Google search options
I always wanted to learn more about how Google works.
here is an exaustive guide on how to give a boost to your searches:
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.htm
there are some useful operators like site: that allow you to see how many pages of your site are indexed by google and link: very useful to understand misteries of page rank getting all the sites that link to your site.
enjoy
Jumping Over the Google Sandbox
It's never easy for newcomers to enter a market and there are barriers of different kinds. For newcomers to the world of search engines, the barrier is called a sandbox – your site stays there until it gets mature enough to be allowed to the Top Positions club. Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don't rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.
Sandbox and Aging Delay
While it might be considered unfair to stop new sites by artificial means like keeping them at the bottom of search results, there is a fair amount of reasoning why search engines, and above all Google, have resorted to such measures. With blackhat practices like bulk buying of links, creation of duplicate content or simply keyword stuffing to get to the coveted top, it is no surprise that Google chose to penalize new sites, which overnight get tons of backlinks, or which are used as a source of backlinks to support an older site (possibly owned by the same company). Needless to say, when such fake sites are indexed and admitted to top positions, this deteriorates search results, so Google had to take measures for ensuring that such practices will not be tolerated. The sandbox effect works like a probation period for new sites and by making the practice of farming fake sites a long-term, rather than a short-term payoff for site owners, it is supposed to decrease its use.
Sandbox and aging delay are similar in meaning and many SEO experts use them interchangeably. Aging delay is more self-explanatory – sites are “delayed” till they come of age. Well, unlike in legislation, with search engines this age is not defined and it differs. There are cases when several sites were launched in the same day, were indexed within a week from each other but the aging delay for each of them expired in different months. As you see, the sandbox is something beyond your control and you cannot avoid it but still there are steps you can undertake to minimize the damage for new sites with new domains.
Minimizing Sandbox Damages
While Google sandbox is not something you can control, there are certain steps you can take in order to make the sandbox effect less destructive for your new site. As with many aspects of SEO, there are ethical and unethical tips and tricks and unethical tricks can get you additional penalties or a complete ban from Google, so think twice before resorting to them. The unethical approaches will not be discussed in this article because they don comply with our policy.
Before we delve into more detail about particular techniques to minimize sandbox damage, it is necessary to clarify the general rule: you cannot fight the sandbox. The only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass. Any attempts to fool Google – starting from writing melodramatic letters to Google, to using “sandbox tools” to bypass the filter – can only make your situation worse. There are many initiatives you can take, while in the sandbox, for as example:
Actively gather content and good links – as time passes by, relevant and fresh content and good links will take you to the top. When getting links, have in mind that they need to be from trusted sources – like DMOZ, CNN, Fortune 500 sites, or other reputable places. Also, links from .edu, .gov, and .mil domains might help because these domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter. Don't get 500 links a month – this will kill your site! Instead, build links slowly and steadily.
Plan ahead– contrary to the general practice of launching a site when it is absolutely complete, launch a couple of pages, when you have them. This will start the clock and time will be running parallel to your site development efforts.
Buy old or expired domains – the sandbox effect is more serious for new sites on new domains, so if you buy old or expired domains and launch your new site there, you'll experience less problems.
Host on a well- established host – another solution is to host your new site on a subdomain of a well-established host (however, free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of SEO ranking). The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains (unless the domain itself is blacklisted). You can also host the main site on a subdomain and on a separate domain host just some contents, linked with the main site. You can also use redirects from the subdomained site to the new one, although the effect of this practice is also questionable because it can also be viewed as an attempt to fool Google.
Concentrate on less popular keywords – the fact that your site is sandboxed does not mean that it is not indexed by Google at all. On the contrary, you could be able to top the search results from the very beginning! Looking like a contradiction with the rest of the article? Not at all! You could top the results for less popular keywords – sure, it is better than nothing. And while you wait to get to the top for the most lucrative keywords, you can discover that even less popular keywords are enough to keep the ball rolling, so you may want to make some optimization for them.
Rely more on non-Google ways to increase traffic – it is often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or marketing tool out there. So if you plan your SEO efforts to include other search engines, which either have no sandbox at all or the period of stay there is relatively short, this will also minimize the damages of the sandbox effect.
from:http://www.webconfs.com/google-sandbox-article-11.php
How much does a domain’s age affect its ranking?
This is how google explain how the domain age effect ranking. The answer is: the age doesn't affect ranking.
What make the difference is the quality of the contents and the links going in and out.
How a Search Engine May Identify Undesirable Web Pages By Analyzing Inlinks
The term “undesirable web pages” is used in a patent application from Yahoo published today to refer to pages that rank highly in search results based upon links pointed to those pages solely for the purpose of increasing their rankings for specific queries even though those pages may not be very relevant for the query terms in question.
“Undesirable” appears to indicate that these are pages that Yahoo doesn’t want ranking well in search results at their search engine.
So, what might Yahoo (and possibly other search engines) look at to determine whether a page is undesirable based upon the links it sees to that page?
Analyzing Inlinks for Manipulation
When search engines show pages to searchers in response to a query, those pages are placed in an order intended to show pages that are a combination of relevance and importance or quality.
One way that search engines determine how important a page might be is based upon the number and importance of pages linking to that page. Search engines may also pay attention to the text used in a link, often referred to as “anchor text,” while determining how relevant a page might be for a certain keyword term or phrase.
But there’s a problem in relying too much upon links pointing to pages to determine how relevant and important a page might be. By giving links such value, the search engines have turned links into a commodity that may determine how highly a page might rank in search results.
Many links pointing to pages are created not to bring direct traffic to a page, or to refer to a page in a specific context, but rather solely to improve the ranking of a page, and may result in “artificially promoted web pages” ranking highly in search results even though those pages may not be very relevant to a query by a searcher.
In response to this problem, search engines may weigh the value of some links differently. The patent application from Yahoo describes how that search engine might distinquish between links pointing to a page, also known as “inlinks” to that page, based upon a statistical analysis of information about those links.
The patent filing is:
Detection of Undesirable Web Pages
Inventws by Gilbert Leung, Lei Duan, Dmitri Pavlovski, Su Han Chan, and Kostas Tsioutsiouliklis
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20100094868
Published April 15, 2010
Filed October 9, 2008
Abstract
A system for detecting artificial promotion of a resource, including:
a search engine operative to index a set incoming links (”inlinks”) which reference the resource,
a log module coupled with the search engine and configured to store log data associated with the set of inlinks,
a partitioning module coupled with log module and operative to partition the set of inlinks into a plurality of groups of inlinks based on at least one partitioning scheme,
a statistics module coupled with the partitioning module and operative to compute a statistic associated with the inlinks within each of the plurality of groups of inlinks, and
a computation module coupled with the statistics module and operative to process the computed statistic associated with the inlinks of each of the plurality of groups of inlinks and compute a metric associated with set of inlinks where the metric indicates a level of uniformity of a distribution of values of the respective computed statistics among the plurality of groups of inlinks, and where the search engine places a list of search results, generated in response to a search query, in a pattern based on the metric.
In analyzing links pointing to a page to try to identify the artificial manipulation of links, the search engine may look at information associated with those links to try to see if there are any unnatural patterns associated with those links.
The search engine might look at information such as:
* An internet protocol (IP) address segment of the source of each inlink
* the domain name of a source of each inlink
* The top-level domain name associated with each inlink such as “.com” or “.edu” or country code top level domains
* The written language used in each inlink (e.g., English, French, or German)
* A geographic region associated with the source of each inlink
* A network routing group associated with the source of each inlink
* The anchor text (i.e., the clickable text) contained within each inlink
The patent filing tells us that a quality or importance ranking score might be given to pages based upon link-based ranking approaches such as PageRank, or a system that gives more weight to newer links and less to older, or some other kind of algorithms.
A statistical analysis of information about links pointing to a page over time may result in a demotion of ranking of that page if abnormal patterns appear that seem to indicate that links to a page have been manipulated solely to increase the ranking of that page.
Conclusion
I’ve written about a number of other patents and whitepapers from the major search engines that can be found in my category on Web Spam, but this Yahoo patent filing provides details about some specific kinds of information that Yahoo might analyze that many of those papers or patent filings haven’t mentioned.
Chances are that Google and Bing may perform some similar types of analysis when looking at links pointing to pages.
FROM: http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=3729
11 useful SEO Tips
1. Semantic Data Extractor - Semantically Rich HTML
The Semantic Data Extractor Tool from the W3C will try to extract the following information from your document. We've provided on site links to extended information for each of these areas.
2. HTML 4 SEO Best Practices in HTML Authoring
Listing of all HTML 4 Elements that you as an SEO Consultant will be involved with at some point during your tenure. You should be familiar with the various HTML Elements and HTML Attributes that are available to you for on page SEO techniques.
3. The Ultimate SEO Guide
These documents are by far the most extensive resource for on page SEO. I guarantee you that nothing else compares and this SHOULD BE mandatory reading for all SEO Consultants.
4. The Basics - Building the Perfect Page - Part I
Building the Perfect Page is a series of topics discussing the basics of web page development.
* Title Element - Building the Perfect Page - Part II
This section discusses the importance of the Title Element.
o Title Element - Page Titles
Every html document must have a Title Element in the head section. Some refer to the element as a meta tag (title tag) when it is not. Here is a working example of the title element.
* META Description - Building the Perfect Page - Part III
This section discusses the importance of the META Description Tag.
5. Robots Text File - robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. For those spiders that obey the file, it provides a map for what they can, and cannot index.
* robots.txt Validation
You should validate your robots.txt file. Enter the full URI to the robots.txt file on your server. The robots.txt file always resides at the root level of your web.
6. META Tags - Metadata Elements
The following is a partial list of metadata elements that may be used in the overall site structuring, organization, and search engine marketing strategy.
* META Description Tag
Some search engines will index the META Description Tag found in the section of your web pages.
* META Keywords Tag
The META Keywords Tag is where you list keywords and keyword phrases that you've targeted for that specific page.
* META Language Tag
In HTML elements, the language attribute specifies the natural language. This document is mostly concerned with how to specify the primary language(s) (there could be more than one) and the base language (there is only one) in HTML documents.
* META Link Relationship Tag
It is helpful for search results to reference the beginning of the collection of documents in addition to the page hit by the search. You may help search engines by using the link element with rel="start" along with the title attribute.
* rel="nofollow" - Link Relationship Attribute
By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines).
7. Robots META Tag
The Robots META Tag is meant to provide users who cannot upload or control the /robots.txt file at their websites, with a last chance to keep their content out of search engine indexes and services.
* Googlebot Robots META Tag
The Robots META Tag for Googlebot is meant to provide users who cannot upload or control the /robots.txt file at their websites, with a last chance to keep their content out of Google's indexes and services.
* MSNBot Robots META Tag
The Robots META Tag for MSNBot is meant to provide users who cannot upload or control the /robots.txt file at their websites, with a last chance to keep their content out of MSN's indexes and services.
8. META Tags Abuse and Misuse - Metadata Structuring and Standards
The SEO Consultants Directory Administrator and Directory Editors were involved in a discussion via email where our interpretation of the Metadata standards are being challenged.
9. Revisit-After META Tag
The revisit-after META tag is not supported by any major search engines, it never was supported and probably never will be. It was developed for, and supported by, Vancouver Webpages and their local search engine searchBC.
10. DC Dublin Core META Tags - DCMI Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models.
11. HTML Comments Tag - HTML Markup
There has been a myth that has perpetuated over the years where keywords and keyword phrases listed inside HTML comments tags would add a boost to the overall relevancy of the page. This is not true based on numerous tests we've performed during the years 2002 and 2003.
from: http://www.seoconsultants.com/seo/tips/