Google Celebrates Pac-Man's 30th Birthday

Google has changed their logo to celebrate Pac-Man's 30th birthday. Pac-Man, the famous arcade game is very popular around the world and Google did not miss the opportunity to celebrate their popularity using their doodle. The logo looked simply great as they have created their first ever playable Google Doodle. But beware, you cannot stop stop or pause the game :) .You gotta see it to believe their unique creativity.

Quality Score Explained in Adwords Live Online Classroom

Day before yesterday (18th Feb, 2010, 12.30 AM IST), I did manage to attend the live online course on "Understanding Quality Score". I somehow managed to keep myself awake till 2 o'clock midnight as the entire webinar was very interesting and it went for 2 hours. Due to some technical problem from their end (Google), the session started after 10-15 mins late. While attending the webinar, I did make note of few important points which I feel sharing with you guys in case you missed that session. Given below are key understandings of Google's Adwords Quality Score:

1. What is Quality Score and why is it Important?
   
• Quality Score is an automated measure of how relevant each of your keywords is to your ad text and to a user's search query.
• It is based on an automated algorithm that tries to determine this factor for each of your keywords in your account.
• Quality Score affects Ad Rank.
  Ad Rank = Max CPC (the advertiser bidding for the keyword) x Quality Score.
  So in order to rank high, you have to either increase your CPC or Quality Score or both.
  
• High quality score will off-set a low max CPC. You can show in higher positions with a lower actual CPC. And that means you will get more clicks for less.
• Quality score means user experience
• The biggest factor in Quality Score is CTR (Click-Through-Rate). If your Ad-copy is having high CTR, that means it has a good user experience.
• Try to match your Ads and Keywords to improve their Quality Score
  
• Quality Score of 1 to 4 is considered poor. Anything higher than 8 is Great. The numbers that we see is not the actual number that has been put into their ranking equation. It is just to give us a general idea of what our quality score is.
  
• Quality Score is based on real time factors such as:
  
  • Search Query
  • Location
  • Ad copy
  • CTR
  • and other relevance factors


2. Optimum Account Structure
   
   
   • Build up your account in such a manner to get high quality score.
   • Do not target all the keywords for a single Ad Group.
   • Try to have separate Ad Groups for a set of targeted keywords.
   • Ad Group, Ad Copy and the targeted keywords should all be relevant under a Campaign.


3. 5 Common Quality Score Misconceptions/Myths
   

• Misconception 1: There is only one Quality Score
  Fact:Google uses separate Quality Scores in their equation and they are used:
  
  
  • Quality Score Factors to determine whether an ad will show for a particular search
    
    
    • CTR on Google
    • Relevance of the keyword to its ad group
    • Landing Page quality
    • Historical Performance (measured through CTR across all your keywords)
    • Other Relevance Factors
  
  
  • Quality Score Factors to rank ads
    
    
  • Quality Score Factors for search
    
    
    • CTR on Google
    • Relevance of the keyword and Ad to the search query
    • Historical Performance
    • Other Relevance Factors
      
      
  • Quality Score Factors for content (partner sites)
    
    
    • Ad's Past Performance
    • Relevance of the overall theme
    • Landing Page quality
    • Other Relevance Factors
    • Don't automatically install software
    • Don't request unnecessary personal information (have a privacy policy if you require)
      
    • Ability to opt out of receiving marketing newsletters
    • Link to a page that is about the product or service advertised in the ad
      
    
    Good Landing Page Quality
    
    
    • Original Content (avoid mirror pages)
    • Free of Malware
    • Don't alter Users Browser behaviour or settings
    • Avoid pop-ups, pop-unders
    • Load fast or faster
    • Don't use all images
    
    Performance on content network wont affect our search quality score and vice versa. Bounce Rate on the actual landing page does not effect Quality Score
    
    
• Misconception 2 :Using different match types (keyword match types) can improve your Quality Score
  Fact: Quality Score is calculated using only data from queries that exactly match your keyword
  
  
  • Use only one match type - Broad is best
    
    
• Misconception 3 :Showing up in a higher position will benefit your Quality Score
  Fact: Quality Score is normalized to compensate for differences in performance for ads in different positions
  
  
  • High CTR does not always equal a high Quality Score
  • To improve Quality Score, you need to get a higher CTR than is average for that position and keyword
    
    
• Misconception 4 :Quality Score is reset when you optimize your account ( I will lose my Quality Score history if I optimize my account)
  Fact: History of keywords, ad texts and landing pages is preserved when the account is restructured.
  
  
  • Visible history is reset
  • History to calculate Quality Score is preserved
    
    
• Misconception 5 :If I optimize (or raise my CPCs) , my position will always improve
  Fact: Adwords is an auction system and to show higher than your competitors you need to:
  
  
  • Increase your Quality Score faster than your competitors
  • Raise your CPCs faster
  • Both
    
    In case you are in a competitive industry, then you need to architect as well as keep optimizing your account because doing nothing you can go backwards and can lose your Ad rank.
    

Question & Answer Session during Live Webinar

Question: Does advertising status effect organic search results?
Answer: No--your advertising status has no effect on your organic search results. Though factors that go into landing page quality and QS may also be similar to factors that affect natural search listings.

Question: Does quality score affect the page rank of my site?
Answer: Quality Score will have an effect on the rank of your ad within the sponsored links, but not on your natural search results.

Question:What QUANTITATIVE measurements can we use to gauge the QUALITY of our LANDING PAGE? Keyword Density for our ad keyword phrase? Say 3-6% keyword density is optimum?
Answer: We do not have specific metrics like you suggest for optimizing landing pages for Quality Score. Optimize your site for the user experience, and follow the guidelines outlined here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs&answer=46675&adtype=text

Question: Do Conversion rates effect rankings?
Answer: No. Conversion rate is not a factor in quality score.

Question: I apologize if I missed your reply to my question. Is there any relationship between QS and Max CPC? In other words, if your QS is 10/10, what else can we do to reduce our Max CPC?
Answer: To your first question--yes. The relationship between QS and Max CPC has been covered (the higher the QS, the lower the CPC). If your QS is maxed out at 10/10, you'll still want to continue to work to improve performance--in terms of CTR and in terms of conversions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, or other metrics you use to determine success.

Question: is there a person to contact if we have questions? may we contact one of you? my email is rich.cray@storagefront.com . please email me a contact. thank you
Answer: You can contact our support team with any questions by accessing the 'Contact Us' form through the AdWords Help Center.

Question: what is conversion rate mean?
Answer: Conversion rate is the percentage of clicks that result in a conversion (sale, newsletter sign-up, or other goal of your website).

Question: Do performance stats for keywords in an adgroup/campaign affect each other? (eg low ctr on a high volume kw bringing down performance for an entire campaign)
Answer: Yes. Overall account history is taken into account for each keyword's specific quality score.

Question: how does google know when we get a conversion and a customer makes a purchase?
Answer: This is a separate topic--Google offers a free tool called 'Conversion Tracking' with AdWords (and also Google Analytics). Search the Help Center for more information on these topics.

Question: Is it better to have a lot of keywoods or just a few?
Answer: We recommend about 30 or so per ad group, but continue to monitor this list so that any poorly performing keywords are removed and to not impact quality score across the board.

Question: ids the quality score that you can see in the keyword list a combination of the poor keyword to the landing page or is it the landing page? how do you find the quality score for the landing page? (i did see the link you recommended to look at for landing page tips)
Answer: If you hover your mouse over the speech bubble next to your keywords on the keywords tab, you can see the breakdown between landing page quality, load time, and keyword relevance.

Question: Does pausing a poorly performing keyword have the same effect as deleting it?
Answer: The historical performance of paused or deleted ads and keywords will continue to affect your account history. However, recent history weighs more heavily in QS, so as long as a keyword is not running (paused or deleted, no difference), its past performance will be outweighed by more recent activity.

Question: in a ad group how do we find a specific keyword that has a low QS?
Answer: You can customize your columns on the keywords tab to show quality score.

Question: When talking about LP quality, do you consider other pages on the site? Does it follow forms?
Answer: We examine the entire domain.

Question: does pausing an ad group have the same effect as deleting it in terms of CTR and Q scores?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Considering the pass-fail, does that mean I should not spend time tweaking terms to make sure they match keywords and ads, etc.?
Answer: As Tali just mentioned, you can see if landing page is effecting you quality score by hovering your mouse over the speech bubble next to a given keyword. If it says 'landing page quality: no problems' your page is fine.

Question: how do you know which type of match your keywords are?
Answer: ''keyword'' is phrase match, [keyword] is exact match and keyword is broad match.

Question: jake M: How is keyword relevance calculated?
Answer: Keyword relevance is determined by a number of factors, many of which are not disclosed (even to me). However, ensure the keyword is relevant to both your ad and the landing page--including the keyword itself in both places helps. The biggest factor, though, is CTR--if users are searching for your keyword but not clicking on your ad, that is the strongest signal to the AdWords system that your keyword and ad are simply not relevant.

Question: I still can't find how to view the quality score
Answer: If you go to your keywords tab and select 'columns' below the tabs, you can check the box next to Quality Score to add this column in for all of your keywords.

Question: what is considered an acceptable CTR? 5%?
Answer: 1% on search, .1% on content

Question: I'm hovering over the keywords and am getting no ''speech bubbles''. Would a firefox option disable that?
Answer: If you're on the keywords tab, the speech bubble is next to the word 'Eligible' in the 'Status' column.

Question: how come sometimes we see our bid is considered too low to appear on first page yet average position is still a low number?
Answer: The first page bid estimates are dynamic and based on your competition. So if your competitors increase their bids, you may have been ranking high yesterday but are not not able to achieve first page position.

Question: is the ctr for content usually lower?
Answer: Yes. Above .1% CTR on content is good.

Question: How do I differentiate between search and content CTR?
Answer: If you're on the keywords tab and scroll to the bottom of the table, you can see metrics for 'total search' and 'total content.'

Question: If broad and exact give the same quality score, why not just make all keywords broad, thereby get more exposure without hurting the quality score?
Answer: This call is entirely yours to make--with broad match keywords, you will get much more exposure, however this could result in getting a higher percentage of clicks that aren't resulting in sales/conversions. You'll likely want to use a mix of match types and negative keywords to refine and optimize your keyword list for the best return-on-investment.

Question: I have a keyword and I hovered over it and my Landing Page, Relative Keyword, and Landing Page load time is No problem. Why do I have a low QS? My ads do not show up for it either?
Answer: It's likely that the system has determined that this keyword may not perform well for you, based on the factors covered earlier. You can improve the QS by 'proving the system wrong' and maintaining a high CTR for t

Question: negative keyword is what again? thx
Answer: A negative keyword filters out irrelevant impressions from match expansions. For example, if you sell wicker baskets but not basket balls, you may want to add 'balls' as a negative keyword.

Question: If I have an account with a very bad history of qs nd ctr, how long might I wait to see results from an optimization overall?
Answer: This can vary, but in general the system begins to recognize the improvement in performance once you maintain a high CTR for several thousand impressions. Again, there's no hard number here, and it varies by account/keyword.

Question: I'm in Rm#2 and only see a grey screen. Is room#1 seeing the same?
Answer: Yes. The presentation is not working at the moment. Sorry!

Question: How many ads per ad group is suggested?
Answer: We recommend about 3 ad texts per ad group.

Question: How is keyword relevance calculated?
Answer: I already answered this: Keyword relevance is determined by a number of factors, many of which are not disclosed (even to me). However, ensure the keyword is relevant to both your ad and the landing page--including the keyword itself in both places helps. The biggest factor, though, is CTR--if users are searching for your keyword but not clicking on your ad, that is the strongest signal to the AdWords system that your keyword and ad are simply not relevant.

Question: Does keyword insertion helps to increase the CTR%?
Answer: It can. If users find your ads more relevant due to insertion and then click on them more often as a result, your CTR will improve

Question: So is she saying if I have a keyword paused, but I have it another ad group that is active? that they are hurting each other?
Answer: I would remove any duplicate keywords in the account as if both are active they will compete with one another.

Question: what is the threshold that determines a ''poor'' quality - is it 4, 3?
Answer: 1-3 are considered 'poor', though getting a '4' doesn't necessarily mean you should stop trying to improve

Question: where can I find the bid recommendation for keywords?
Answer: In the status column on the keywords tab. You will see bid recommendations if you're currently below the first page bid estimate. Otherwise, it will say 'eligible.'

Question: do you recommend having both a singular and plural form of the keyword in a campaign?
Answer: Yes. This allows you to capitalize on more relevant keywords.

Question: Is there any value to having keywords all at the campaign level?
Answer: This is not possible--keywords are housed in ad groups, which are housed in campaigns.

Question: But you can have keywords at the campaign level?
Answer: No. Keywords are added at the ad group level.

Question: Well lets say one keyword is paused, but its active in another adgroup...is it affecting each other?
Answer: The keyword's history is relevant at the account level, so both of the keywords' history will factor. However, the keyword that is active will have a higher weight here, as recent history is more important than older history.

Question: can you have negative keywords at the campaign level?
Answer: Negative keywords can be added at the ad group or campaign lev

Question: does the word order matter for a keyword? 'fresh roses' vs. 'roses fresh' - should an ad group use both or does it not matter?
Answer: I would recommend both to cover your bases.

Question: In general it is a good idea to insert the keyword(s) for your ad group into the ads themselves?
Answer: YES - this lets the advertiser see immediately that whay they searched for is what you are offering, resulting (hopefully) in a higher CTR for you.

Question: What is the recommended number of keywords tied to each ad?
Answer: In a given ad group we recommend no more than 30.

Question: what is the maximum number of keywords that can be there in an adgroup
Answer: Make sure to keep your keywords tightly themed and closely related to your ad text.

Question: how is the QS determined if a keyword has no impressions
Answer: New keywords with no impressions still have a QS assigned. As there is no history in your account for this keyword, the other factors of QS determine the keyword's QS, including how the keyword has performed for other advertisers.

Question: Does clicks from content have the same effect on qs?
Answer: The Quality Score for calculating an ad's eligibility to appear on a particular content site, as well as the ad's position on that site, consists of the following factors: the ad's past performance on this and similar sites, the relevance of the ads and keywords in the ad group to the site, the quality of your landing page

Question: How do you move words to make new campaigns
Answer: If you create a new campaign with new ad groups, you can move keywords from one ad group to another by checking the box to the left of the keyword you'd like to move, selecting 'more actions' and then 'copy' and selecting the new ad group where you'd like to place it.

Question: what is the single most important factor to determining quality score, you didnt say
Answer: I would focus on click through rate. There are many important factors, but this one is crucial to maintaining a strong quality score.

Question: Can I target competitors name in my keywords list (considering we are in the same business) and still have high quality score?
Answer: This is possible, but generally unlikely. This is because users searching directly for a specific brand or company are usually looking for that specific brand or company, resulting in lower CTR and relevance for you. You can certainly try, and if you can maintain high CTR doing this you may see good QS, but again, this typically does not happen.

Question: How do IMAGE ads and keywords interact since, unlike text ads, they CANNOT contain the actual KEYWORDS?
Answer: Image ads can only show on the content network, so will be placed on sites based on the theme of your keywords and how they match up to content pages. The quality score for content is not attributed to a specific keyword.

Question: Can keywords be listed in alphabetical order in campaigns, and how can i do this?
Answer: If you sort by clicking on the header 'Keyword' in the first column on the left within the keywords tab.

Question: What is the difference between the ads that appear at the top of the page and the ones that appear on the right hand side? Are they just lower ranked ads?
Answer: Yes--ads at the top have excellent QS and a sufficient bid to reach that 'top placement.' Ads on the right hand side are lower-ranked ads.

Question: what are the biggest things we can do to impact quality score
Answer: If your landing page has no problems, focus on CTR.

Question: you pay more, you get high CTR? right?
Answer: Not necessarily. You need to have compelling ad text to entice users to actually click on the ads. Having a high bid can get you a good ad rank, but a user will only click on the ad if they're intrigued by your ad text.

Question: What is a good way to decide what campaigns to make if you are selling a lot of different products on your website?
Answer: You should mirror your account structure to your site, so breaking out separate ad groups for your different products or services. You may consider different campaigns rather than ad groups if you'd like to divide up your budget or set different geo-targeting.

Question: when is the next webinar on a different topic?
Answer: In three weeks, we'll do a webinar on Landing Page advice.

Question: how many keywords per adgroup/ad do you recommend? how many adgroups per campaign? why only 3 ads recommends for adgroup? seems low to me
Answer: This can vary, but typically once you have more than 10-20 keywords in an ad group, it's likely you could further refine your keyword lists/ads by breaking the keywords out into even more specific ad groups and targeting these keywords with more specific ads. Put as many ads as you'd like to try out in the ad group--the default setting is to show better performing ads more frequently anyway, so it's essentially an experiment and an optimization performed automatically.

Question: If CTR is the biggest determiner of QS, then how can Google determine QS on a brand new campaign for a brand new account?
Answer: We look at historical factors for the keyword across all of google as well as the account's overall history, and then give keywords the benefit of the doubt for a period as it accrues its own specific CTR and performance history. This is why you sometimes see keywords with a high QS for a few days when they're first added, and then a sharp drop once we have enough information to determine poor performance.

Question: Do I receive your slides automatically along with the vocal part or do I need to request them?
Answer: An email will be sent out (likely tomorrow) to EVERYONE, and it will include the presentation and a recording. The recording may be an earlier recording from a different market due to the technical issues we experienced today, but the material covered is the same.

Question: also, is there a Support Chat url for GG Adwords that would be similar to this chat in here ... ? that would be really great
Answer: If you go to the AdWords Help Center, we often have chat support available depending on the availability of our representatives.

Question: what is a good resource for passing the AdWords qualification exam outside of the learning center?
Answer: Definitely check out the videos on the new AdWords Online Classroom: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en_US&page=webinars.cs

Question: Is there a way to find out which ads win a certain bid and how much they paid? Or any other info on them so that you know where you stand with your competitors?
Answer: You can see your average CPC for a given ad if you go to the 'ads' tab. If you look at the average CPC as compared to the average position, you can see how you're performing.

Question: what about setting up keywords for multiple similar websites - will these compete with one another (if for example, you have websites in North America & UK)
Answer: If they are targeting the same areas, then yes. If you are targeting the US website to just the US, and the UK website to just the UK, then the keywords will not be competing with each other.

Question: what is the difference between ad group and new campaign?
Answer: You can create multiple ad groups within a given campaign. At the campaign level you can select your budget and geotargeting, and at the ad group level create your keywords and ad texts.

Question: Does AdWords see FL the same as Florida?
Answer: FL can expand out to Florida if its in broad match, but you may want to add in both variations to cover your bases.

Question: what's the AdWords qualification exam?
Answer: It's called the Google Advertising Professionals program, more info here: https://adwords.google.com/professionals/

Question: Is there a limit to how many ad groups you can have in a campaign
Answer: 2000 ad groups per campaign

Question: how accurate is geotargeting really? is it better to use national instead?
Answer: If you have a local business, geotargeting is going to allow you to reach a much more targeted audience.

Question: How can you use multiple URLs for the destinations.
Answer: You can set keyword level URLs by customizing columns on the keywords tab and selecting 'Destination Url.'

Question: If goggle give the benefit of the doubt for QS on new account keywords, then how come I've gotten messages that the bid isn't high enough to appear on page 1? Seems to me that the benefit of the doubt would allow it until it proved itself a total disaster as far as QS.
Answer: I understand what you are saying, but it would be impossible to give a generous 'benefit of the doubt' for every keyword added to an account. The system relies on the keyword's performance across all accounts as well as other factors to get a 'starting point' QS. Otherwise, spammers and other low-quality advertisers (not implying this is you!) would be able to start new accounts and see good results for at least a short period of time for high-value or high-traffic keywords, resulting in search results pages clogged with poor quality ads. This would be a terrible user experience.

Question: can you have geotargeting for one website and national for the other, then will the keywords be competing?
Answer: If you're using the same keywords in both campaigns, you should exclude the local region in your national campaign so you have one campaign locally targeted to that area, and one for the rest of the country without overlap. You can set up location exclusion from the location targeting on the settings tab.

Question: My business has a 10 mile radius and I use geotargeting. But, I'd like to refine that to a smaller area and fewer communities. I tried using the Google to do that and it failed completely. Will you be providing better geotargeting in the future?
Answer: I hear what you're saying here. The trouble is, location is determined at a local level by IP address, which starts to get inaccurate when you get more specific than a 10-mile radius.

Question: If you have the same keyword in multiple campaigns, and it says it will not double serve, what should be done,
Answer: Remove duplicate keywords so that you dont have to worry about competing with yourself.

Two-Column Sitelinks VS One-Line Sitelinks

Google started showing sitelinks in their search result from the year 2006 (around Aug or Sep). They have now introduced a new and unique feature that is beneficial for the user. I always wonder how they come up with such nice ideas everytime. It’s the user that they always think of and which motivates them to provide such great stuffs. Yet another successful feature got added to their repertoire. Anyways, you might have already started thinking all about sitelinks? What it is? How do they work and many such questions must be already flocking around your mind.


Sitelinks are links that are shown below the first search result. All the links shown are internal links of the website which is ranking number one for a particular search term. The main objective of showing sitelinks is to allow users navigate and move to the other relevant sections of your webpage that might be of their interests.

Advantage of Sitelinks

• Saves time for the users.
  
• User can quickly find the information that they are looking for by quickly navigating to the important pages of your site.
• Useful for large and complex websites.
• Gives users an overview of a website's content by highlighting some of the popular parts of the site that users may not know about.
  

The entire sitelinks system is fully automated and an algorithm is running behind it. Google will show sitelinks only when they think that it will be beneficial for the user.

Sitelinks Depend on

• Website internal linking structure
• Content
• Fast navigation
• Relevancy
  

Google Pulling Sitelinks names from:

It is still unclear from where exactly the Sitelinks names are pulling from, since they are not an exact match for

• on-page anchor text,
• page titles or
• alt attributes.
  

Most likely it is using a combination of those factors, but then stripping out “stop words.”

Sitelinks are not shown if

• The structure of the website does not allow the sitelinks algorithm to find good sitelinks.
• The sitelinks are not relevant to the users’ search query
• Have a minimum of 3 sitelinks available
  

Manage and View your Sitelinks

• Login to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard and
• Click the site for which you want to see the sitelinks.
• In the left menu, click Links
• Then click Sitelinks. (will display a list of sitelinks if Google has sitelinks information for your website)
  

Sitelinks are generated periodically from your website content on account of which the lists may change from time to time. If you want, you can block a sitelink from the Webmaster Tools Dashboard. It may take 1-2 weeks’ time to remove a link as a sitelink. Sitelinks that are blocked will not appear as a sitelink for the next 90 days until you unblock it. The 90 days blocking period may extend everytime you visit the Sitelinks page on Webmaster tools.

Exclude a page from sitelinks if

• The page has become outdated or unavailable
• The page that contains information you don't want to emphasize for users.
  

One–Line Sitelinks:


We have witnessed till today that sitelinks are normally shown for few search terms and for websites that are ranking number 1. Now Google has started showing one-line sitelinks instead of usual two-column sitelinks. On April 15th, the day before Google announced it, the one-line sitelinks or alternatively "Mini-Sitelinks" are getting displayed even for results that are not in the first position. This means that for a single search query, multiple websites can have sitelinks in the search results. Up to four sitelinks can show up right above the page URL, instead of the usual two columns below the URL of the first result.

One–Line Sitelinks Advantage:

• Website will start showing sitelinks for a number of search queries where it previously didn't.
• Will increase the visibility of and traffic to your site.
• Improve user experience.
  

One–Line Sitelinks Vs Two-Column Sitelinks:

The main differences between these so called One-Line Sitelinks and Two-Columsn Sitelinks are:

• Display of this abbreviated version of Sitelinks is not limited to “branded” searches.
• One-Line Sitelinks are not just reserved for the #1 result and can appear in results at the bottom of the SERPs.
• One-Line Sitelinks are appearing on more than one result at a time.
• A single domain can have more than one set of Sitelinks per page.
• One-Line Sitelinks (aka "Mini Sitelinks") display four links in comparison to 8 links displayed by Two-Column Sitelinks.
  

For webmasters, this new feature might help them attract more visitors to their website. It is now just a matter of time to analyze and come to a conclusion, which is better, two-column sitelinks displaying 8 internal pages or one-line sitelinks displaying 4 internal pages. Only time can say.

Google Display Adult Image for "Happy Labor Day"

Google Image Search is again get caught in wrong foot for the keyword "Happy Labor Day". With Family filter ON, Google Image search displays adult image and that too for such a big event keyphrase "Happy Labor Day". As the event is very near, and more and more people are actually getting into the weekend mood, getting such an image with safesearch ON is really disturbing.

The Google Logos Video

Matt talks about the anatomy of a search result

Google guru Matt Cutts discusses how best to optimize your site for Google. Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. He is currently the head of Google's Webspam team.

Underscores in URLs are now Treated as Word Separators by Google

Till now, Google used to treat dashes and underscores in the URL differently. A dash (hyphen) between two words in the URL (i.e. keyword-phrase) would tell Google that those are two different words (i.e. keyword +phrase). In the past, an underscore between two words in a URL (i.e. keyword_phrase) would tell Google that those words are a single word (i.e. keywordphrase). Now both underscores and hyphens in the URL are treated as word separators.

One key development that Matt shared with the audience was that underscores in URLs are now (or at least very soon to be) treated as word separators by Google. That's great news, because it historically hasn't been that way. Back in 2005, Matt stated that Google did not view underscores in URLs as word separators. That meant that in a URL like http://www.mysite.com/iphone_review.html Googlebot couldn't "see" the words iphone or review. Instead it read iphone_review as one word. I wouldn't recommend targeting "iphone_review" as a keyword, as I doubt anyone will be including an underscore in their Google query.

So it used to be--until now--that any benefit that you would have gotten by having a keyword-rich URL was negated by the use of underscores separating those words. TypePad and Movable Type blogs were particularly affected by this, as by default, underscores were used instead of hyphens. This new change in the Google algorithm should make bloggers using the TypePad service or the Movable Type blog software (and anyone else using underscores in their URLs) very happy, as I anticipate their Google traffic will be going up.

A few other highlights from Matt's talk that you may find interesting:

• Matt claims that Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. Caveat: as long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL, that is! Put another way, you won't take a hit in your Google rankings if you have a question mark in your URL; just don't have more than two or three equals signs in the URL.
  
• Matt stated that the number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn't a factor in your Google rankings. He went on to say that although it doesn't matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). Matt addressed this because I specifically asked the question from the audience.
  
• According to Matt, the file extension in your URL won't affect your rankings. So it's inconsequential whether you use .php, .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .jsp etc. The one extension you should avoid for your Web documents? .exe.
  
• Matt stated it was myth that Google uses its status as a domain registrar to access domain registration data to use it as a ranking signal. According to Matt, being a registrar doesn't grant one special access to other registrars' customer data. Note that Matt didn't state whether Google is or isn't using WHOIS data as a signal. I believe they are.
  
• When asked about how to get one's blog into Google News, Matt shared one of Google's requirements for inclusion: the blog must have multiple authors. So those of you wanting your blog showing up in Google News results, I hope it's a group blog!

Implementing 301 Redirect Properly

What is 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a command used to tell the search engines that a page has permanently moved, and that you want them to index the new page and drop the old one from their index. It’s basically a change of address card for the Web. As long as everything is done correctly, a 301 redirect will ensure that you keep the rankings earned by the old page and it will prevent the duplicate content nightmare that should arise if the engines were to index box version of your site.

How to Implement 301 Redirects Using .htaccess for Apache?

Before you get yourself all excited about the fun you’re about to have, make sure you have access to your server, your Apache Configuration file, and that you can use your .htaccess files. The ability to use .htaccess files will reside in a command called "Allow Override" in the Apache Configuration file. If you do not have this access, you’ll have to first call your hosting company and get access.

Once you know that you have access to this file, your next step is to locate it. The .htaccess file is a control file that allows server configuration changes on a per-directory basis. It controls that directory and all of the sub-directories contained within. In most cases, this file will be placed in the root Web folder for your Web site. If there’s no .htaccess file present, create one.
To begin using the .htaccess file to redirect page(s) on your Web site, open up your FTP and login to your Web site. Work your way into in the root Web folder in order to access your .htaccess file. This little gem is the file you’ll need to edit. (A little piece of advice: The dot in .htaccess makes it a hidden file, so make sure your FTP browser is enabled to view hidden files. Otherwise you’ll never find it and your IT guy will laugh at you when you ask him for help.)

When you start editing the file, use a UNIX style text editor, not Notepad. Typically, an HTML editor or code editor such as TextPad works just fine. To 301 redirect pages using the .htaccess file, you will add a line to the file that will tell the server what to do. You can do this a couple of ways:

RedirectPermanent /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html
-or-
Redirect 301 /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html

A redirection from one domain to another would be:

RedirectPermanent / http://www.new-domain.com/

Our IT department reminds me there are some key things worth mentioning here:

• The first section of the command tells the server what to do: RedirectPermanent or Redirect 301. Again, these commands are equivalent.
• The second is the relative path to the file that you want to redirect. This must be the relative path to the location of the .htaccess file (i.e. /old-file.html).
• The last section is the full path to the new file. This is a fully-qualified URL, meaning you need the http:// (http://www.domain.com/new-file.html).

Once you have inserted the commands to 301 redirect your pages, you need to make sure that there is a blank line at the end of the file. Your server will read the .htaccess file line by line, which means at some point you’ll need to throw them an “endline” character to let them know you’re finished. An easy way to do this is to put a blank line at the bottom of the file.
You can test that your redirect was done properly by heading over to your search bar, typing in your old domain name, and hitting search. If you’ve correctly implemented your 301 you’ll be immediately taken to the new location. If you haven’t, go play in traffic. You’re useless and should be ashamed of yourself. Zing!

How to do a 301 redirect using a Windows server?

Okay, this is a bit trickier. First, navigate your way to the Internet Services Manager (Programs -- Administrative Tools -- Internet Services Manager). Once you’re there, select the site you’re redirecting from, and right click to open up the properties menu. This will open up the Context menu. (Sadly, there is no ‘viola’ once this happens.)

Inside the Context menu you’ll see the “Home Directory” tab, click on it and select "A redirection to a URL" from the radio buttons at the top. The default choice will be to select “A directory located on this computer” but that is NOT the option you want. Once you’ve made your selection, type in the new URL you want your old domain to point to. Make sure that the “A permanent redirection for this resource" is selected in the checkboxes underneath.

The other checkboxes listed handle some different options, depending on what you want to do:

• "The exact URL entered above": This will redirect the search spiders and users to the exact URL you entered in the "Redirect To:" box. For instance, if you somebody went to http://www.youroldsite.com/products/index.html, they would go to http://www.yournewsite.com/.
• "A directory below this one": Freaky Friday images aside, this redirects a parent directory to a child directory. For instance, if someone typed in http://www.yoursite.com to access the site and you wanted the request to be redirected to a child directory named "tools", then they would be sent to http://www.yoursite.com/tools.

If you need more options for what you’re redirecting to, you can add some control variables to the “Redirect to” box where you just entered in the new URL. The most useful variable for domain redirects is $V. This removes the server name from the original request.

For example, http://www.youroldsite/directory1/page1.html would redirect to http://www.yourNEWsite.com/directory1/page1.html. Leaving this control variable out will only redirect the home page. If other pages are ranked in your site, then it would be extremely helpful to redirect those pages using these variables also.

If you don’t have access to your .htaccess file or your Windows Server Administration Panel, you can still implement 301 redirects with code on your old pages, but you have to do with one hand tied behind your back and wearing an eye patch. Fine, no eye patch. If your pages are in PHP, ASP, Java, or any other language that allows you to modify Response Headers, simply place code at the top of each page to do the Permanent Redirect.

Does 301 Redirect HURT Rankings ?

Aaron Wall posted a case study on a recent site move. He documented the traffic to the site, before, during and after the big move. He also documented how long Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft picked up the site on the new domain.

Google to Introduce New Meta Tags

The ‘unavailable_after’ meta tag will soon be recognized by Google according to Dan Crow, Director of Crawl Systems at Google and Jill Whalen of High Rankings. Google is coming out with a new tag called “unavailable_after” which will allow people to tell Google when a particular page will no longer be available for crawling. So, it gives you the option to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page.

This tag comes in handy when you have a limited time offer promotional page, and on this page, the promotion will expire on a specific date. For instance, if you have a special offer on your site that expires on a particular date, you might want to use the unavailable_after tag to let Google know when to stop indexing it. Or perhaps you write articles that are free for a particular amount of time, but then get moved to a paid-subscription area of your site. By using the "unavailable_after" tag, you can tell Google that they should not crawl this page, after the promotion expires. There are several practical scenarios for this tag.

For example, if you have a page that you would like to be removed from the search results at 6pm EST on July 23, 2007, you would add the following Meta tag:

meta content="unavailable_after: 23-Jul-2007 18:00:00 EST" name="GOOGLEBOT"

Once Google crawls the page and sees this Meta tag, it will take about a day for the page to be removed from the search results. Also this tag is only supported with web search. To remove the page completely from Google, including the cache copies, use the Google removal tool.
Google has also added support to control access to other types of documents, such as PDF files, audio, xls documents and so on via new X-Robots-Tag directive in the HTTP Header used to serve the file.

Here are examples of how to use the X-Robots-Tag:

Don't index this document:

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

Don't show cache or snippet in search results for this file:

X-Robots-Tag: noarchive, nosnippet

Don't index after a specific date (i.e. the "unavailable_after" tag):

X-Robots-Tag: unavailable_after: 7 Jul 2007 16:30:00 GMT

You can also combine these tags as well.

Google Websearch / Search URL Parameters Explained

If you are really interested in knowing the different parameters appended at the end of the Google search URL, then go through the list given below. The list is originally created by Joost de Valk containing the different parameters you can add to the Google search URL.

Parameter	Description (Value)
Search modifiers
q / as_q	the search query
as_epq	matches exact phrase, same as searchphrase surrounded by quotes in searchbox
as_oq	with at least one of the search terms, same as searchterms combined with OR in searchbox
as_eq	without these searchterms, same as searchterm prefixed with - in the searchbox
qdr / as_qdr	Date restriction, show results up to either 3 months old, 6 months old, or 1 year old (3m 6m y)
as_occt	query term occurs in (any title body url links)
as_filetype	specify filetype (pdf ps dwf kml kmz xls ppt doc rtf swf)
as_ft	exclude or include solely files with filetype given in as_filetype (e i)
sitesearch	the same as site: (URL with or without http://)
as_sitesearch	same as sitesearch, but shows site:URL in the search box, can be used together with as_dt (URL with or without http://)
as_dt	together with as_sitesearch shows you results from URL, or from all except that URL (i (only this URL) e (except this URL))
as_rq	find sites related to URL, same as related: in the search box (URL)
as_lq	find sites linking to URL, same as link: in the search box (URL)
hl	specifies the interface language
lr	language restrict ()
ie	input encoding
oe	output encoding ()
safe	safe search filtering (active (default) off)
filter	0
Result modifiers
num	number of results (<0..100>)
newwindow	open results in new window (1)
pws	disable personalized web search (0)
adtest	allows testing of ads without registering an impression, url's are not clickable (on)
Buttons
btnG	normal search from webinterface
btnI	I'm feeling lucky search (I%27m+Feeling+Lucky)
Localization (taken from: bluetent.typepad.com)
gl	country, for instance "US" ()
gll	latitude&longitude, (,)
gr	region, for instance GB-ENG ()
gcs	city, to use this gr must be set to the same value ()
gpc	postal code, only works if gl is set to "US" ()
gm	US designated metropolitan areas ()