November 2004 Archives : Bruce Clay Blog

November 12, 2004

Pure Search Engine Evil: Microsoft vs. Google (Round Two)

Ever wonder why “sandbox” is such a popular term with search engines? Because when it comes down to it, everyone is still that five year old that has fun kicking sand in peoples’ faces… In retaliation for Google ranking Microsoft as the #1 result for “more evil than Satan” in 1999 (as a result of [...]




November 11, 2004

The Upside of Search Engine Indexing Wars

Thank you MSN for pushing Google to index 8 billion pages in order to surpass your advertised 5 billion page index. It’s really nice to wake up and see that your client’s indexed page count has nearly doubled overnight. Let the indexing wars begin…




November 8, 2004

Linking in a Meritocracy

One major problem with link–based algorithms is that positive publicity and negative publicity have the same effect on a website’s rankings: it increases their link popularity. So how can you direct your readers to a webpage without explicitly endorsing it? Technorati developers have come up with a new VoteLinks specification that allows you to “vote-for”, [...]




November 5, 2004

Search Engine Hacking for SEOs

Gary Price at SEW mentioned a CNETAsia article about protecting yourself from Google hacks. It’s a great reminder of how important it is to properly use your robots.txt file and metatags. However, visiting the Google Hacking Database (GHD) provides inspiration in that it reveals how much information you can really find with Google’s advanced search [...]




November 4, 2004

Google Posts New AdWords Guidelines

Google posted their new AdWords content guidelines today, focusing mainly on excluding advertisements for certain products (fireworks, black boxes) and ideas (violence, sex) from being advertised in the AdWords network. It seems like the devil will be in the details. Now, a search for "brass knuckles" results in an eBay AdWords ad for SAP Tactical [...]