11/26/2003 03:14:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|If Google has you down, read this. It will at least make you smile... Page and Brin's Blog|W|P|106987765290038387|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com11/26/2003 08:45:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Here is a very thorough article describing all that is going on at Google. If your major key phrase has fallen out of the listings you might want to read this: Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update!|W|P|106985433582289700|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com11/25/2003 02:20:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|In case you aren't aware, there is a new algorithm in town. It seems some sites have been removed from the listings for the more commercial phrases. This means that a phrase that was generating a lot of your best traffic has now disappeared. Needless to say, not a few people are very upset by this. We've been researching in greater detail what is going on at Google. There are three possibilities of what is going on. Here they are: 1. There is a temporary bug in the listings at Google. If this is the case, things should clear up in the next month or so. 2. Phrases that have a great deal of Google AdWords advertisements are being penalized in the main "free" listings. In this theory, people believe that Google might be testing how to get more people to click on the Google AdWords listings by not having great natural listings. This could be a very possible scenario. In our testing there are clearly a lot of AdWords listings for the phrases we researched. 3. Their new algorithm is factoring out over-optimized pages from their listings. In this theory, if a site uses an exact phrase in all of the possible places a person would normally use for optimization, the site gets penalized. Those are the major possibilities of what has happened to your site. My suggestion is to not change anything from an optimization standpoint. If it turns out to be a bug, and things are fixed soon, you don't want to change anything. If it's not a bug, we'll know in a month or two. In the meantime, my recommendation is to start bidding in Google AdWords for your big phrases. That way you'll still be in the listings as all of this gets sorted out. |W|P|106978805591172160|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com11/25/2003 08:17:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|As most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here are some common promises less than ethical search engine marketers are trying to tell unsuspecting clients: Top Five Search Engine Optimization Myths|W|P|106976625985242107|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com11/17/2003 01:21:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Yahoo back in X-rated business: "With the acquisition of Overture Services last month, Yahoo is now selling ads to a range of hard-core Web sites. Those ads appear on two search engines Yahoo acquired as part of the Overture deal -- AltaVista and AlltheWeb.com. "|W|P|106909326546750811|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com11/04/2003 08:01:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Why an SEM RFP Is a Mistake, Part 2 In this part of Fredrick Marckini's article he suggests the RFI instead of the FRP. This is good information to consider if you are looking into working with a search marketing company.|W|P|106795087980642581|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com