Submit Express Newsletter #64
July 28, 2004
Past Issues
1- News Summary
It has been a long time since we published our last issue. We apologize for such a long delay. There are two reasons why we took such a long break. First, we have been experiencing such a growth in our business that it has left us no time to write articles for this newsletter and second, in the recent months there has not been too many interesting news stories to report on.
The good news we need to tell you about is that we will be exhibiting at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in San Jose next week, August 2nd to 5th. For more details and Free Expo Passes, See below.
In this issue you will also find details of the new MSN Search Engine Beta, info about the upcoming Google IPO and an interesting article about an unethical SEO firm that got their clients banned in Google .
Feel free to forward this email to all your friends that have websites and could benefit from this information.Subscription is completely free and can be obtained at:
http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters.html
Thanks,
Pierre Zarokian
President, Submit Express
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LaptopKings.com sells used and refurbished laptops from Dell, Compaq, HP, Toshiba, Apple, and many others. |
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2- Come See us at Search Engine Strategies
Submit Express will be exhibiting at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in San Jose next week, August 2nd to 5th. If you have never heard of this event, Search Engine Strategies is the premier event in the Search Engine Marketing industry. Many search engine marketing experts and even search engines themselves will be appearing and speaking at the conferences. In addition, there will be many leading search engine optimization firms and marketing firms exhibiting at the show.
SES conference happens several times a year in different locations. However, the San Jose show is by far the biggest one of all and an event not to be missed by those in the industry or anyone interested in the latest search engine marketing techniques or looking to hire professional search engine optimizers. In addition, there are several parties that happen each year at the end of each day, which are the most fun part of the show. This year Google, Yahoo and Overture will be sponsoring parties. Google has been known to sponsor parties at their headquarters and call it Google Dance...an event not to be missed.
The good news is that we are offering free expo hall passes and 50% off conference passes to our readers and site visitors. You can download the pass at:
http://www.submitexpress.com/ses_2004.pdf
(You will need a PDF Reader)
For those that come to the show, please make sure to visit us at booth #312. We will be offering FREE Ranking Reports at the show.
For more info about the show visit:
http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/summer04/index.html
3- MSN Launches Beta Search Engine
For over a year now, MSN has been saying that they would be launching a new search engine to better compete with Yahoo and Google. Now for the first time, the public gets to see this upcoming engine in action.
From a quick review, it appears that the results look a little spammy and that MSN still has a long ways to go. However, one good feature that might help MSN return relevant and less spammy results is their feedback button, which is a very unique in its implementation. Google had tried something similar before by implementing a Happy and Sad Face button on their toolbar that you could click if you found the search results relevant. The way MSN is doing it is to place a little graphic link after each result. Once you click on the link you are presented with a feedback form that has a drop down box with several options. Many of the options identify the problem with the search result that you just clicked on, such as spammy sites or sites with irrelevant content. Our guess is that if MSN receives enough negative data about a site, they might then lower the rankings for that particular site either automatically or via a manual human review.
MSN is claiming that there are 1 Billion results in their database. MSN also released another beta site at:
http://beta.search.msn.com/
After reviewing the above site, it appears that this is not really the new engine, but it is a new look that they might be using very soon. The search results at this site resemble those at current MSN site.
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4- SEO Firm gets all their Clients Banned in Google
In the recent weeks there has been some news around the net about a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm that used unethical techniques that resulted in the ban of their clients in Google.
The news was first reported on WebmasterWorld.com, which is a Webmaster related Bulletin Board. "GoogleGuy", a Google employee, who is a frequent poster at the forums, posted the following note:
"I know that we pulled the plug on some specific spam pages recently. If you paid an SEO and they somehow convinced you to put spam like sneaky redirects using an obfuscated JavaScript onMouseOver on the body tag on your pages, or other stuff like links to their doorway domains or their other clients, please make sure that you read http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html and http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality before contacting Google.
I believe that one SEO had convinced clients either to put spammy Javascript mouseover redirects, doorway pages that link to other sites, or both on their clients' sites. That can lead to clients' sites being flagged as spam in addition to the doorway domains that the SEO set up."
After this news many of the clients of a company called Traffic Power posted on various bulletin boards that their website was banned in Google and that they believed it was due to what Traffic Power had done. Several internet publications such as WebProNews published articles about this story. There is even a class action lawsuit in the works.
If you do a search in Google for the term "traffic power", you will see many of the news stories and the forum postings. There is even a hate website at http://www.trafficpowersucks.com/. The site was launched by an ex-client of Traffic Power whose site was banned by Google. The site claims that Traffic Power uses shady sales tactics to sign their clients and promises top 10 guarantees that are never achieved.
A recent post at WebmasterWorld states that:
"... today I get a call from a SEO company. They say that they guarantee top 10 placement for 80% of the keywords that I would choose. Even highly competitive keywords.
I asked if this would require changes on our code or content. He said no. I asked if they worked with people inside the SE companies. He said no. So I insisted that I don't believe in any offer of top ten placements for competitive words if it won't require changes to my site or anything like that. He insists that they have a software and can do that, and they guarantee the results."
We contacted the individual that posted the above comments and he confirmed that the company contacting him was no other than Traffic Power. The full posting can be seen at:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/5002.htm After some further research, we found postings at several forums with examples of Traffic Power techniques. Below is a site that uses a redirection technique called "mouse-over redirection":
http://www.wholesale-security-cameras.com/
(Note by the time you check this link, there is a good chance that the example might not be there.) If you notice the site will redirect if you move your mouse on top of it, but it will not redirect if you do not move your mouse. This is one of the redirection techniques that Google does not like. In addition, Traffic Power cross-linked all their clients to each other from link pages that contained links to unrelated topics. You can see some examples below:
http://www.warehousescooters.com/warehousescooters.com_friends.html
http://www.pipe-city.com/pipecity.com_friends.html
http://www.eta-usa.com/Eta-usa.com_friends.html
(Note by the time you check these links, there is a good chance that the examples might not be there.) We hope that none of our readers have engaged in the services of Traffic Power or similar companies. If you have and are concerned that your site might be banned, there is a couple of things you can check to see if your site is possibly banned:
1) Download Google Toolbar and check your Page Rank. If the Google Toolbar returns a PageRank of Zero that could be a bad sign, specially if you know you had a higher PageRank before. 2) Check your back links in Google by typing link:www.yourdomain.com in Google. If Google returns zero links that also could be a bad sign.
3) Check your traffic stats. Has your traffic decreased? Specifically check your Google referrals. Are you getting any traffic from Google and if so has it dropped at all from a few months ago? If your traffic has decreased and both #1 and #2 cases are true then your site is most probably penalized or banned from Google.
Please note that although the above may all apply to your site, it could also be a temporary issue while Google is updating their database or perhaps your site was down when Google was indexing. If you know that your site has not been involved in any spammy techniques, then you may want to wait a few weeks before you take any action. If you conclude that your site might be penalized, we recommend that you remove everything on your site that you think might be spammy, discontinue service with the firm you have hired and contact Google for re-inclusion. If you need help with this feel free to contact us. Submit Express offers natural search engine optimization and we can help you get your site back in Google if you happen to be penalized. Ironically, we already had two ex-Traffic Power clients call us about their problems and have now signed up with us.
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5- Google IPO Coming Soon
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In one of the most eagerly awaited public offerings in years, Google hopes to raise $2 Billion in the IPO coming soon. In company's recent SEC Filing, Google states that it's IPO could be priced at around $108.00 to $135.00 per share. Its price per share could be the highest ever for a U.S. company. |
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After the offering, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will each own about 16 percent of Google's voting power . Brin and Page plan to sell over 962,000 shares each. 55 percent of the company's voting power will go to Brin, Page, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, and board members John Doerr and Michael Moritz.Time Warner Inc.'s ( TWX ) America Online unit and Yahoo both own shares in Google and plan to sell 10 percent of their stakes in the IPO, which will include 743,745 shares by AOL and 549,888 by Yahoo. Around 24.6 million shares are going to be sold in the IPO. Google plans to sell about 14 million shares, while another 10.5 million would be sold by shareholders. For more on this story, please visit below link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20040727/bs_nf/26046
Is your site anywhere to be found in the search engines? Do you need to be in the top 10 of search engines, but don't know how? Are you tired of trying everything you possibly can and still are nowhere to be found?If you need help getting your site in the top 10 of major search engines, please check out our search engine optimization services:
http://www.submitexpress.com/optimize.htmlWe guarantee results or your money back.We can also give you free advice when you order our 75,000+ Search Engine Submission. We will visit your site and send you a list of suggestions on how to improve your rankings. See details at:
http://www.submitexpress.com/submit2500.htmlDon't just submit your site to the search engines, SUBMIT IT RIGHT.
Submit Express
417 Arden Ave, Suite 106B
Glendale, CA 91203
Website: http://www.submitexpress.comPast Issues of this Newsletter:
http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters/
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