Who was there?
Dave Naylor (Bronco)
Ciaran Norris (altogetherdigital)

Marcus Tandler (Mediadonis)

Joost de Valk (Orange Valley)

Dixon Jones (Receptional)

Bob Rains

Who talked more than anyone?
Dave Naylor (of course!) and Dixon

What were the highlights?

* Dixon is in favor of Yahoo! answers as a free links source that is well indexed by Google.

* have just bought some expired domain? Dave recommends not to change anything  (content, design, hosting company etc) right away but to do it gradually, after a couple of months, otherwise search engines realize that something is happening.

*Black hat is:
- Messing up with someone else’s site (Dixon).
- Buying even a single link from authority site like newspapers website.

* Canonical Tag:
- Works better than 301 at the time (Joost).
- Doesn’t work in cross domains (Dave).

* Google knows almost everything so don’t use the same IP or PC to login for different accounts.

* Using Wikipedia for SEO can work only after participating (writing articles, adding comments etc) and joining the Wiki spam team (Joost).

* Although the links on Wikipedia are nofollowed, removing them can hurt the site’s ranking (Marcus).

* Mobile search is important when advertising offline simply because this is when people tend to use their mobile for search. Ciaran said that he saw an ad of Samsung on a train station that said: “Search for any deal on Google” but once he did a search about it he found all of Samsung competitors on the search results but not Samsung. J

* Use http://www.majesticseo.com to check the links that lead to your competitors and then try to get those links to yourself.

I guess I’m a late waker (I blame the lack of time behind the 24 hours limit) , but only today I’ve noticed the option of Music Search by Google and was really thrilled by it.
I know that the vertical search is “live and kicking” and yet I haven’t noticed this “search music” button and / or link until now.
God bless whoever it was that created the music and at the same time pat Larry Page and Sergey Brinand on their shoulder for their Google’s music search feature.

How can you get into Google Music Search?
You just need to search for the name of a singer or a band, say Britney Spears, and you’ll see the blue link of “Music” on the bluish top bar, just right below the search box.

Clicking the “Music” link will get you into a deeper search results page in which you can browse several categories such as artists, albums and songs.

Clicking on the artist name will send you into a page with a list of all albums that can be sorted by popularity or by release date.

Clicking on specific album will give you the name of the artist, album and the year it was released plus the full list of  tracks and links to online shops where you can buy the album. Below the album’s image you can find links to related web-pages such as the artist website, photos and latest news.

Clicking on specific song we’ll give you the name of the artist, the name of the album, other performers, song length, a link to all other versions of the song, its lyrics and an option to buy the song via iTunes.

Very nice, you must admit it!

Looking for other music websites? Check the following
(and please feel free to keep me posted on others I don’t know):

Free Music Listening Sites:
Soundpedia – Music discovery community. Great thing is that you can listen to full albums and get suggestions for other artists and bands of the same genre.
Bandcamp - The place for artists to offer their music, including full albums, for free or for money.
Deezer- Free music platform in which you can create lists of your favorite music.
Pandora - Free internet radio.
Last.fm – Free music listening (internet radio) plus music catalogue.

For those who are into reading about music and artists, check the following music portals:

Musicpedia - Your favorite music in pictures.
Mog - Discover people through music and music through people.
Yahoo! music portal – info, downloads, videos and much more.
All music – All about music – reviews, new releases and artists biography.

I guess most of you know that yandex is dedicated to the Russian market and as such tends to show in its search results Russian sites, but not only.
What about indexing a new site in the Russian language?
Yandex.ru is known as “a unique product for indexing Russian-language resources” and yet I have a friend who started a blog in Russian not too long ago and he says that he has waited for more than a month for his blog to be indexed in yandex but nothing happened, ‘though it was written in Russian and had some backlinks from other Russian sites.

Two important things to note are:
1. His blog had a Russian hosting.
2. His blog had .biz extension (my-view.biz ).

After discussing this issue and searching the subject on the web, noticing there are others who had the same problem, he decided to buy a .ru domain and to perform 301 redirect of the old domain name to the new one. 6 days after making this 301 redirect his blog was indexed by yandex!!!

I wish he was a little bit more patient so we could test the time that takes yandex to index a new site with .biz extension, but he didn’t care for SEO tests and I understand him J
In any case, there are some questions left:

1. Is yandex, like most search engines, not in favor of .biz domains?
2. How much time does it take for yandex to index a biz domain vs. com or ru domain?

I’d be more than glad to hear your thoughts and experience on this one.
Спасибо и до новых встречь

Two months ago we were announced that Google adwords allow gambling ads in the UK
Now it says the same about advertising alcohol on Google adwords in US.

Does any of you share the same annoying feeling that in the face of the world economic threat Google decided to loose its moral restrictions?

Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m in favor of this new policy of advertising “tricks and treats”,I just think that Google shouldn’t pretend to be something it’s not.
Does democracy really work on the web and can you really make money without doing evil, as Google claimed philosophy says?

I don’t think so, but maybe I’m in minority…

For all of you who haven’t read this post by Sugarrae already – just wanted you to know that I’m 100% heterosexual
and yet I fell in love with this heavenly bright creature.
Excellent writing (especially the instructions for changing the year on your PC calendar)
and great things to think about.
Please do read the post and the discussion following it:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum12/3047.htm

p.s

I’m following sugarrae on twitter and I think you should too.

Last year it was the first time “evar” for the sphinncon session in Israel and it was great. Now it looks like good old Barry Schwartz is snooping around for some real SMX conference in Israel.
So, for all of you who are a little bit like me and would like to be apart of this event,
check this link, answer the small list of questions (positively) and then hold your fingers tights we’ll all get together sometime around January near Tel Aviv.

**The short survey can be answered anonymously.**
** The event is somehow already announced, as can be seen here, but I guess it won’t happen unless enough people will demonstrate their enthusiasm**

I haven’t written for ages, I know, and I have no excuse but the fact that I probably work too hard (and maybe sleep too much?!). In any case, just wanted to let you all know that I’m about to go to the “world usability day” conference tomorrow, in Israel, Ra’anana.
Unfortunately, Jakob Nielsen won’t be there, but still I really look forward to hear about “reading on the digital era” and “business effects of the user interface”.

For those who’d like to get some more background information please visit:
Worldusabilityday.org - The international site of “world usability day”.
UPA Israel - The Israeli site of “Usability Professional’s Association”.
UPA international - The international website of “Usability Professional’s Association”.

Usability related sites:
Usability first - A good online collection of usability resources.
Useit - Jakob Nielsen site on web design and usability. My top guru on the subject!
Cre8pc - All about SEO and usability. 
Usability news - Updates from the world of usability and human-computer interaction.
Userfocus - Usability consultancy and training.
Webcredible - Includes articles and reports about user experience, usability and accessibility.

This is a video of Bill Gates at the “world usability day 2007″:

No doubt that social bookmarking is just a tiny part of SMM (social media marketing) and that SMM is just a small part of SEO or SEM, but you know what people say – All (big) things are amde of small pieces.
As far as I see it, if you work alone (with no SEO expert by your side) or have limited budget for your international marketing efforts (assuming, off course, your project suits the global market) – some international social bookmarking can give you the global exposure you are looking for, both in terms of relevant traffic and in terms of search engine positions.

First step is to know your other languages strong keywords
For this you need to have a healthy logic, more than a couple of hours and if you are lucky enough – some friends who speak the languages of the international markets you wish to target.
Sure, you can use some automatic translating tools like Yahoo babel Fish or Free Translations, but most chances are that you’d miss some important terms as well as distort others. If you got the money – get some expert translator or even better – an expert SEO who speak the language of the foreign market you are trying to reach.

Second step is to build your international bookmarking database
In order to find relevant bookmarking sites in your targeted languages, you need to know the translation of at least two important terms: “bookmarks” and “favorites”. Type these keywords in the search box of relevant search engines (google.de if you look for bookmarking sites in German or Yahoo.fr if you look for bookmarking sites in French and so on) and check the results. Most bookmarking sites look and behave the same, so you shouldn’t have any difficulties in understanding how to register as well as how to submit a site.

In addition, you can search for some blogs in your targeted markets (using google blog search or technorati) and check the bookmarking buttons at the buttom of their posts.
In any case, for your cnvenience, you can find some bookmarking sites in French and German at the end of this post.
Third step is bookmarking and socializing on a regular basis
Don’t just submit all your website’s pages under relevant kewords and then disappear. Submit other URLs (that aren’t yours but from the same niche and language), vote for others’ submissions and so on.  Remember – you can’t talk social bookmarking and do only one of the two. They go together so you must do them both if you want to succeed.

A list of Social Bookmarking Sites in French and German:
Bookmarks.fr (FR bookmarks)
Mesfavoris (FR bookmarks)
Excite (FR bookmarks)
Bookmarks Sites (FR bookmarks)
Plpage (FR bookmarks)
Bookeet (FR bookmarks)
Scoopeo (FR bookmarks)
Bluegger (FR bookmarks)
Yigg (DE bookamrks)
Webnews (DE bookamrks)
Folkd.de (DE bookamrks)
Bonitrust (DE bookamrks)
Kledy.eu (DE bookamrks)
Linksilo (DE bookamrks)
Lufee (DE bookamrks)
Minota (DE bookamrks)
Weblinkr (DE bookamrks)

Anything to add?
Feel free to comment or even bookmark…

p.s
Check this fine video by common craft if you’d like more basic info on social bookmarking:

TinyURL makes me “Click the Link”
Don’t know what about you guys, but ’till I started to twitter I didn’t really need TinyURL eventhough I knew it was outhere, live and kicking. This post is dedicated to Kevin Gilbertson who invented TinyURL, ’cause as far as I see it, he is sort of a genius – not so much for changing long URLs to tiny ones, but for making me curious. TinyURL is a great marketing tool in terms that it makes me “click the link” otherwise (when seeing the URL behind it) I might not.

A Story about a Hot Lady in a Hot Red Dress
Admit it – if I tell you a story about some hot lady in a hot red dress and then invite you to see her picture on this URL: http://tinyurl.com/6be7xa  instead of this one: http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-14/bearded-lady-in-red-dress.html- you’ll definitely click the first one but you’d have your doubts about the second one, right?
A-Ha! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! TinyURL allows you to create some mystery around your outgoing links and that mystery works like magic in term of CTR.

Tiny vs. Whiney
As far as wiki can tell us about it, this may (and did) cause some problems such as easy spam or getting into sites that might offend you, but I think there are more advantages than disadvatages into TinyURL [Shout your thoughts on the comment section if you think differently  ] and at least the offending issue can be solved by using the preview version of TinyURL…

For those who are new to TinyURL, just before I say good night and make myself feel tiny again, here are …

Some TinyURLs You Might Aappreciate:
http://tinyurl.com/2pb7f8 – this TinyURL is somehow related to FireFox.
http://tinyurl.com/2vmzcv – this TinyURL deals with something I mentioned here earlier.
http://tinyurl.com/24lp7m – this TinyURL is for opera lovers (wink, wink!).
http://tinyurl.com/2hesey – this TinyURL is stat related.
http://elfurl.com/gpchk - this is like TinyURL but its elf based and it refers to a nice article on the topic that also mentioned http://snurl.com

Have anything to add?
Your shouting time begins now…

I have just finished listening to Chris Sherman on the SMN webcast, talking about the advantages of blended search ( a year after it was launched) and I thought “What the hack? Why not summarizing it for you guys?”
so here it goes:

Blended Search – Definition
Blended search, also known by the name of “Universal Search” or “Search 3.0″, is incorporating results from non-web sources (like books, videos and images) into the regular web search results.

What is it Good For?
- The sources that we use to get information from are just the same, but we use them more than we did before the launch of blended search. Searchers no longer need to use the search engine’s different tabs (news, images, etc) – they get the relevant results for their search inquiry directly on the web results page. In other words – if “Vertical Search” was alive somewhere in the past, I guess there’s no doubt it’s starting to die now.

- Search marketers and businesses’ websites have more seats on first results page to “fight over”. Before “blended search” was born, websites could be shown on only 2 out of 10 results per page. Today, one can be shown on the same two seats from the past (seats that are reserved for the website’s pages, usually the homepage and some inner page) but also on other seats taken for social sites such as youtube (video results) or news sites (press releases).
Basically, one can be shown on most if not all of first pages’ results (take Britney Spears for example).

- Searchers are open to more sources of information otherwise they might not know about. Think about your old uncle – if not for the blended search, will he still be sending you funny YouTube videos? Moreover, the blended search makes the all process of searching much easier. looked for an IPhone and got a video result among others? With Google’s “Universal Search” results you don’t need to jump to the video site in order to watch it – Just click on the “Watch video” link (marked in red at the following example):

What is it Sad for? 
- Less precision: Vertical search resulted in better search results, since it was focused on specific search field (video, news, images etc). Blended search returns a wide range of results that are more speculative than accurate (in terms of what the searcher was searching for). This is clearly demonstrated by  the following screen shot taken from Chris Sherman’s webcast:

- No more “good old only web results”:  Google is no longer showing only web results. Even if you use the “web” tab in the search process, you’ll get the blended search results which means web sites, videos, images, news sources and alike. This lost of “only web feature” is quite sad, since there are still lots of people who’d like to get these results with no extras… 

- Bad blogs and products results: Search engines don’t index these two very well, so blended search in this term is quite poor. 

So what will Blended Search bring?
- Better and much more sophisticated statistic tools to track conversion rates out of different search results, such as video which is un-trackable at the moment.
- Better and much more sophisticated SEM efforts: Traditional SEO will be nothing but complemental, while search marketing will focus on viral video, creating juicy (and highly optimized) press releases and so on.

What do you say?
Do you see the future of blended search differently?

Feel like reading more about blended search? I bet you’ll enjoy the following:
Blended search increases your visibility ( April 2008 )
Blended search results study by iprospect ( April 2008 )
Google’s ranking advice in blended search ( February 2008 )
Optimizing for blended search ( January 2008 )
Search 3.0 by SearchEngineLand ( Nov 2007 )