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This week, we're giving you insider tips for your Google rankings and we're telling you why Yahoo thinks it can become the dominant player in the search market using its newly acquired Overture patents.

Table of contents:

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

We hope that you enjoy this issue and that it helps you to get more out of your web site. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

During the last few weeks, GoogleGuy revealed some previously unknown tips and information that may help you to improve the ranking of your web site on Google (and possibly other search engines as well).

About getting indexed on Google

• GoogleGuy says that new web sites take time to rank well in Google and other search engines. He also says that most newer sites take time to build up PageRank.
  
  
• If you have your domain hosted on a shared server that also provides other domains, there was always the fear that your domain could be penalized when a domain on the same server was penalized. Now GoogleGuy said that Google was smart enough to recognize virtual hosting.
  
  
• Contrary to popular belief, Google does not penalize web sites that use pop-up ads.
  
  
• GoogleGuy clarifies that participating in Google's AdSense program does not get your web site indexed more quickly.
  
  
• He says that Google doesn't start indexing web sites in alphabetical order.
  
  
• Rumors had it that Google could not index more than 2 billion web pages but GoogleGuy negated it.

About URLs on Google

• GoogleGuy recommends avoiding URLs on your web site that contain an "id" parameter because "id=" usually marks a session ID. For example, if your web site has page URLs like "www.your-domain.com/index.php?id=xyz", then you should rename the "id" parameter to something else.
  
  
• He finally clarified the everlasting question whether file names should be separated by underscores ("_") or hyphens ("-"). Now we know that Google does not treat underscores as word separators.
  
  
• Top level domains, for example .com, .net, .org, etc., are not a factor in Google rankings.

Other noteworthy facts about Google

• GoogleGuy says that it's likely that Google can detect hidden text, for example "a white text link in a white table, where the page background is blue".
  
  
• If a search result on Google shows only the URL, and the site description is missing, then it could be that the web site was down when Google tried to index it.

Sources:

Mark Carey's web site collects quotes of GoogleGuy. The ultimate source is the webmaster forum "http://www.webmasterworld.com" but a subscription is required to read all postings.

This Search Engine Facts newsletter is free and will keep you informed about the latest trends in search engine ranking.

"Dominance in Web search may be determined by the scope of a company's patent portfolio, rather than its ability to shuttle people to Internet sites. [...]

With the Web portal's proposed $1.63 billion buyout of commercial search specialist Overture [...], Yahoo would acquire 60-plus patents related to technology and processes for indexing the Web, as well as for pay-per- click and bidding systems to grant sites higher placement in search results."

Google introduces advanced news search feature

"Online search engine Google has added another drawing card to its popular Web site by introducing a tool designed to make it easier to find specific news stories.

The new feature, available by clicking on an 'advanced search' link in Google's news section, enables users to limit news searches to particular publications and dates. The tool also narrows searches to stories containing an exact phrase."

Google, Switchboard ink content-ad deal

"Google has signed a deal with online yellow pages provider Switchboard for its keyword-based contextual advertising to appear on Switchboard.com [...]

Google and Switchboard will share the revenue generated from clicks on the text advertisements. The deal is for one year."

Amazon wants to create online archive of non-fiction books

"Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several of the largest book publishers about an ambitious and expensive plan to assemble a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of non-fiction books, according to several publishing executives involved."

Search engine newslets

With the launch of Google Pakistan (google.com.pk) and Google Luxembourg (google.lu), the Google search is now available on 77 country domains. Here's a list of all of the Google county domains.

The editing server of the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) had been taken offline for backing up and upgrades and is now online again. If you tried to submit your web site in the last 10 days, now you can try again.

The AlwaysOn magazine named Google the "Company of the Year" and the "Consumer Technology Company of the Year".

"Will Google be forced to complete its long-waited public offering so it can have enough financial clout to battle Yahoo/Overture? The investment community has been anxiously waiting for Google to make an IPO, which could value the company as high as US$2 billion."

Questions & Answers with Krishna Bharat of Google News

"As with Google's web ranking, relevance is determined by information retrieval techniques that look at the distribution of words in the article [...] factors include the importance of the source, timeliness of the article, and importance of the news story, relative to other stories in the news currently."

Digging for Googleholes

"Certain types of requests foil the Google search system or produce results that frustrate more than satisfy. These are systemic problems, not isolated ones; you can reproduce them again and again."

If you want to know more about link popularity and how it can help you to increase your search engine rankings, read the free link popularity eBook.
From the contents:

• 7 easy steps to get higher link popularity, higher search engine rankings, more visitors and more sales
  
  
• Tips and tricks on how to improve the effectiveness of your link directory, how to optimize your link directory layout, how to make your link pages searchable, and much more

We highly recommend this eBook if you want to optimize your linking campaigns and get the grip on link popularity. It's free.

• Yahoo to acquire Overture - What does it mean to you?
• How to optimize your linking campaign
• Online, the clock is ticking
• Google's new AdSense program
• The top 5 search engine optimization myths
• View all past issues...