It’s not reflected in this StreetView image, but it’s roughly at the corner:

Update: Since I wrote this post, the lamppost has appeared, but without the signage.

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I don’t know if the author of this sponsored post was in a rush here, but I thought I’d point that out. After all, brianwhite.org is a Website That Cares!

Added: Since it’s been a while since I blogged about Webspam (I work on the Google Webspam team), I’ll add a reference to our quality guidelines on link schemes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoU41UwL5LI

Hmm, a new word, sounds like “caliphet.” Unfortunately, the Google search [define:caliphet] didn’t help me out. [caliphet] wasn’t much help either.

I tried ["jihadist *" +romney] and bingo, the apparent proper spelling, caliphate, showed itself. While I would have liked “do you mean Caliphate?” to have shown up, I know I have the means to get to an answer in a reasonable fashion with a Google search. Of course I’m biased, but it’s of great comfort to know tricks that work.

…business owners need to be aware of what their internet staff are doing, because programmers are constantly learning new methods, new techniques and tips from each other and from the web. “They would not give a second thought to using this new but perhaps untested and dubious technique on your live website just to hone freshly acquired skills or to appear to be a bit more professional in their own minds.”

That’s an important point and I agree in spirit. I don’t agree that everyone is adding features and the latest tricks just as a resume-building activity, but I have heard in person, from feedback to Google, and in forums that site owners have employed someone who has taken unnecessary risks with their sites, only to find out after a removal from search engine results.

Overall, I think that the number of people working on websites who are willing to make risky changes is a small fraction. And, at the end of the day, one has to put a large amount of trust in those working for him or her. However, business owners can consider a few things with respect to their website to mitigate these risks.

Knowing the spirit of the quality guidelines of search engines, learning what techniques they frown upon, doing a thing or two to keep tabs on their site, and knowing where to get help, are all potentially worthwhile. It then becomes straightforward to touch base with staff on changes, or bring that knowledge to new proposals, to ask how well the work meshes with search engine guidelines. If the web designers, programmers, or SEOs they work with know that the site owner has a basic savviness, those doing the work might be less likely to employ risky techniques on a whim.

These include a charter and tips on posting, as well as answers to common questions for Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking, and using Webmaster Tools. These FAQs cover a lot of topics that are brought up in postings on a repeat basis, so they’ll sure to be well referenced.

I have it on good authority that these FAQs are being translated for our different language versions of Google Webmaster Help.

Kudos all around to the team and to the active group participants who lend their experience and skill in helping others.

Hey Brian, check out “mexican food in Dublin”

Now, does the person who sent that to me want me to search in quotes, or without? When we email queries around, we use brackets ([]) to represent the search box:

[mexican food in dublin]

If I want the quotes,

["mexican food in Dublin"]

Saves an email back, “did you want me to put that in quotes or not?”

While we’re on the topic, this will probably help me:

["* mexican food in dublin" +ireland]

Looks like I’ll be taking the DART out to Howth…

Indeed, to rank for Random Stuffâ„¢, you need some PageRank. PR is calculated pretty much continuously inside of Google which keeps our results fresh, but the Toolbar PageRank value is refreshed not nearly as often. Thus, one should not pay too much attention to PR, and instead rely on their own logs and analytics applications.

How did I get PageRank? I’ve met a few industry folks at shows like Pubcon and SES, and have been getting links to my posts from search industry news sites and blogs by them or from those who have heard of me (self-rating: I’m a C-lister at best). That little bit of effort has turned into a nice stream of traffic, although I’m not focusing on that at all.

Update: In the comments, Adam Senour points out quite correctly that PageRank is just one of over 100 factors in how pages or sites rank in Google.

I also have some peers in Search Quality headed to SMX in Seattle next week. Oh to be a fly on the wall at the You&A with Matt and the Penalty Box Summit! My compadres will have to brief me afterward.

Hope to see you in Milan if you’re going there. I also wish Danny and his team best of luck with SMX Advanced.

Blogitive is a business that, in a nutshell, matches bloggers and advertisers with the caveat that the advertising is in the form of blog content, and within that content is a direct hyperlink with the desired keywords as anchor text. Please correct me if I am missing specifics, but that is based on the information I gathered.

This FAQ item in particular that caught my attention:

Q: Do the search engine mind this tactic?

A: No, search engines need people to create content that is unique and relevant. By supplying that, both you and the client are helping the search engines grow it’s [sic] index. Just make sure to supply as good of content as possible.

While I agree that both search engines and users love original content, I respectfully disagree with the way this question was answered. My opinion is that this particular tactic can be trumped by a specific part of Google’s guidelines, given that the tactic can make it difficult for users and search engines alike to know that the post is sponsored. Matt, in his update to his paid link reporting post, outlines methods to make content like blog posts in ways that don’t affect search engines.

A quick check of the query ["filed under Blogitive"] shows sites that are likely participating in paid blog posting. A sampling shows some websites show that they’re not completely forthcoming on the sponsored nature of the posting. While a site-wide disclosure policy, typically available via a navigational link, seems to be a common way to disclose the nature of some of the content within a site, as a user I’d appreciate that the post itself was labeled as sponsored.

Labeling the post itself as sponsored in machine-readable text moves the site more into alignment with Google’s guidelines:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

The takeaway is thus: To the extent the site owner employs paid link activity on their site in a way that works to obfuscate the nature of the links to search engines and to users, is the extent to which that activity can have a negative influence on their presence in Google results. The good news is that there are the aforementioned ways for sites to align with the guidelines and to also align with what users expect from Google’s natural search results.

Brian is a Google employee and a member of the Search Quality group focusing on Webspam. These opinions are his alone.

The URL (http://www.google.com/ig) stays the same. Some folks speculated on the name when the Personalized Homepage came out in 2005:

P.S. Anyone know what the “ig” in the www.google.com/ig is supposed to indicate? I always think “iGoogle” as in “iRobot“, but am pretty sure that’s not their intention