What would you do if a client will come to your SEO company and will say the following:
I have a 2 months old domain and I need optimization for a highly competitive keyword, 100 millions website competition and I need it done in 10 days?
If you are not a scammer you will throw him out or if you have some spare time you will sit down with him and explain it that what he wants is quite impossible.
Breaking News: It is possible. No black hat, no tons of content no links bought.
How about that?
Ajax. Initial a popular detergent and in the past 2 years a geek buzzword mainly attached to what is now called as Web 2.0. 100.000.000 websites competition according to Google. Obviously a suicide job for most of the white hat SEO companies.
Ajaxwrite.com did it. #9 in 10 days and climbing toward the top 5.
On March 23rd almost simultaneously appears on: Slashdot, Digg, Techcrunch, Ajaxian, Solution watch and in another 1075 blog articles since than (according to Technorati) – What is curious is that Technorati says that there are only 159 links pointing to that domain.
I will not go again rambling about the quality of the service. Many others have done it and will do it from now on. My point on that is here.
Instead let’s see what Google optimization myths were shattered: Myth: Only old domains score for high competitive keywords Truth: As I said probably registered in February or January. That counts 2-3 month max
Myth: Sandbox Truth: What sandbox? Is #9 in 10 days for a competitive keyword. We already know that spiders are reacting fast on new domains, but many have claimed that even though you are indexed you will score only for low quality keywords.
Myth: You need external links from high PR sites. Truth: Really? I wonder how many blogs from those 1075 have a PR higher than 3. And probably Google indexed post pages that most of them due to their age have a PR 0
Myth: The age of the links matters Truth: Probably. But in this case links were not older than 10 days.
Myth: You need a lot of quality content to get in top 10. Truth: Really? Never thought that 1 page of cheap bullshit marketing is called “quality content”
Myth: Any burst of external links using the same anchor will be marked as bought links and will have no value Truth: Great one Matt Cutts. I think that India was shacked by an earthquake when all the Indian link builders saw that and started to laugh. The seed of truth is that a sudden burst of external links site wide MIGHT be counted as advertisement and thrown away. Keep in mind that the magic phrase is “10 days”.
So. What to learn from that.
1. Nothing is impossible
2. Most of the things said in SEO forums are myths based on heuristics AND on negative examples (that might have other logical explanations). As an example of what that means: psychanalysis was developed by Freud on psychiatric hospitals on pacients and in time it showed no value for normal people
3. Links are valuable no matter their source (don’t aim for PR 5 or higher links, it might cost you more than is worth)
4. One way links MIGHT be the key
5. Always when you launch a product be aware of the power of the blogosphere. It’s almost free and all it takes is to know it and to be nice with it
6. Don’t trust any SEO advice or excuse. SEO is based mostly on reverse engineering and heuristic. There are no facts only theories and results
More than one year after Yahoo launched Y!Q Search, Google launches version 2.0 (like in web 2.0) and calls it Google Related Links. Of course a beta product and worse than the original ideea. Probably another brilliant project from the 20% series.
Most likely is based on the same set of Common Words that are shown in Google Sitemaps in site analysis section or on the Adsense indexing engine. Probably in the near future one of the killer features that will be added will be to allow webmasters to target through html tags only partial content of a page (feature that was from the beginning in Y!Q search).
This would have been a good April Fools joke but unfortunately is real.
I’ll dedicate this South Park episode to the guys at Google and Yahoo.
Google because of the Analytics, Measuremap,Page creator and the never ending closed betas and Yahoo because of the Yahoo! Go Desktop.
Google added a few days ago a new feature to their Analytics service. The feature called Site Overlay is available in Google Analytics->Dashboards->View->Site Overlay and is described in their own words as:
Google Analytics displays your website pages superimposed with click and conversion data for each link. Site Overlay doesn’t require any downloads, and allows you to easily see which links lead to conversions, just by browsing your site.
A service (Crazy Egg) offering a similar feature was presented on TechCrunch but is still in private beta and the GUI is lees usable than the Google Analytics.
Data offered by those 2 services are not new on traffic analysis packages but the method of presenting them is more valuable
EDIT:
On a beer talk a friend of mine said that I don’t use F-words on this blog. Ok here you have it:
FUCK the idiots promoting Planzo, 30boxes and Hipcal with comments on Digg and TechCrunch. Make better services dumbasses and then people will be writing about you. Stop spamming news sites
Just woke up and found in my email the best news this year. MeasureMap got bought by Google. Thew news is already on the main tech blogs but I haven’t seen the email nowhere so here you have it.
Congratulations guys. I think that I haven’t been happier before on an aquisition. You REALLY deserved this:
I want to share some important news with our earliest users of Measure Map.
Since its inception, my colleagues and I have seen tremendous potential for Measure Map to influence how people blog, and how they understand participation on the Web. We have always expected it to be big, and as such, our desire was to give Measure Map its start and then send it out into the world to grow and evolve into a strong, meaningful application.
Through the dedication of a fantastic team, along with your tremendous support in the form of feedback, feature requests, and overwhelmingly positive comments, have built a product that is fundamentally different from every other analytics application available today. We’re both grateful and proud.
So I said there was news, and here it is: I’m writing you to announce that Measure Map has been acquired by Google, effective today. For the near term, you will see no difference in its operations. In the not so distant future, you can expect great things from this acquisition. We couldn’t be happier to find such an ideal home for Measure Map, and are thrilled at the possibilities.
While this is a milestone for all of us at Adaptive Path, this sale does not affect how we operate, nor will it alter the structure of the Adaptive Path organization. Adaptive Path is still here, stronger than ever, and it will be for a long time to come. Above all, we remain
committed to the principle that superior user experience inspires innovation and creates business advantage.
Thank you again for your input, your time, and your support of Measure Map. Should you have any questions or comments about any of this, please do not hesitate to contact me.
For more information, please see our post on the Google Blog:
Yahoo just made public a set of Ajax Libraries and Design Patterns under very friendly licenses. From the first look I had they worth having a look at them.
Today I noticed the first sign of Yahoo’s aquisition of del.icio.us. When using the del.icio.us bookmarklet to bookmark a site a new pre filled pop-up opens for My Web 2.0. I like this feature because allows me to share good content within my Yahoo network BUT I bet that the negative response to this will be overwhelming because:
- not all del.icio.us users have Yahoo accounts
- users might feel forced to do this
- there is no way to disable this
So…how much till a new del.icio.us suicide group will appear? A week? Put on your bets
After this kind of behaviour, it’s getting more and more clear, that after the aquisition of an independent leader of a certain niche by a major company the second place will see a wave of new users
Today while reading a good post on Vista’s UI by Luke Wroblewski, the things gotclearer and the big picture revealed. Windows Explorer is based on Internet Explorer and Vista’s WE will be based on IE7 by that having a search box on the right top corner. Considering the fact that on Vista, to local search results will be added web results AND maybe advertising, a competitor winning that litlle corner will hit Microsoft just below the belt.
By the moment Vista will be officialy launched I bet that the Google Desktop will perfectly work with it and more and more regular Joe’s will use it.
The product line continues to target the desktop (after the good start made with the aquisition of Konfabulator - now Yahoo! Widget Engine) but also goes to new areas like TV and mobile.
What Guillaume missed from the screenshot is that beside a Vista like sidebar (or Google Sidebar), Yahoo! Go Desktop features a nice browser window with Yahoo shortcuts. This might be the work of the XUL hackers wanted on the Jeremy Zawodny blog last year (It has tabs and I bet a one month payment that is not IE based).
The time I am writing this post the apps are not available for download but Search Engine Watch says:
The suite will be formally announced by Yahoo CEO Terry Semel at CES keynote today
Here I'll share my knowledge, discovery and experience related to my hobby and work. Most articles on this site are related to blog design, short reviews, tips and make money online. More
