Recently I came across this interesting new while visiting the Google Blog. Everyone knows that Google, Yahoo and MSN are arch rivals in search engine market, but finally they are united on something. Google Blog recently announced that Yahoo and MSN will now support the Google Sitemap XML Protocol. More details on sitemap protocol can be found at http://www.sitemaps.org.

After having answered the same question repeatedly about Sitelinks I've decided that perhaps this is a good topic for the blog, at least this way I'll be able to direct people to a single location to find all the answers regarding this confusing area. Sitelinks is the name given to the links that appear below the #1 result for some Google queries.

An example of Sitelinks can be seen when we run a search on Google for "AOL":



Here we can see links to internal pages on the AOL website. So how do you get Google to do this for you? The answer, at present is, you don't.

Here is what Matt Cutts wrote about it:

For a small number of sites, we are not just showing our regular snippets: we try to expose useful links from within a site. In this Berkeley example, Google shows links for Berkeley departments, academics at Berkeley, etc. Pretty neat (and more importantly, useful) stuff.

People who know Google well will go “Cool” and move on. Other folks will ask things like “Are sites or their links selected by hand–can my site get in on this? Is money involved?” And the answer is: it’s all algorithmic. The algorithms pick the sites where this could be helpful. Of course money isn’t involved at all.

So it's an algorithm, much like the ranking algorithm but with more mystery regarding how to get it for your site. Here is the only "for sure", you need to hold a #1 position for a phrase. OK, that's easy enough right. Past that there is more myth than fact about what the "secret recipe" is. Guesstimates range anywhere from site age to the internal linking structure in how the list is generated and whether it is at all for a query.

Here is what Google has to say on this topic:

How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.

At the moment, Sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our Sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

WebmasterWorld has a thread about scaling AdSense earnings out with site size. The thesis being pushed is that site earnings is not a linear function tied to site size. For many sites that statement is true, but part of the reason it is true is that some webmasters do not leverage feedback their current site gives them.

On small sites I look at ad clicks on a per page level to see what pages are bringing in real money. I like to start new sites with at least 3 (and sometimes up to 5 or 6) global navigation sections. Each global navigational section acts as a mini site which can be expandable based on market feedback. Wherever I start ranking AND getting clicks on decently priced ads gets more attention.

Given the amount of authority a site has (or will gain due to the amount of effort I am willing to put into a project) you can sorta estimate how deep you can go and how broad your initial site focus should be. The beauty of my partitioning idea is that I do everything with includes such that it takes under a minute to add another global navigational element and it is also easy to broaden the overall site focus if it is ranking well in all the verticals you targeted and there is not much left on the depth front in the verticals you are already targeting.

Also if your site is small enough and you set up page level clickthrough tracking and track the search queries sometimes early in the morning you can see what a page is earning or what some specific queries earn. Another big indication of page level earnings for some of the more important concepts is going to be a change in overall site earnings due to a page suddenly ranking well or a page that dropped out of good grace with one or more of the major search engines.

When you branch out with new sections it is also important to give yourself the opportunity to put a foot in the water before committing to a bunch of work. For example, a friend recently started creating pages about topic + all 50 states. I told him that I would have started off with the 3 to 5 states that best fit the purpose of the site and had the most demand. Now he is 30 states into the project and a bit bored with it, and as it turns out the ad targeting on those pages is not as great as the ad targeting on the other pages, and there isn't much search traffic.

A couple of the other pages on the site are making the bulk of his earnings due to being highly commercially oriented, heavily using semantically related words, and avoiding excessive duplication.

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

Let us know what you observe through our feedback form, or if you have any technical issues with Slurp please contact support.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with this update!

David Simpson
Yahoo! Slurp Team

Google Analytics is what I’ve been saying a search engine should have done years ago, provide the statistics to any website that uses it. People love stats and aspecially when its of their own website, so this will get huge uptake, and probably provide Google really invaluable information. A year or so ago I hoped Technorati would do this for blogs, but they probably saw it as outside their core business. Interesting note: this is the first stat tracking javascript I’ve seen that validates as XHTML Strict. Good job, guys. (Most examples leave the language attribute.)

Another best thing is, Google don't restrict you with (or ask you to pay for) a pre-determined one-size-fits-all professional services package. Instead, you customize your integration, analysis, and implementation package according to your needs. Some of you already have in-house expertise, some prefer a do-it-yourself model, and others prefer to work directly with one of the Google Analytics partners.

Here are some of the useful resources to learn more about Google Analytics:

Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics Online Help: http://www.google.com/support/analytics
Google Analytics Discussion Group: http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help
Conversion University: http://www.conversionuniversity.com/

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

"We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc console and management tools into our advertising system. There are a number of very interesting deals being negotiated," Schmidt said. It's a typically ambitious effort for Google, which got into the radio business in January with its $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a company that had an automated radio advertising system.

So the million dollar question is, Is Google really going for Radio Ad Business? If that's true then it will surely turn Radio Ad Industry upside down.

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The latest big hubbub not involving blond newsreaders is that eBay has added Google Checkout to its list of payment services not allowed in its marketplace. Check this out:

Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, Payko.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com

All of these services have been banned due to being unsafe for eBay buyers, that they are in some way poorly designed or secured and thus aid fraud. Google Checkout, however, is too new and untested to fall into this category, so it is far more likely that this is being done for political reasons. Checkout is very similar to Paypal, just cheaper, so if a large number of eBay’s merchants switched over, a huge portion of their revenue model would just go away.

eBay, unlike many other internet companies, doesn’t really believe in transparency. Unlike Google or Microsoft or Yahoo, they don’t release many products, and have a consistent stream of earnings coming from owning a large marketplace, like Amazon, and don’t need community support to survive. Google could have went the eBay route, and been a far less stressful company for it, but they decided to jump right in and go toe-to-toe with the big boys.

Ars goes over the possible reasons for the decision (beyond the more obvious political/conspiracy ones):

Unlike PayPal, Google Checkout is not primarily a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) payments service. Google’s new service appears to be focused primarily at small businesses while aiming at larger sites down the line. As it is currently situated, it’s not going to turn into a C2C service anytime soon. There is no provision for sending payments to those without merchant accounts and no way to send money to an e-mail address, as is the case with PayPal.

So why the hate from eBay? In perusing eBay’s Accepted Payments Policy, Google Checkout would appear to meet criteria such as financial, privacy, and antifraud protection; not involving precious metals or other noncash services; and regulatory concerns. However, a couple of bullets point from eBay’s list of criteria for who makes the cut stand out: “the identity, background and other business interests of the payment service sponsor” along with “whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services.”

AuctionBytes has a quote from a Google spokesperson:

A spokesperson for Google said it has no restrictions regarding marketplace use. “We want to work with everybody,” she said on Wednesday.

Now, isn’t that the most gosh-darn cutest quote ever!

Are you waiting for the next page rank update from Google to move up their results page and bring you a flood of new traffic? (aren’t we all?) Well a little well places birdie told me last night that Google are getting close to an update - in fact a page rank update is scheduled for anytime in next 10days as of today.

Of course I’m not about to guarantee the dates - but my source generally knows what he’s talking about so I guess we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

Google today announced the launch of their own rival to PayPal, Google Checkout.

"Google Checkout offers an easy and trusted checkout option that enables shoppers to purchase from participating stores with a single Google login. It also works with Google's search advertising program, AdWords, to help merchants acquire new customers and process all or a portion of their Checkout sales for free."

I will have a look into this to see how well this works, I'm particularly interested in seeing how the AdWords intergration performs. Starbucks Store, Levi's, Timberland and Buy.com are e-commerce websites already using Google Checkout.

Microsoft is taking off the beta stage on its MSN adCenter, and ramping up its ad efforts and challenging Google and its AdSense program.

Steve Balmer announced that the beta name will be taken off, and he is challenging Google because Microsoft can supposedly target its audience so specifically by tapping into its huge information portals, and statistics it has gathered on users for so many years.

The new MSN adCenter works similarly to Google's Adsense as users would choose to bid on keywords relating to their businesses, and using Microsoft's exclusive targeting feature to allow registered users selection of what time of day, who, and what geographic locations they wish their ads to be shown in.

This move by Microsoft puts a slight threat on Google's AdSense operation, as this is a direct threat at Google's main money making program. Knowing Google however, things are always cooking at the Googleplex, they will bite back hard with something that is sure to blow the online ad industry away.

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