Pedro Sttau

Just read a great post by webstractions that I would like to share with you guys.

He comes up with a very interesting concept that seems to provide much more logical approach to the new indexing filtering method that Yahoo is deploying.

WebStractions presented several alternatives. One of them is the creation of a new tag such has that I presume would wrap around the content that you wish not to get indexed.

However, the most interesting idea was the usage of the old REL attribute (Relation) to dictate the purpose and origin of a given content. Could agree more with WebStractions, if it’s not original content, it quite simply shouldn’t be indexed as if it were.

I still that Yahoo is leading the way, and it’s much better having this tool then nothing to work with, using a CSS class to filter our content is a rather dubious decision., would certainly be very interested to know the reasons behind this choice.

WebStractions Yahoo’s Robots-NoContent Another shade of NoFollow

An old friend of mine down at WebMasterWorld just sent me this fantastic presentation featuring Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

So it seems that in this case the common knowledge is accurate.

I am very surprised at how fast the site’s IP change affected our SERPs.

Our website (www.easylogics.com) was crawled 23 hours ago. Precisely 2 hours later the following SERPs changes occurred:

Keyword: Web Design - We moved up one position on Google.pt: from #11 to #10
Keyword: Web Marketing- We moved up an astounding 3 positions on Google.pt: from #9 to #6

So clearly, this is an indication of how important the Server IP in relation to the place where the query is being made from.

In the next hours I will post an additional the other websites I mentioned that will be transferred from the US to a local IP and will post the results.

Shoemoney raises great points regarding Goggles supposed pursuit of Arbitrage sites.
To sum it up, according to Jeremy Google recognizes arbitrage has a valid Business model, hence it’s very unlikely Google is going after these sites, at least int he way thart way described by Jennifer Slegg.

So for a Blog that holds in it’s title SEO Experiments, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of experiment going on here!

So I decided to kick things off by beginning our first SEO experiment that I have been considering for quite awhile.

How does the server IP affect a given site is being hosted on affect the SERP.

It is common knowledge among the SEO community that being hosted in the same country where your market is will benefit your website in relation to the SERP of the keywords you wish your website would rank for

So let’s put it to the test.

I am changing three websites (currently hosted in the US) to Portuguese Data centers.
The first website is my own company’s website, so let’s start with that one:

http://www.easylogics.com | Ranks #11 for Web Design on Google.pt | Ranks #9 for Web Marketing on Google.pt

If the theory is correct, I should see some immediate changes after the next time the site is crawled (Will check Webmaster Central and post the info) and after the next index update.

Naturally it’s impossible to predict when an actual index update will occur, but usually we are talking about a couple of hours.

Now, what those changes will be is quite unpredictable? Will the website start to tank better for any of the keywords we are marketing? It might even be the case where this is true and there are no visible changes, meaning that although it positively affects the Rankling position, the factor doesn’t have enough strength to cause any visible Position increase.

Guess we have to wait and see. Will keep you posted.

I know it’s an oldie, but probably one of the best interviews I have had the pleasure of seing with Eric Schmidt.

Two days ago I was making my regular internal and client SERPS check and my company’s page was no where to be found. I pretty much had to perform the search 10 times to believe my eyes.

Now, we averaged at about SERP #3 and #5 for the term “Web Marketing” on Google.pt, as for “Web Design” we tend to rank#11.

Upon further research, I realized that my internal pages were showing up as usual, maintaining a steady rank for the usual keywords that they were ranking for.

By searching for the company name itself (easylogics), I realized that the root page of my domain had simply been removed from the index, leaving the first result as the https://www.easylogics.com

By now, everything was going through my mind. Could it have been too many inbounds at a short period of time? (Although this was very unlikely as I was very cautious not to link build too aggressively)

Although I do tend to venture off to rather gray waters at times, I do not subscribe to any SEO Black hat techniques whatsoever.

• No hidden text on any of the pages
• No Keyword dumping in the ATL tags or anywhere else in the pages
• No Duplicate content – Even the print version of the site used nofollow
• No Reciprocal links
• No purchased links. (well..at least no too many )
• No sneaky javascript redirects or anaythung remotely similar
• No unrelated outbound links

Basically no misdoing was going on. So I began looking for answers somewhere else. Why were our first results replaced with the exact same page but with the HTTPS?
I believe that Goole somewhat favours HTTPS pages in detriment to regular pages. I haven’t read or had any proof of this beyond what happened to me, but it does make sense.

An HTTPS page is a secure page that not only provides a safe way for the user to interact with the web platform, but it usually also assures a bigger degree of veracity regarding to the website itself.

Disclaimer

Now, in all honesty it is impossible to assure that any of the actions that I took had any influence at all in the resolution of my problem. Nevertheless, it was quite a coincidence that everything went back to normal after the last time crawl seeing has it had been crawled 3 times before I made the changes though any improvement in my situation.

1. Prevent Google from indexing your HTTPS pages

One of the other issues I was facing was a potential Duplicate content problem caused by a mistake of my doing.

If you have HTTPS enabled, it might be a good idea to mess around with your Robots.txt file and disallow Google from crawling these pages. Additionally a no-follow should be implemented on the Meta-tags.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

Example of a Robots.txt disallowing HTTPS indexing

User-agent: *
Disallow:/https:/

Also, if you use Sitemaps, remember to remove the HTTPS links from the XML file.

Remember, and HTTPS version is treated as an independent page, even tough the content is the same as in the regular HTTPS version.
Google FAQ - HTTP V.s HTTPS

2. Chose your preferred URL format

Making life easer for the Google Bot may actually help you. Now please notice that this is highly speculative, and there might not be a direct correlation between this and the problem it self, however, I find it logical that the easier you make your site to crawl the better it get’s crawled!
Login to your Web Master Central account, and on the diagnosis tab select “Preferred domain”, chose the domain format that you would like Google to display on your Results page.

3. Resubmit your Sitemap

Even if no changes were done to the XML file, resubmit it.

Try to be patient and wait

Easier said that done, I know! Just try and wait out for 24 hours.

My guess is, if within these 24 hours your site was crawled and nothing changed, none of the above had any effect.

Now, I understand that in order to have access to this video Sitepoint requires us to provide an email address, which I think is a highly questionable policy. If you don’t want to provide free access to your content, don’t, but asking the visitor to provide an email in order to access the freaking Video Link is beyond me.

P.s. Cease and desist letter should be sent to my Havana Adress.

Enjoy: An introduction to CSS

I was very surprised to find out how obscure Search Mash is even in the inner circlesof the Search community.

For those who don’t know, Search Mash is a Search Engine owned by Google that is used as a platform to test new features and ideas. One might even say that some elements seen on the engine are a preview of what’s to come.

Search Mash is ahead of the engine seen on Google.com e almost every technical aspect. The Query speed in infinitely faster, the navigational system much slicker and easier to use. Even the Search results seem to be more relevant, which means that the Search Mash seems to be tampering with the Algorithm itself as well.

I especially love the Search box’s fixed position on top, making it a lot easier to repeat a search.

Besides the right bar gadgets, the most visible and noticeable feature is the absence of pagination within the Search Results page. By taking advantage of Ajax, the Search Engine expands the retuls beneath each other.

I would love to see Google test out the new Adsytem within this platform!

Be sure to check it out: visit Search Mash

Just in case you’ve missed this, some time ago graywolf posts this fabulous video entry about making Wordspress SEO friendly, covering lots of interesting issues, including how to avoid duplicate content.

P.s. Would love to see more of these Michael.

I have always wondered why this feature wasn’t developed before.
Yahoo brings us the robots-nocontent tag that literally allows us to prevent indexing of specific content within our webpage that for some reason we don’t want indexed.
The first thing that came to my mind when I first heard of this was – Duplicate content.

This seems to be the perfect solution to avoid the unnecessary duplication of content on WebPages and subsequently on the Search results.

Quoting should be about bringing value to the content that is being quoted, not the other way around. This new Tag does just that, it doesn’t remove the whole intend behind quoting, but at the same time doesn’t remove the ownership from the original content providers.

Step Forward towards better search results

Most importantly, if used properly, this new features improves the relevancy of the search results.

I don’t want nor do I need to find the same content regurgitated over and over again on the search results and WebPages. Using this tag should be instated has a good practice just as the no-follow usage was initially was intended to be used.

How does it work?

Very simple. Just assign a class attribute - robots-nocontent within a div, span or paragraph tag. It will affect the entire contents within that tag just like any other class attribute would.

On a final note, on Danny Sullivan’s Daily Search Cast I heard that even Matt Cutts praised this feature, which might indicate that we might see Google using it in the very near future.

Reference: Yahoo Supports New Robots-Nocontent Tag To Block Indexing Within A Page

An interview worth seing, if not only for the moment when Eric Schmidt is confronted with the Double Click purchase issue and about performix!

Most people tend to attribute Google’s success over their direct competitors to things such has technological advantage from any stand point, the search product itself being more usable and accessible, and of course, brand trust and recognition.

However, I think that one key factor isn’t taken into account.
Unlike Ask, Yahoo and Live search, Google is an international Search Engine. Goggles engine provides relevant (or at least they try to) results based on the country your search from.

If I’m searching for a Web Design firm in Portugal I don’t want to be served American or firms based on the UK.

By a simply switch in Google’s country extension, I am able to get much more relevant results based on my Nation’s market.

Now, It’s uncomprehensable to me how all the other major engines tend to scarp and ignore markets outside the US and Uk.

Of course that neither of them restrict content from abroad, but the the results are neither relevant or optimized to the places where the queries are being done.

Modern search is about relevancy, Google understands this.

If your not so keen on generating your Site-maps by hand, I suggest you use a tool that I found last month and got completely addicted too.

It’s an absolutely fantastic script that crawls your internal links, detecting 404 erros, pages with duplicate content, invalid redirects, and much more.

After validating the links, you get to choose the update rate and priority of each page and then simply finalize by generating your XML.

http://www.sitemapdoc.com/

Was just doing my daily SERPS check and…