waterfall taken from various angles could be edited into a seamless panoramic photo, and then uploaded on a blog — all for free.
More than a dozen Japanese companies have signed on as partners for Windows Live, including top telecommunications company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., mobile and Internet services company Softbank Corp. and electronics maker NEC Corp., according to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.
By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer
news.iwebtool.com/article_35289.html?mp=1
Many sites have seen a big drop in PageRank. Some even from 9 to 6. Hours later, many others have reported on this.
Websites affected by Google’s October PageRank update:
AndyBeard PR5 to PR3
AutoBlog PR6 to PR4
Blog Herald PR6 to PR4
CopyBlogger PR6 to PR4
Engadget PR7 to PR5
Forbes.com PR7 to PR5
JoyStiq PR6 to PR4
Master New Media PR7 to PR4
ProBlogger.net PR6 to PR4
SFGate PR7 to PR5
StatCounter PR10 to PR6
SunTimes PR7 to PR5
Tuaw PR6 to PR4
WashingtonPost.com PR7 to PR5
Most of the sites mentioned above have a lot of interlinking going on between them.
]]>Many SEO specialists think that Google has made a new change in its algo. Now they are waiting for a SERP change.
You can check the status of your PR by using our free tool.
]]>Technical recommendations for your website
• Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Make sure that all tags are closed, and that all links open the correct web page. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, thus preventing people from reaching all of your pages.
• If you move a page, set up the page’s original URL to direct people to the new page. Indicate whether the move is permanent or temporary. For more information, see What to do when your site moves.
• Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your site and isn’t on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your site. For more information, see Control which pages of your website are indexed.
• Use a robots.txt file or meta tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your site. You can use the robots.txt file to prevent web crawlers from crawling specific files and folders. For more information about the robots.txt file and the Robots Exclusion standard, see the Web Robots Pages. This site may be available in English only.
• Keep your URLs simple and static. URLs that are complicated or that change frequently are difficult to use as link destinations. For example, the URL http://www.example.com/mypage is easier for MSNBot to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn’t change is easier for people to remember. That makes it a more likely link destination from other sites.
Content guidelines for your website
The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in. The following guidelines can help you design a more efficient and popular page:
• In the visible page text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your site.
• Limit all pages to a reasonable size. We recommend one topic per page. An HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB.
• Make sure that each page is accessible by at least one static text link.
• Don’t put the text that you want indexed inside images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo.
• Add a site map. A site map helps MSNBot to find all of your pages. Links that are embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map.
• Keep your site hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each page should only be from one to three clicks away from the home page.
Techniques that may prevent your site from appearing in Live Search results
The following techniques aren’t appropriate uses of the Live Search index. Use of these techniques may affect how your site is ranked within Live Search, and may cause your site to be removed from the index.
• Attempting to increase a page’s keyword density by add lots of irrelevant words. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
• Using hidden text or links. Only use text and links that are visible to users.
• Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your page.
Source: Windows Live Help
]]>MSNBot is crawling your site, but your site isn’t in the index
There are many design and technical issues that can prevent MSNBot from indexing your site. If you’ve followed our guidelines and still don’t see your site, you may want to contact a search engine optimization company or submission service. These companies may provide tools that will help you improve your site so that we can list it.
To find site optimization companies on the Web, try searching on search engine optimization company.
Your site isn’t listed anymore
Because MSNBot continuously crawls the Web, our index continuously changes. Sites are added, and previously indexed websites may drop from the index. For example, if your server is offline or there is another access problem when MSNBot tries to crawl your website, MSNBot can’t gather your website information.
Make sure that your web server is connected to the Internet and that your website is available. For information about adding your site, see Submit your website to Live Search.
The index contains outdated content that should be deleted
Outdated pages are automatically deleted when we update our index. However, if other sites that link to your site don’t update their links to your site, we might find those outdated links when MSNBot crawls those sites. To resolve this problem, remember the following when you change links:
1. Determine the websites that link to your website.
2. Notify the website owners about your changes.
To determine who links to your site, use the following syntax in the Live Search box: link:
For example, to search for websites that link to www.microsoft.com, type link:www.microsoft.com in the Live Search box, and then press ENTER.
MSNBot crawls your site too often
MSNBot generally doesn’t try to access your site more frequently than one time every few seconds. If MSNBot determines that your site has a slow connection, it automatically adjusts how often it crawls your site. To increase the delay between crawls, use the Crawl-delay parameter in the robots.txt file to specify a minimum frequency (in seconds). For example:
User-agent: msnbot
Crawl-delay: 120
Individual crawler sections override the settings that are specified in * sections. If you’ve specified Disallow settings for all crawlers, you must add the Disallow settings to the MSNBot section you create in the robots.txt file. For example, your robots.txt file may have the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
If you add an MSNBot section, you must add any Disallow settings to the MSNBot section. For example:
User-agent: msnbot
Crawl-delay: 120
Disallow: /private/
Note
Live Search also uses a dedicated crawler to crawl certain types of sites at high frequency. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 news crawler helps provide current results for our news site. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 does not adhere to the crawl-delay setting.
If you continue to experience problems a couple days after you update the robots.txt file, contact Site Owner Support.
The server log indicates “File not found” for the robots.txt file
MSNBot looks for and follows restrictions that site owners place on web crawler activity. These restrictions are defined in a robots.txt file. MSNBot looks for any restrictions in this file before it crawls your site. The “File not found” message indicates that MSNBot didn’t find a robots.txt file on your server. To prevent this message, create an empty robots.txt file in the root folder of your website.
MSNBot does not comply with my site’s robots.txt file
After you add or update the robots.txt file, there may be a delay before MSNBot indexes the changes. If you have not created or changed the robots.txt file in the last couple days, make sure that the syntax of your robots.txt file is correct. Also, make sure that the robots.txt file is in your site’s top-level (root) web server folder. For more information, see the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
Note
MSNBot tries to access a private server
Web crawlers, including MSNBot, sometimes follow links to a private server or to a file that you don’t want crawled or indexed. This typically occurs when the web crawler finds your URL and referring server information, called the referrer, on a website that your site links to. If this occurs, review how your website links to other sites to make sure the links don’t point to a private server or file.
Source: Windows Live Help
]]>While MSNBot crawls billions of web pages, not every page is indexed. For a site to be indexed, it must meet specific standards for content, design, and technical implementation. For example, if your site’s link structure doesn’t have links to each page on your site, MSNBot may not find all the pages on your site.
Ensure that your site follows our indexing guidelines. These guidelines will help you place important content in searchable elements of the page. Also, make sure that your site doesn’t violate any of the technical guidelines that can prevent site ranking. For more information about site ranking in web search results, see About website ranking.
Source: Windows Live Help
]]>
• Helpful/useful information
• Fresh Content Update Pages Frequently
• Add Pages Frequently
• Quality and Relevant Backlinks (Inbound Links)
• Well-organized and easy-navigated structure
• No broken links
• No black hat SEO techniques
• HTML/CSS Valid
Negative Factors
• Bad Content
• Bad Structure
• Full of “adsence” or other ads
• Bad Inbounds (Poker, Porn, Sex, Drugs, or anything to that nature)
• Spamming and other SEO black hat techniques
• Broken Links
• Lots of HTML/CSS code errors.
Backed by Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, San Mateo, Calif.-based Zimbra’s clients include Comcast, many ISPs and a number of colleges. The Wall Street Journal’s Robert A. Guth wrote about the company last year.
In a post by Om Malik on his GigaOm blog, he noted: “The Zimbra-built email client marries the email and calendaring applications with visual voicemail, and eventually will tie into other Comcast triple-play services.”
Yahoo’s been on a bit of an acquistion roll of late, grabbing behavioral ad network BlueLithium for $300 million earlier this month and news aggregator BuzzTracker last week for $5 million.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang continues on his 100-day march–and now seems to be making a number of interesting moves.
The acquisition was within Yahoo Senior Vice President Brad “Peanut Butter Manifesto” Garlinghouse’s unit.
Yahoo is briefing reporters today on the deal, but left BoomTown off the list. Big mistake, as it just makes us cranky and bored!
]]>The move, announced today, speaks to how much the online world has changed around AOL, which became a high-flying Internet stock in the 1990s by providing dial-up Internet connections in millions of American households.
AOL, which is part of Time Warner, will base all of its advertising sales out of New York through a group the company is calling Platform A. That group will be lead by Curtis G. Viebranz, the former chief executive of Tacoda, an advertising targeting company that AOL acquired in July for a reported $275 million.
AOL also said in a memo to company employees today that Mike Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks and a longtime Time Warner executive, will leave AOL after the transition. He was brought in to head ad sales at AOL in 2004.
As with most of AOL’s recent history, the move to New York symbolizes a shift away from the company’s roots, and analysts said it could portend coming job layoffs of some of the company’s 4,000 employees based in northern Virginia.
A year ago, executives announced the company would make its Web portal and e-mail services free and generate money through advertising rather than by providing those services and Internet connections to subscribers. Since then, AOL has acquired a string of online advertising technology companies, including Tacoda, and revamped its Web content to try to attract more visitors.
“AOL’s leadership in this space was theirs to lose years ago, and they did lose it,” said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at Forrester Research. “This move is a great one, but my concern is: is it too little, too late?”
AOL executives put a good face on the move, which is certain to be disruptive in Virginia. AOL executives did not say how many employees would move from Virginia to the new 152,000-square-foot office, leased at 770 Broadway, just south of Union Square. Time Warner’s corporate headquarters is about three miles uptown, at Columbus Circle.
“If you’re going to be in the advertising business, you have to be in New York because that’s where all the agencies are, that’s where all of the media money is controlled, on Madison Avenue,” said Randy Falco, chairman and chief executive of AOL.
In an interview, AOL executives explained that they see the company’s advertising revenues coming more in the future not only from its branded Web site but also from thousands of publishers’ sites across the Internet that let AOL sell ads on their pages.
AOL will use targeting technology from Tacoda to capture data about consumers’ Web surfing and translate that information into a road map for delivering different ads to different people each time they log on. AOL will also use that data to sell ads in its Advertising.com unit, which delivers ads to its own network of outside publisher sites.
“There’s really been a shift in advertising to the network business,” said Ron Grant, AOL’s chief operating officer. “Portals aren’t really big enough to meet the needs of advertisers.”
]]>Quantcast’s free Quantified Publisher program hopes to benefit its partners from accurate third-party audience ratings, powered by direct audience measurement. Tom Drapeau, Director of Netscape remarked, ‘’We’ve worked hard cultivating the Netscape member base. With our recent shift to a social news focus, we wanted to see exactly how our community is developing. Until now, all available analytics have either understated or overstated our audience size. We care about—and our advertisers deserve—accurate metrics. With direct traffic measurements feeding advanced analytics, Quantcast’s Quantified Publisher program is the first to deliver them.’’
According to the company, accurate audience data is increasingly precious. Online advertising spending exceeded $16 billion last year, but it was concentrated among a handful of web properties. Forty percent filled the coffers of just two companies. Traditionally, third-party audience ratings have been both prohibitively expensive for the majority of publishers and, due to the sampling approaches employed, fraught with error. Recently, IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg highlighted this issue with an open letter to the industry’s foremost traditional research services.
Mr. Rothenberg remarked, ‘’Imagine my surprise when I came to the IAB and discovered that the main audience measurement companies are still relying on panels—a media-measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago—to quantify the Internet.’’
Quantcast endeavors to bring Internet measurement into the Internet age with the Quantified Publisher program. The free service measures website audiences directly rather than by panel-based samples alone. Interpreting this data with state-of-the-art statistical models, the Quantified Publisher program levels the playing field by giving web publishers of all sizes accurate traffic, demographic and lifestyle data on their audiences.
Matt Mullenweg, Founder at WordPress added, ‘’Quantcast combines powerful web analytics with easy-to-read charts and data. Even though we have server logs and analytics about who visits the 800,000+ blogs on WordPress.com, it wasn’t until we started using Quantcast that we got a sense of ‘who’ those people were. Bloggers finally have a real sense of their audience.’’
Quantcast’s free web service is designed to break down billions of monthly website visits to produce comprehensive audience reports for millions of web destinations. The Quantified Publisher program allows every web publisher, regardless of size, to participate directly through a simple measurement pixel. Those benefiting from the program already include Fox.com, Facebook.com, Answers.com, Indianapolis Colts (colts.com), TheNation.com, MIT Technology Review, Gawker.com, The USC DailyTrojan.com, Weather Underground (WUnderground.com), The HuffingtonPost.com, deviantART.com, CollegeHumor.com, Techdirt.com, Nerve.com, Apartmentratings.com, SmugMug.com and thousands others.
Robert Formentin, VP of Advertising Sales at Answers.com commented, ‘’The transparency Quantcast brings to the web is invaluable. As a publisher of authoritative content catering to different audiences and tastes, both we and our advertisers benefit from a trusted source that breaks down Internet audiences into actionable data.’’
Konrad Feldman, Co-Founder and CEO of Quantcast offered, ‘’As the IAB recognizes, panel-based research has passed the breaking point for sizing Internet audiences. The Quantified Publisher program is the first ratings service to use direct measurement and we’re delighted to have popular and significant destinations such as Netscape, WordPress and Answers.com as early program members.’’
The Quantified Publisher program is a free service that endeavors to improve ratings accuracy for websites via direct traffic measurement. Web publishers may add a small tag to a website’s page to begin viewing detailed audience information. As a Quantified Publisher, site owners have control over their Quantcast profile and can access traffic widgets that can be easily added to display the site’s status, reach and rank. All services are freely available.
Based in San Francisco, Calif., Quantcast’s goal is to create transparency in the online advertising marketplace. The Quantcast service analyzes billions of Internet visits each month to produce comprehensive traffic, demographic and lifestyle profiles of website audiences. Quantcast currently provides data for over 20 million websites.
Answers.com offers clear, authoritative content drawn from over 100 high-quality titles, as well as writing by its own editorial team. Founded in 1999 by CEO Bob Rosenschein, Answers Corporation also partners with, among others, Firefox, Opera, The New York Public Library and A9.com.
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