Google's Amit Singhal offered more "clarity" into Google's approach with the Panda update . However I am not convinced that any clarity was actually added, and I think a lot of the questions they ask are to a degree even a bit wrong-headed. Would you trust the information presented in this article? Sounds like this is all about promoting perceived authority.

In the Manufacturing Consent DVD a newspaper executive highlighted that they liked to have a 60/40 ratio between ads and content. Google says that if over half your page's content is ads then your pages are of insufficient value .

Before Google's Panda update an effective SEO strategy was to "make a page for everything." If you are Wikipedia that strategy may still work, but for most websites that approach is a high risk & low return approach. Clustering like keywords together and using that to help set up your site's information architecture is a lower risk and higher return strategy.

The #1 goal for any organization is self-preservation. When people feel things are fairly just & they are just getting by they are fine with squeezing out more efficiency in what they do and figuring out ways to pay the bills. But when people feel the table is tilted at some point they stop caring and do whatever it takes .

Outiside of Google, Amazon and eBay own perhaps the 2 largest streams of ecommerce traffic. In fact, both are amongst the top 10 sites in Alexa )even though ~ 100% of their traffic is commercial while ~ 0.001% of Twitter's traffic is(. In spite of Google's prominent promotion of Wikipedia, Amazon still gets more traffic. In the leak of AdWords top spenders data last June Amazon was #5 on the list.

A Spammy Start Up Recently TechCrunch posted an article outing [link nofollowed] the Sequoia-backed start up Milanoo for ranking using paid links: Here's what Digital Due Diligence found: For a number of very valuable keywords in Google search,, Here's how Milanoo ranks for "cheap dresses" )position 2(, "evening gown" )1(, "cheap wedding dresses" )1(, and "summer dresses" )2(.

Google Implies Local Demand Based on User Location It appears that Google has just dialed up search result localization in a big way. A picture is worth a thousand words, so... Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there and there and there and there and there . The Struggle Real Businesses Face The big problem with this IMHO is all but the spammer )who is now busy working on "local" signals( loses. Legit online-only pure plays are simply wiped off the result set.

Changing the Cost-benefit Analysis In the last post I mentioned how the US government tried to change the cost benefit analysis for some sleazy executives at pharmaceutical corporations which continue to operate as criminal enterprises that simply view repeated fines as a calculable cost of doing business. If you think about what Google's Panda update did, it largely changed the cost-benefit analysis of many online publishing business models. Some will be frozen with fear,

A Friendly Warning I got an email the other day titled "small business SEO scam" My name is Ryan, and I head small business outreach for ConsumerAffairs.com. Recently, we started receiving a rash of complaints from small business owners concerning illegitimate SEO consulting companies they have used. These small business owners are paying hundreds )in some cases thousands( of dollars to have these SEO consulting companies remove negative comments from ConsumerAffairs.com.

We Are Not a Content Farm When Google began speaking publicly about content farms Demand Media's Richard Rosenblatt stated that it would be silly to call their stuff a content farm & he emphasized the quality of their content & care that went into it. Of course, those who bothered looking at the content often saw something different Panda II Hits Demand Media When Google did the global roll out of Panda earlier this month,

I just saw this Google snippet while trying to fine one of our old posts and it was *so* awful that I had to share it. This is an area where Bing was out in front of Google & used a more refined strategy for years now before Google started playing catch up last fall . Google ignored our page title, ignored our on-page header, and then use the 'comments' count as the lead in the clickable link. Then they follow it with the site's homepage page title.

You can learn a lot about how search has improved over the years by reading Matt Cutts. Recently he highlighted how search was irrelevant in the past due to a lack of diversity : Seven of the top 10 results all came from one domain, and the urls look a little' well, let's say fishy. In 1999 and early 2000, search engines would often return 50 results from the same domain in the search results. One nice change that Google introduced in February 2000 was "host crowding,

Majestic SEO has long had great link data, but their biggest issue has been usability. They sorta built with the approach of "let's give them everything" as a default, and then allowed advanced filtering to be done over the top to generate custom reports. For advanced users this type of set up is ideal, because you are able to slice and dice it in many ways on your own terms. It allows you to spot nepotistic networks, pinpoint strategies quickly,

Value Systems Many broken belief systems that exist do so because of a misinformed understanding of how the world works through naive idealism, with various special interests paying to syndicate misinformation that coincides with their current business model to foster culturally constructed ignorance - agnotology . It is not a bubble. This time is different. The internet changes everything And then of course we had "Real estate always goes up!" Who was behind that lie?

Humility When I graduated high school one of my teachers gave me a card stating how they appreciated my humility. My mom read that and was proud, and I felt a bit embarrassed because I didn't know what the word meant and had to ask. It turns out it is easy to confuse ignorance for humility! :D Marketing is chuck full of humbling teachable moments. One of the most important concepts is the importance of humility.

If you live outside the United States and were unscathed by the Panda Update, a world of hurt may await soon. Or you may be in for a pleasant surprise. It is hard to say where the chips may lay for you without looking. Some people just had their businesses destroyed, whereas the Online Publisher Association sees a $1 billion windfall to the winning publishers . Due to Google having multiple algorithms running right now, you can get a peak at the types of sites that were hit,

What is Search Assist? Yahoo! announced search assist , a new beta product launched in the United States which is similar to Google Instant , but extends a bit further. It works by extending the search interface to include a layer before the results come up.

Firefox 4 was just released. It is much smoother & faster than prior versions of the browser. And the persistent memory leaking issue seems to have been tamed, even with many extensions installed. Overall an awesome upgrade. I can see this once again becoming my main web browser while also remaining my primary SEO research browser. With the upgrade I only had 2 major issues I needed to install the newest version of Roboform By default there is no status bar in Firefox 4.

Guidelines are pushed as though they are commandments from a religious tome, but they are indeed a set of arbitrary devices used to hold down those who don't have an in with Google . When Google nuked BeatThatQuote I guessed that the slap on the wrist would last a month & give BTQ time to clean up their mess. As it turns out, I was wrong on both accounts. Beat That Quote is already ranking again . They rank better than ever & only after only 2 weeks! And the spam clean up?

This infographic highlights how Google's cat and mouse approach to SEO has evolved over the past decade. One of the best ways to understand where Google is headed is to look at where they have been and how they have changed. Click on it for ginormous version. If you would like us to make more of them then please spread this one.