SEO Consultant in San Diego

I have noticed several phishing attempts along with a colleague, Alex Rothaus, from some Google impostors. After contacting our Google representatives this morning, they confirmed that those emails were not authentic. If you receive ANY emails from “Google AdWords” or any a similar source, claiming a payment was not processed and asking you to click on a link to resolve the issue, do not click on that link. Just forward the email to Google help through your webmasters account if you have one.

The emails look legit, but Google will never ask you to click on a link, they will just give you instructions to go to Adwords.

Here are some screenshots from phishing emails we received this morning:

If you noticed the same, get the word out and let us know.

Happy Thursday

Over a month ago a friend sent me an email asking if his Link strategy was up to par with Google’s policies. He wanted to make sure that his site wouldn’t end up being penalized by Google.

It’s also important to determine if all the work you’re doing will actually bring you the “Link Power” you’re seeking. I often encounter business owners who still spend a lot of money and energy into builing link exchanges with other sites, and in the opinion of this humble SEO Consultant that’s the biggest waste of time! To have a relevant link exchange is one thing, but to blindly create reciprocal links from buried pages on a site about tires going back and forth to a site about candles won’t help. That’s just a ficticious example by the way.

Anyway, back to my buddy’s question… He asked if it would be ok to own 4 different websites, all using different hosting servers, then create links from three of them going to the main one. The thinking behind the different server is so they can have different IP addresses. The purpose behind that is so that it looks natural, not like you’re manipulating Google, even though that’s exactly what you’re doing.

That’s smart thinking and all, but there’s something else we need to consider, the Registrar information. If you’re buying all domain names as the same entity, then you end up having the same registrar information under your WHOIS record. Can Google look into that? You would be surprised with what they have access to! In February of 2005 Google became a registrar. What does it mean to become a registrar?

Registrars are resellers, any entity can become one and sell domains. There are different tiers of registrars. You could be a “middle man”, between the source and the client. You could even be the “middle man” between the original middle man and the client and so on. It only costs a few thousand dollars to sign up to different tiers, and for Google that’s small insignificant ash tray change. Do you think they acquired that so they could let you buy domain names from them? ——- No.

Disclosure: now we enter the area of speculation and SEO Survivor’s opinions

Google made this move so they could have greater access to domain information. That doesn’t mean that now Google has information to all domain names purchased. They would only have the information to the domain names registered under them, but now they have the edge they needed to get into the registrar databases. They may not get into the black and white information, but as registrars, they get benefits such as being able to carry out high volume of automated queries and many others. I won’t get too techincal here since there’s more information about Google as a registrar if you want.

If Google can reset the Search Engine Authority from domain names that expire, you can be sure that they can find that your domain names are owned by the same entity even if they are hosted in different servers. This remains to be tested though, so if you are currently doing this, let me know how it’s going. It could work out for a while, just keep in mind that it is a huge pain in the ass to get out of Google’s supplemental index, and that’s where you go when you do something naughty in Google’s eyes.

The best way to build links is to be active in the Social Media community, share and help others out. To have original and useful content on your site, to have an SEO friendly and user friendly site navigation. To personally contact other site owners that have relevant content to yours and offer to write something for them to post on their site and link to you, as well as other practices along those lines. Organic strategies may not produce results as fast as robotic strategies, but be sure that they are well worth the time and effort, and provide super valuable links to you. Also don’t be affraid to link to other relevant sites since you have to give if you want to receive. And remember, don’t panic if it’s organic.

I hope this helps out a bit! Stay tuned for more and don’t be affraid to comment people! Peace out…

We have been watching the Google / DoubleClick acquisition process, and it has come to an end. I’m personally surprised at how fast this deal came together, though the talk has been around for a while.

What does this mean?

Read Google’s Announcement about the purchase to get your questions and doubts answered, or at least somewhat humored.

Meanwhile we wait to see DART tags implemented into the Google Content Network, among other new features that will certainly pop up in the near future.

I feel for any layoff victims, since there may be some DoubleClick layoff soon. Google will probably opt to reduce DoubleClick’s headcount to match its current business structure. The word on the street is that this is supposed to be done by sometime in April.

Just another regular day of good old SEO ass kicking here at eVis… My office mate Fumi is on the phone with a client chatting away while I’m doing my unintended eves-dropping because we sit a few feet away from each other. Then I hear Fumi yelp a “Whaaaaaaat???” in mid-sentence and I had to look at his screen.

He’s already calling me over, and pointing at his screen while getting back into his conversation. I look at his screen and I see search results for “ftc” on his screen. I notice the usual Sitelinks and then, the unexpected:

WHOA!! What the heck is that “Search ftc.gov” doing there?

Is Google trying something new behind my back? I haven’t heard of any buzz about this new feature yet, so I can say I was truly surprised.

Is this something Google is awarding sites with extremely high authority, like ft.gov for example?

Is this something Google is just testing out but will be implemented to every site that is awarded Sitelinks?

Will we have any control over this tool through Google Webmaster?

There will be some researching here on my end, as I’m sure there are many other blogs writing about this right now, so let me figure this out write a bit more about it later.

Just wanted to share the new findings! Take care and please do comment about it with your thoughts.

As promised last Friday, I wrote a blog post on understanding what the “No Follow” tag can do for you.

The post was just published this morning and it has already received quite a bit of positive feedback from the Sphinn community.

If you have a website, need to explain “nofollow” tags to clients and don’t know how, or are interested in understanding more about how nofollow tags work, you must check this out at the eVisibility Insider.

Have a great week, and look forward to another post later this week.

Alright, this is no breaking news unless you don’t use Google Local on a daily basis, but Google Local Results now gives you TEN results rather than the usual three. For example, if you were to search for “dry cleaning san diego, ca”, you’d get the results on the screenshot below.

So yeah, wow Google, you really want to give more and more on page Real Estate to your awesome Local Database. No problem, I get it… I’m not complaning… yet!

When questioned about the “OneBox”, Google said “… the reason it’s showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn’t realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the ‘more results . . .’ prompt.”  Google said that with the 10 links people will hopefully realize that there are many other local results to be explored.

Noble answer, the only problem is that Google Local takes sooooo long to update its submissions. I’ve had to wait several months before to see a local listing go live. So, now we have a large area that responds very slowly to any optimization one might put in place while submitting a local listing.

I’ll follow up on this entry with more on Google Local listings optimization soon.

If you have a land line, listen up.  Do you know how much information Google has on you?  Freaky deaky.

This isn’t a brand new concept, but a lot of people aren’t aware it’s going on.

Google has implemented a feature which enables you to type a telephone number into the search bar and hit enter, and you will be given the person’s name and address. In some cases you won’t find the person’s address, but it will narrow down to their city.

Next to the listing, there will be a link to hit “map”,  and that will give you a map to the person’s home address. Though it isn’t a terrible thing, everyone should be aware of it. It’s a nationwide reverse telephone book.

If a child gives out his/her home phone number, someone can now look it up to find out where he/she lives. The safety issues are obvious and alarming, specially with the overgrowing number of internet freaks out there.

The good news is that you can have your phone number removed or blocked. I tried my number and it came up along with the map and directions straight to my house. Then I filled out the removal form for myself, and I encourage all of you to do the same.

In order to test whether your phone number is mapped, go to Google at www.google.com and  search for you home phone number, area code first.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines has the language to back that up. It has recently been changed with the following:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

This time Google is being pretty blunt about it, and it is coming out and saying it will penalize sites that sell links.

Just thought this would make an interesting entry. Things have been so busy this week that unfortunately I haven’t had time to keep up, but I’m working on a good Monday post, so be sure to check back.

According to Bloomberg News, Google and AT&T have had a chat or two about AT&T joining Google’s Android mobile software movement. This is good news for all AT&T users if it goes through, since when Google announced that they were going to open their doors for different carries to use their open source software, AT&T and Verizon were the only two not invited to the party. Maybe they just didn’t invite themselves, I’m not sure which statement is more accurate.

Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s CEO, said that AT&T is “analyzing the situation” and could end up using Google’s open source software for their phones during an interview on Friday. Details? Oh you wanted details? Sorry, no details. Ralph excused the lack of details by saying he hasn’t personally met with Google… yet!

Google made the big announcement that it would work with other companies to fully develop their open source software for mobile phones on November 5th. Amongst the 33 companies that made up this alliance, the big ones are T-Mobile, Nextel and Sprint.

I can’t even imagine how far they will take this, but I’m sure everyone will be happy with the kick ass phones we’ll see as a byproduct of this. The users will be happy with all of their new phones and features, the advertisers will be happy serving ads through new means, the wireless carriers will be happy by selling more phones, and did I forget anybody? Oh yes, Google will be very happy and maybe set out to buy the moon next. (I bet they already have the money to do so)

Look up this story at Sphinn.com and give it a sphinn!

Have you been a victim of Google’s PageRank Massacre 2007? Do you know someone who has been affected?

It has happened to multiple sites across the web, and who knows when the next wave will hit us. The good thing is that PageRank isn’t everything. Some people seem to think it’s your site’s overall score in Google’s eyes, and though that is what it was meant to be one day, it’s no longer the case. Don’t get me wrong, it still represents your level of authority in one way or another, but loosing a PageRank over the last update doesn’t mean you actually lost Search Engine Authority.

Google’s last update targeted partially all sites who have been selling/buying links, and cut down their PageRank value as a way of punishment. The problem is, a lot of sites that have nothing to do with that also lost PageRank in this process. At least they were updated on the loss of ranking, since the little PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar is months delayed anyway.

Check out Andy Beard’s blog post about the ZeroRank problem if you’re interested in more information. He gathered a lot of information on that blog post and it makes it for a good update on what’s going on.