To be part of Google’s SERPs is deemed so vitally important to web site owners that KinderStart.Com has sued Google for Anti-trust violations asserting its rights under the Sherman Act of 1964, as well as Lanham Act false representation claims, free speech violation, defamation and unfair competition under California state law. The claimant brought the suit when it saw a 70 percent drop in monthly traffic in March 2006 and an 80 percent drop in AdSense revenue. KinderStart at one point had a first page ranking for competitive terms, but saw its ranking nearly disappear from the radar, which coincided with its drop in revenue.
Google did manage to get the case kicked, but this case may open up the search giant to more and more litigation as other companies try to match their fortunes with Google and the rankings their web sites receive. The suit did not assert a claim against Yahoo the next closest competitor of Google, with roughly half the market share. Google, with such a large market share stands to take the brunt of the frustration of online store owners’ and black hat SEO’s who see their client’s sites disappear from the rankings.
"Google is so large it runs the risk of slamming into the kind of situation that Microsoft found itself in, in terms of bundling its services together," said Robert B. Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administration and now professor at the University of California's Goldman School of Public Policy.
This does not mean that Google has done anything wrong, or does it mean Google is likely to loose any similar suits. However, it does put Google square in the cross hairs of any frustrated business owner who can point to a revenue reduction which happens to occur during the time their Google rankings fluctuate. Google was praised recently by many ethical search engine optimization consultants called “white hats” for removing BMW’s German web site for cloaking its web site so that searchers saw one page, while the search engines saw a separate page designed to enhance BMW's place in rankings. Yet, BMW could just as easily have brought a similar suit. The only thing protecting Google is that BWM was re-listed in a relatively short time frame, in addition to the fact that Google’s webmaster guidelines expressly state “no cloaking”.
The bottom line is that Google and now YouTube (the leading video sharing site on the web) have a tough road ahead, especially in terms of defending themselves against many frivolous law suits, and perhaps even a few suits with merit. That is the price one must pay when they are just too good for their own good.
Belgian photographers and journalists have come to an amicable agreement with the search giant, Google, regarding the fight over the copyright violation that Google allegedly conducted by linking to Belgian newspapers’ web sites.
Several Belgian copyright groups, with over 3,700 photographers, came to the agreement with Google. Google has removed links to 17 news sources from its Google News page.
The agreement, which has not been publicly released, but likely is large financial one, will allow Google to once again link to news content from the European nation. “We reached an agreement … that will help us make extensive use of their content,” Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google, said.
As technology is getting more advanced the threat of destructive code appearing in your web applications is becoming more and more a concern for developers. The threats posed by malicious code and SQL injection in particular, and by leaving code vulnerable to such attacks must be constantly monitored. Yet, while SQL is the most common code injection attack, there are numerous others that can be just as dangerous to your applications and your data, including LDAP injection and XPath (a form of XML) injection. While these may not be as well-known to developers, they are already in the hands of hackers, and they should be of concern.
From an SEO perspective, this potential code infiltration can be disastrous to your rankings. Engines such as Yahoo who base their algorithm heavily on content can reduce the rank of a page if not complexly eliminate the page from appearing in its SERP for queries which once had page one or two ranking. The problem is often the content changes before you know it, or even worse a redirect has been added to your home page and the spiders which in some cases visit on an almost daily basis catch it and update the rankings accordingly.
There are many ways to protect against such a disaster, but it all starts with sound server security. I like to call the protection method the Holey Trinity of web security. Step one - have both a physical and software based firewall; step two – install a commercial (not free light weight) spyware / Virus detector on the server; step three – conduct daily backups of your database. Though these 3 steps will not guarantee your site’s safety they will at the very least make your site almost invisible to most hacking attempts, and significantly reduce your likelihood of an attack.
In a recent blog posting by Matt Cutts, the face of Google, he discussed the issue of page rank, and how the number you see on your Google tool bar is really not a very good indicator of how Google measures your web site’s importance at the time you see the rank. This is an interesting admission from someone so high up in the Google ranks. Matt essentially says, what we have all suspected for some time, that page rank is a constantly moving metric, and that Google uses that metric in the placement, but what they show all of us on the tool bar is only a snap shot of the measurement during one point in time. This measurement is only updated to the public a few times a year, but internally it is updated daily if not more frequently.
At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. … I highly recommend keyword analysis, looking at server logs to figure out new content to add, thinking of new hooks to make your site attract more word-of-mouth buzz, pondering how to improve conversion once visitors land on your site, etc.
As shown with this snippet from Matt Cutts blog, he does not give too much credence to page rank, but rather looks at it as a measure of your back links (page popularity) and suggests that you consider all of the other aspects of SEO, as they all weigh in and become part of the whole that Google and other’s such as Yahoo and MSN will use to rank your page for any specific keyword search.
USA Today reported this week that the search giant, Google has set aside more than $200 million in its concluded takeover of YouTube as a financial cushion to cover losses or possible legal bills for the numerous copyright violations on YouTube's video-sharing site by its users. Google said it is withholding 12.5% of the stock owed to YouTube for one year "to secure certain indemnification obligations."
Google will also likely hang its hat on section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act. This congressional act protects online publishers from liability from what their users post, unless the publisher encouraged such postings.
There is a new program that Yahoo has put out in recent months called the Yahoo Express Inclusion Program. This program is a hybrid of conventional SEO practices PPC and traditional PPI fee for each URL to be used in the program. The concept is simple. You pay a fee of $49 for the first URL and a decreasing fee for each additional URL to be included in the program, and then a fee of $0.30 per click each time the link is returned in the SERPs and a user clicks on the link.
Each URL is then visited by a Yahoo spider every 2 days to check for new content or other on-site updates, which is factored into the Yahoo algorithm. However, simply paying for inclusion in the program in and of itself is insufficient. A web site will not come up simply because of the program. It needs to also use all the best practices of SEO both on and off site.
Do I have permission to use the content I find on any RSS feed on my web site? This question is being asked frequently. There are two approaches we can take to answer this question; what is the search engines answer and how would the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) be interpreted?
Search engines may deem any content from an RSS feed duplicate content if that is the only content on your page, and thus you may never see the page indexed in the engine. On the other hand, search engines may see the content as simply complementary to the vast majority of other content on your page and not penalize you in any way, other than ignoring the keyword density the feed may add to your overall content. A search engine may also look at the RSS feed in the same way a normal user would (which is how Google, Yahoo and MSN want it) and see the RSS content as new content on your web site every day, where you page is frequently updated and give you more spider visits.
The legal view is quite a bit more complicated. There are cases that fall on both sides of the coin. That is, some courts have held the use of RSS feeds to be fair use, while others have claimed this to be copyright infringement if the proper credit is not displayed in an open and notorious manor. So what is the legal standard to use?
One theory is the original creator of the content did not grant implied consent to repurpose that material by republishing it on a blog or Website, unless proper credit and a link is provided back to the original source of the content. Under the DMCA, in order for any content to be considered fair use, there are a number of elements a court will look at. One of the most significant is whether the use of the creative work is intended as a means to generate a revenue stream in and of itself? If all you have is a bunch of titles, and those titles serve no other purpose then to generate search traffic to serve Adsense or as a part of the Yahoo content network, then the fair use doctrine is likely not an option and copyright infringement is a strong possibility. It should be noted that intentional copyright infringement can result in a damage award of up to $150,000 without proving $1 in actual damages.
Though there is no specific right or wrong answer, I would argue that anyone who posts their content and proactively creates an RSS feed of the content has the intention of syndicating their content throughout the Internet. Such an intention would grant an implied license to the content in an RSS feed, and allow anyone to use that feed as they see fit. However, that does not mean the creator of the work has waived their right to claim the work as their own, and to prevent any other person either natural or business entity form doing the same. One who creates the content and then an XML RSS feed however; retain certain exclusive rights by including a disclaimer in the feed, as well as on the web site, stating how the content may be used. Such a disclaimer could not is not guaranteed to obliterate an implied license.
The bottom line is that until the U.S. copyright Office accepts RSS feeds as original creative works, and then it will be very difficult to come down with any one definite answer. The best advise for now is follow any guidelines the author requests, let the author know you are using his or her feed and where the feed is, as well as provide a link back to the original web site where the content came from. Most authors, will be happy to let you use their work, and will welcome the inbound link.
This article was written by Michael A. Goldstein, Attorney at Law for Rock Coast Media, a Boston area search marketing firm. Attorney Goldstein is licensed in Massachusetts and not any other jurisdiction. In addition, Attorney Goldstein is not a member of the United States Patent Bar. As such, this article is not to be taken as legal advice in any shape, manor, capacity or form. Should you require a legal consultation, you should seek the advice of an intellectual property attorney in your state.
The mid-term elections had many interesting twists and turns in relation to how certain candidates delivered their message to the public. Perhaps the most interesting was the last minute PPC (Google ad words and Yahoo sponsored listings) campaign that candidates, such as Bob Casey used to swing voters to their camp. A study just released by The Rimm-Kaufman Group found several very interesting facts:
There were over 550 pay per click ads running in the weekend preceding the election.
Of those ads, only two ads linked directly to videos (against George Allen: "macaca" and prescription drugs).
The vast majority of the ads were found on the Google content network, or on Google itself, where Yahoo and MSN were rarely used.
Democrats were three times more likely to use negative ads.
58% of these ads did not support a political party, such as ads from news sites.
The study concluded the cost of search advertising is a fraction of the cost of television advertising, but it has equivalent reach. It is expected that the 2008 campaign will utilize paid search advertising much more, based on the success of this year’s swing vote campaigns.
There are many good reasons to write and syndicate articles about a topic which matches your web site. Some of the benefits will be seen in your organic search engine rankings, while others will take on more of a branding initiative, while yet even others will promote the author as an expert an a particular area, which people may seek out for advice. The bottom line is article writing and syndication is not the new hot idea any longer in online marketing, but rather it is a proven marketing concept that is here to stay.
From an SEO perspective, a good article with a resource box that points back to your web site will generate those precious inbound links. The more links your website has by other sites, the more trust is conferred to your website. In addition to the SEO benefit of inbound links, there is also the added potential benefit of direct traffic coming to your site as a result of someone clicking on the link. Users who click the link in your Resource Box are highly-qualified prospects by the very nature of how they found your website.
Another benefit from an SEO perspective is to rank higher for your company name. If done properly, your resource box will have a link to your web site with your company name as anchor text. The more articles that are picked up, the more instances of your company name will be associated with your web site.
There are great branding opportunities in article syndication. When your articles are picked up by other sites, your credibility and trust increase with in the industry that you have written about. In addition, your articles reinforce in your reader’s minds what you can do for them. What you want to remember is each article you syndicate is like casting a wider net to reach new customers and traffic that would have never found your articles or website before.
The key to a good SEO plan is to never create a web site for the search engines, but rather create one for your users and the rest will fall into place. There are many examples of this practice, but perhaps one of the most obvious is The 404 - File Not Found – page, which is displayed to users as an error page when a file does not exist on the server. The server automatically generates these generic 404 error pages when a user enters an invalid URL, on a domain that does exist.
Search Engines don’t like seeing this and would much rather see a customized web page with content and a few links, such as a link back to the previous page, home page and site map. However, this error page is even more annoying to the user of the web site. They don’t want to see an error, but rather they want to be told the page does not exist, and possible links to pages they may have meant to visit. In many cases a free text search is a great tool to provide users to locate a page with the content they are looking for. It also helps a user to see a familiar design, in that, the GUI the user has been viewing all along creates the appearance that the web developer was thinking of the user when they cratered the customized 404. Many hosting companies offer a 404 redirect page. This can usually be set easily in the control panel, under some link such as error messages, or HTTP headers.
One of the more common practices is to just add a 302 or 301 redirect to any URL that does not exist, and send the user back to the home page. However, the problem with this is that the user may think they are stuck in a loop and keep trying to get to a page that does not exist. They may even think that there is a programming problem and leave your web site. It is a much better idea to show the user a unique page which tells them the page they entered is not available any longer.
Some things you may want to put in your page can not be found 404 Error page are:
A statement of apology for the page not being found;
Provide links to the home page, sitemap, and contact page;
Offer assistance and encourage the user to continue to search for the information he needs on your site. You could even include a search box right on the error page;
As of today, Rock Coast Media has launched a new wiki, called Search Source. The reason for this is so that the search community has a place to add user generated content about the search industry.
