I am already getting fake webmaster tool notification messages using the above subject line & the following message: Hello dear managers of http://www.seobook.com/ ! My name is Olivia, and the issue I'm gonna to discuss is for sure not new, but really actual and complicated, otherwise your website and therefore business wouldn't have lost their favourable positions. Yes, I want to talk about Google Panda and Penguin. These virtual beasts become more and more freakish.

Negative SEO vs Sabotage Just about any independent SEO worth their weight who publishes a number of websites has at least once hit a snag & been filtered or penalized. A person can say "not me" but how do they operate optimally in both the short term and long term if they never operate near limits or thresholds? But now that Google has begun actively penalizing sites for unnatural link profiles & tightening these thresholds, competitors have been giving one another shoves.

Before I get any drops of jupiter hate on the following...I was typing in training.seobook.com & somehow accidentally hit enter after typing train & when the URL completion didn't work I got the following SERP. If you click the feature video link it does a YouTube video overlay. The other links lead into the relevant iTunes webpage. Such media extensions have been in place for movies for quite a while now ,

Huge Update Google recently launched their webspam Penguin update. While they claim it only impacted about 3.1% of search queries , the 3.1% it impacted were largely in the "commercial transactional keywords worth a lot of money" category. Based on the number of complaints online about it ) there is even a petition! ( this is likely every bit as large as Panda or the Florida update.

Excessive Complexity & Unintended Consequences Sergey Brin recently said : You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive. The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation. He was talking about Facebook, but those words are far more applicable to Google.

For the following study, we asked "Does this search result have ads on it? " to 1,000 searchers, per search results. Due to these surveys requiring a smaller image )to fit the ad unit size( we chose search results that generally had more ads on them )typically 3 or 4( so that the background had a significant portion of real estate devoted to ads, in spite of its small size. The one exception here was DuckDuckGo,

Which do you trust most as a source of advice on important issues? People tend to trust friends & family and the mainstream media far more than they trust websites & search engines. Vote All )1204( friends & family 37.1% )+3.0 / -2.9( newspapers 32.5% )+3.0 / -2.8( search engines 19.3% )+2.6 / -2.4( social media websites 6.7% )+2.0 / -1.6( weblogs 4.4% )+1.9 / -1.3( Relative to one another, men tend to trust newspapers,

When you search, how did you pick your primary search engine? Most people use the search engine which they believe has the best relevancy, whatever their computer came with, or what a friend recommended. Vote All )1190( it has superior relevancy 30.4% )+3.0 / -2.9( the computer had a default selected 26.8% )+2.9 / -2.7( a friend told me about it 23.1% )+2.9 / -2.7( I saw it on a TV ad 10.3% )+2.3 / -1.9( it came bundled with software 9.5% )+2.3 / -1.

How many search engines do you typically use in a given month? Most people only use 1 or 2 search engines in any given month. Vote All )1223( 1 48.9% )+3.1 / -3.1( 2 26.2% )+2.9 / -2.7( 3 9.1% )+2.2 / -1.8( 4 4.7% )+2.0 / -1.4( 5 or more 11.1% )+2.3 / -2.0( There isn't much difference between men & women on this front. Vote Men )669( Women )554( 1 49.4% )+4.0 / -4.0( 48.4% )+4.8 / -4.8( 2 25.5% )+3.6 / -3.3( 26.9% )+4.6 / -4.1( 5 or more 10.6% )+2.9 / -2.3( 11.7% )+3.8 / -3.

If you use a search engine but don't find what you are looking for, which are you more likely to do? People are more likely to search again with a new keyword than they are to click onto the second page of search results. Vote All )1189( search again with a different word 55.7% )+3.2 / -3.3( go to the second page of the results 44.3% )+3.3 / -3.2( The split is fairly consistent among men and women. Vote Men )651( Women )538( search again with a different word 55.4% )+4.0 / -4.

Which of the following have you heard of? More people have heard of paid search / AdWords than have SEO / link building. One of the big issues with this question is that since it had numerous check boxes it had a lower response rate )roughly 10% vs an average of closer to 16% to 18%( & took longer for the answers to come in.

In the below poll we didn't make any distinction between AdWords & organic SEO investments. If we did I am not sure how it would have impacted the voting. How do you feel about people paying for placement in search engines? Nearly 2 in 3 people dislike money manipulating search results. response All )1201( I think it is deceptive 65.4% )+3.3 / -3.5( It is good if it is relevant 34.6% )+3.5 / -3.3( Women tend to dislike it slightly more than men.

Google recently launched a consumer insights survey product , which quizes users for access to premium content. How do users get access to these poll questions? Google locks premium content behind them, likeso: Google has long stated that "cloaking is bad" and that it was deceptive & users didn't like it.

How do you feel about companies tracking your online behavior to target ads? Surprisingly, nearly 1 in 11 people like ad retargeting. However, over 3 in 5 people dislike it. response All )1250( I dislike it because it feels creepy 62.3% )+3.1 / -3.3( I don't care either way 29.3% )+3.1 / -2.9( I like more relevant ads 8.3% )+2.3 / -1.9( Women tend to think being stalked by ads is creepier than men do. vote Men )822( Women )428( I dislike it because it feels creepy 60.6% )+3.

As publishers we tend to be quite concerned with the over-promotion of Google+ because it carves up the search landscape, is potentially another hoop that we have to jump through, and in some cases, the Google+ hosted version of a page will outrank the legitimate original source - which screws up the economics of online publishing. But do users care about how Google+ was integrated directly into the search results? Generally no.

Should search engines be able to preferentially promote their own services in their search results? Nearly 3 in 4 people think that search engines should not be able to preferentially promote their own services. vote All )1226( no, results should be objective 74.1% )+3.1 / -3.4( yes, it is their search results 25.9% )+3.4 / -3.1( There was essentially no split between men & women. vote Men )827( Women )399( no, results should be objective 73.7% )+3.1 / -3.4( 74.4% )+5.2 / -6.

Internet Marketing Ninja Jim Boykin has promoted link building since before I even knew what SEO was. Nearly a decade later so many things have changed in SEO )including renaming We Build Pages to Internet Marketing Ninjas(, but he still sees links as a key SEO driver )as do I(. I recently interviewed him about links & the changing face of SEO. so, links links links ... these were the backbone of ranking in Google for years and years. are they still? Is social a huge signal,

Sorry I haven't blogged as much lately, but one of our employees recently had a child and Google sending out so many warning messages in webmaster central has created a ton of demand for independent SEO advice.

This is a pretty powerful & instructive image in terms of "where search is headed." It's a Yahoo! Directory page that was ranking in the Google search results on a Google Android mobile device. Note the following the page is hosted on Google.com the page disclaims that it is not endorsed by Google the page embeds a Google search box the page strips out the Yahoo! Directory search box the page strips out the Yahoo!

I was recently chatting with Jonah Stein about Panda & we decided it probably made sense to do a full on interview. You mentioned that you had a couple customers that were hit by Panda. What sort of impact did that have on those websites? Both of these sites saw an immediate hit of about 35% of google traffic. Ranking dropped 3-7 spots. The traffic hit was across the board, especially in the case of GreatSchools, who saw all content types hit )school profile pages,