'The reasons why!!!', I hear you cry. Well, G.W Bush will certainly be happy, as his Google Bomb was one of the biggest and most commonly known of all. The Bush Google Bomb was 'miserable failure'. If you search for miserable failure on Google, then www.whitehouse.gov/president used to some up as the top result. Since Google updated their algorithms, the top results are now articles discussing how miserable failure put the whitehouse at the top.

Another top official who will be pleased by the defusing of the Google Bomb is Tony Blair. He was at the top of Google for the search term 'liar'.

The reasons people will not be so happy are people who do off-site optimisation for unrelated search terms, effectively Google Bombing. For example; If site A has lots of SEO text to site B, but site B has little or no relevance to SEO, then site B will be penalised. But, site B might be involved in SEO. This is an unlikely scenario, but you get the drift.

"It's completely automated", says Google. Whilst claiming it not perfect, Matt Cutts hints that the algorithm update to defuse the Google Bombs will do the job.

Google produces search results automatically using software to examine a web site's pages and determine the relevancy of the content and the relevancy of popular sites that link to them. The more popular web sites that link to another web site the more likely that web site will list highly in the search results for that search term.

Whilst this has not been a major problem for Google before, Google Bombing became very popular and the main Google index started to suffer.

For more information, visit: -
Bigmouthmedia
Matt Cutts' Blog
Searchengineland

What is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is the best method to retain your search engine rankings and Google PageRank when redirecting web pages or a website. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently" by most search engines. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name. You implement the 301 redirect by creating a .htaccess file. But, this will only work on Apache servers and the like.

What is a .htaccess file?

When a visitor/spider requests a web page, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

How to implement the 301 Redirect

1. To create a .htaccess file, open a simple text editor and save the file as .htaccess (there is no extension).
2. If you already have a .htaccess file on your server, download it to for editing.
3. Place this code in your .htaccess file:
   
   redirect 301 /olddir/oldpage.htm http://www.newdomain.com/newpage.htm
   
4. If the .htaccess file already has lines of code in it, skip a line, then add the above code.
5. Save the .htaccess file
6. Upload this file to the root (/) folder of your server.
7. Test it by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be immediately taken to the new location.

Notes: Don't add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - place the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/olddir/oldpage.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.newdomain.com/newpage.htm (new path and file name)

When the search engines spider your site again they will follow the rule you have created in your .htaccess file. The search engine spider doesn't actually read the .htaccess file, but recognizes the response from the server as valid.

During the next update, the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, plus some fluctuations in rankings. According to Google it will take 6-8 weeks to see the changes reflected on your pages.

Other ways to implement the 301 redirect:

To redirect ALL files on your domain use this in your .htaccess file if you are on a unix web server:

redirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com

redirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com

You can also use one of these in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html

redirect permanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html

redirectpermanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html

This will redirect "index.html" to another domain using a 301-Moved permanently redirect.

If you need to redirect http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com and you've got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

or this:

Tip: Use your full URL (ie http://www.domain.com) when obtaining incoming links to your site. Also use your full URL for the internal linking of your site.

If you want to redirect your .htm pages to .php pages and you've got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule (.*).htm$ /$1.php

If you wish to redirect your .html or .htm pages to .shtml pages because you are using Server Side Includes (SSI) add this code to your .htaccess file:

AddType text/html .shtml

AddHandler server-parsed .shtml .html .htm

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes

DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html

Meta Redirect

To send someone to a new page (or site) put this in the head of your document:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10" url="http://mynewsite.com/">

Content="10"; tells the browser to wait 10 seconds before transfer, choose however long you would like, you can even choose 0 to give a smoother transition, but some (really old) browsers aren't capable of using this so I'd suggest putting a link on that page to your new site for them.

With a meta redirect the page with the redirect issues a 200 OK status and some other mechanism moves the browser over to the new URL. With a 200 OK on both pages, the search engine wants to index both the start page and the target page - and that is a known spam method (set up 10,000 domains full of keywords for the search engines to index then meta redirect the "real visitor" after 0 or 1 seconds to the "real site" ) so using it gets you penalized.

The 301 redirect simply issues a Permanently Moved message in the HTTP header which tells the search engine to only index the target URL.

Conclusion: The safest way to redirect old web pages to the new pages or old web site to the new web site and keep the same search engine rankings is to use the 301 redirect. It will also pass on the page rank from your old site to your new site.

This is a huge lead against vertical integrated companies like Microsoft, Sony and Apple. For example, the Sony Walkman, Apple Ipod and Microsoft Zoon all require proprietary software to integrate with the rest of your technology. This is the basis of the vertical model. Restricting the consumer to one brand.

Mena Trott, President of Six Apart said:

"We know we have people using other services so you can integrate with You Tube, Amazon and Flickr and use all those services and have one hub there is not one place to be online, there is a whole bunch of services."

"People are promiscuous online and its not going to change and so you have to embrace it and figure out how to create a product that allows for them to do that and also be loyal to what you're doing."

Six Apart's blogging software on the other hand, will integrate with any blog software out there. This makes Nokia's mobile phone platform independent. Challenging the vertical model and making Nokia a cross platform smart phone.

Microsoft's Zoon is based on the vertical model where several integrated devices are all designed to work together, but only within the Zoon range. Whereas Microsoft state that their Windows software is not based on the vertical model as it will work with many other systems and standards.

This means that the major technology players in the world today could be left behind if they do not take a serious look at the way the technically savvy people are using technology today.

People do not want to be tied down to one service, one product. People like to have the diversity of being able to pick and choose what they do and when.

Yahoo have taken a cross-platform initiative launching Yahoo Go, A generic solution that works for most popular smart mobile phones. The idea being that the Yahoo service will provide you with a hub for your Internet needs on your mobile phone. Very similar to the Nokia / Six Apart relationship, but this doesn't just work on Nokia phones.

This releases Google to further research and manage duplicate content on the web.

This is a high impact sign of the times for the SEM industry and the likes.

Plagiarism has always been a problem for Internet Marketing specialists as the search engines do not like duplicate content. Unique content can be time consuming to produce and to avoid similar content is just as difficult. All content copywriters want their work to be recognised and unique content is half way to winning the content wars.

Google were awarded this patent (patent number 7,158,961) after more then five years in the application process. Other large organisations have filed similar patents, but Google have, yet again, come out with the application grant.

Another take is that Google’s similarity engine will hopefully assist Google in providing an even better set of results to the search audience. By stripping out similar/duplicate content and only displaying unique/quality results, Google will be streets ahead of the SE competition in the similarity stakes.

This will provide the Search audience with a much more varied array of search results and will force the marketers to produce higher quality work to be recognised, thus improving the web in-whole.

If Google continue to register more patents like the similarity engine, then it is unlikely Google will be under any competitive threat for some time.

Google has commonly been reported as the daddy of all search engines and this train of thought for the industry giant is just proof that they have the brains on board to tackle the industry and come out on top.

The questions posted to date will still remain on the service, but Google will be ceasing to answer any more questions by the end of this year according to a post in the official Google Blog.

Google answers was launched in 2002 and setup by a team of four to answer the worlds questions. These questions have subsequently been answered by a group of over 800 people committed to helping people.

Some of the question people have had answered are; Can wardrobes have automatic mirrors?, How tall is Durmot Murnaghan?, How do you kill a cockroach? and Why did they make Barney Purple?.

Does this mean that Google are not innovating, or are running into trouble? Certainly not! One thing that innovators like Google know and understand is that innovation is not just about invention, but also about destruction. If an invention does not take off, then why try to keep it flying? Even giants like Google understand that without destruction you will never truly be a leading innovator.

The service is still taking questions, but with some of the most recent questions posted asking where the answers are, it is probable that you will not receive an answer. The answers posted to date will also stay available on the net. So, whilst the service is stopping to answer any new questions, you will still be able to find answers to previously asked questions.

Whilst it is sad to see a Google service go, the resources released by not supporting this service will most certainly provide Google with additional resource in the invention camp.

If you would like to read additional material about this then please visit Matt Cutts’ post on R.I.P., Google Answers

Also, if YOU think there are any other Google services or any other web services that deserve the certificate of destruction, then please let us know.

Yahoo have signed a newspaper content and advertising deal with 7 US newspaper groups, totalling 176 regional newspapers. The newspaper groups included in the deal are Cox Newspapers Inc, E.W.Scripps Co and MediaNews Group Inc as report by Yahoo. The deal primarily involves the partnership of jobs adverts. Yahoo's HotJobs Classified Jobs will be supplying the newspapers online section with content as from December 2006, whilst the newspapers will be selling their jobs adverts on Yahoo's HotJobs. With Monster taking more and more of the jobs market, this will be a big hit back from the web giant Yahoo.

Profits dwindle

This move by Yahoo could not have been more timely. With Yahoo's shares dropping nearly 40% in October, the company has obviously been losing the online battle with competitors like Google. More than 500 million people visit Yahoo's web network each month and this will certainly help them to capture more of the market. Whilst the deal looks primarily at Jobs advertising, the potential for providing content both for Yahoo and the Newspapers is huge. Content such as news, advertising and search could then be provided by Yahoo to these newspapers as part of the deal.

Local Advertising

Analysts have recently criticised Yahoo's lack of innovation and this shows with the fall in shares. Although one area that Yahoo has not performed in recently is local search. This newspaper deal will certainly boost the local search mechanism for Yahoo and will drive more people to the web services that Yahoo provide.

Google take the lead

Whilst the newspaper deal by Yahoo looks like a great move by Yahoo, Google announced in November that it was to sell advertising space in print editions of 50 US newspapers including The New York Times. Whilst this is different to Yahoo's initial deal, Yahoo could end up selling advertising space in print editions too.

This means that your web server can serve pages up at any speed, as long as your web server does actually serve the page up. If your web server is slow, or your connection is slow, then Google will still index the page and this will not affect your web page's ranking in the search engine results.

This is great news for people that wish to host their own web site on their DSL line. But, should you be hosting a web site on your DSL line in the first place? It has been noted that contended lines (connections that have a delay) are not suitable for hosting web sites. Although you may not have any other option. If you have specialist services that you require of your web server, or your hosting company will not allow you to host the content you wish to host, or your budgets restrict your hosting services, then you may not have any other option.

So, Google is happy to wait for your content, but how long will it wait for? A realistic time would be a maximum of 5 seconds, although Google would most probably wait a little longer depending on how popular your web site already is. If your web server has delivered content in less than 5 seconds before, then you will most probably be given a second chance to deliver the content again.

Some people say that web sites hosted on dedicated servers rank higher in the search engine results, than on a shared hosting service. This would then re-mystify the problem. Please comment on this post and lets put this issue to bed.

Have you had any problems with your web pages being indexed by Google? And what hosting services do you use?

Whilst driving traffic to your web site is a necessity when marketing your web site for the search engines, the question is rarely answered sufficiently.

Link Building to drive traffic to your web site

Link Building is vital when driving traffic to your web site. Whilst this is not the only way to drive traffic to your web site, it is a proven way to drive traffic to your web site.

Most of the search engines pay attention to the quality of in-bound links to your web site

What are in-bound links?

In-bound links are links from a third part web site that point to your web site

How do in-bound links drive traffic to my web site?

The quality of in-bound links in imperative when driving traffic to your web site

What aspects of in-bound links affect the drive of traffic to my web site?

The title of the link to your web site and the description associated with the link are a couple of factors that will affect the performance when using in-bound links to drive traffic to your web site. The more relevant the link to your web site is the more powerful the link will become. This in-turn helping to drive traffic to your web site.

Another factor is the web site that is linking to your web site. If the web site linking to your web site is relevant to your web site, then this will hold more weight than a unrelated web site linking to your web site. The more relevant the web site linking to your web site the more likely you are going to get quality targeted traffic to your web site.

The search engines and in-bound links

The Internet was born out of links and the continued life of the Internet is still based around links.

The major search engines know this and will give your web site more weight if quality, relevant web sites link to your web site. This will increase your search engine rankings, which in-turn will drive more traffic to your web site.

This is not all about quantity of in-bound links to your web site, but about quality and relevance.

If you are a fabric designer, then you would not want links coming from a fishing web site. This will not drive more traffic to your web site and could actually do more harm than good.

Competition Analysis

Competition analysis is always a good place to start when research where to obtain in-bound links to your web site. If you research your competition and see where they have their links and which web sites these links come from, then you will have a much better chance of driving traffic to your web site.

This does not mean you need to produce links in exactly the same places to drive traffic to your web site, but this will give you a good picture when thinking about the quantity and quality of the links you need to obtain for your own web site.

Conclusion

There are many ways to drive traffic to your web site, but link building is a certain winner when looking to drive traffic to your web site and will earn you additional points with the search engines if you produce quality relevant in-bound links.