Teaching google to read

I just sent this is to Google. I'm trying to learn how to teach google what I mean.....

My spelling site is running many ads about wiccah and wizards and magic and such. There's a confusion around the word "spell".

While I personally think it is humorous that google's algorithms confuse magic "spells" with "spelling" (ie vocabulary, phonics) but many of my members, evangelical christians types, seem to find this offensive and are accusing me of all sorts of things.
Can you prompt your algorithms away from magic, mysticism, and wizardry? thanks

BTW - I might be de-emphasizing this blog in favor of a new one about learning seo with me....

Chrome Browser - Almost like an OS

Google's chrome includes some features that help the web generally and google specifically. As background, Google is releasing it's own web browser called Chrome. Chrome will compete with other browsers (all free) such as Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Firefox's Mozilla. Chrome has a collection of cool new features:

1. A more powerful efficient java engine to execute complex web applications
2. Efficient memory management with protected memory for different applications.
3. An open source approach
4. Multithreaded multitasking programming

What struck me when I read this (and other more complete lists) about Chrome is that it starts to sound like a description of an operating system. Remember, Google has just released Android which is their open source OS for mobile phones. Is Chrome a big step towards providing an OS for some desktop-type device, like a future network-centric PC or web station?

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Returning to my business news:
I have about 75 parked domains at: TrafficClub, GoDaddy, and NameDrive. I am looking for some way to compare the results at them but since no two domains are identical and in most cases, the visits and clicks are paltry, it's hard to do meaningful statistical comparison.

SpellingCity.com is a definite hit. You can check out it's traffic at Quantcast. I'm examining a number of ways to monetize it from building it out to a full subscription site, to having my own spelling ebooks, to using it to promote my own sites (and parked domains), to putting up advertising, or even to selling it (7 figures!).





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What is an original work?

I run an online educational service. I'd like to be focused day-in-and-day-out on education and how software and methodology can help kids learn. I'd like to focus on helping to redefining learning. But, I run a company so I actually spend most of my days on issues like credit cards, people management, on marketing, and on my least favorite days, on intellectual property issues.

I'm in the software business and so, we create and use "original works" which can be software programs, images, music, and writing. Much of this is in the public domain in some sense. Some of it is proprietary and belongs to someone and it would be wrong to use.

Being a small company, I avoid spending money on lawyers because....well, it's my money and I'd like to keep it. So this post is an effort to gather my thoughts and maybe some input on what is an original proprietary list.

Ultimately, this is an incredibly grey area which can only be decided on a case-by-case basis by the courts.

Let's start with some items that cannot belong to someone followed in some cases by a caveat:

• Facts, like the population of the US. But this is limited since some info, like the daily stock market feed, does "belong" to someone.
• Ideas, like the idea that the planets revolve around the sun and rotate. But some ideas can be patented
• Original works such as songs, book and poetry. A complete curriculum. A photograph

So could a word list be considered proprietary? I would think not. But then, a dictionary with it's definitions is proprietary as would be a complete vocabulary curriculum. But a list of few hundred words for vocabulary or spelling, could that be considered proprietary? I would think not.

The online world, with google constantly indexing everyone's proprietary sites, providing photos of everyone's houses from above and from the front door (have you seen StreetView on google, it's so amazing!!!!), indexing all the printed books, and generally making information accessible is certainly increasing the focus on these intellectual property issues.

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Anchor text basics

There are a lot of web literate people who don't understand the basics of anchor text. Here's a primer taken from an email that I wrote to a forum moderator:

A post on autism was answered like this:

Welcome! Here is a link you might be interested in.
This answer is fine for people. But to help the search engines better “understand” the page that you are pointing to, you should write it like this:

Welcome! Time4Learning has a page on educating children with autism that you might be interested in.

The words that are hyper linked are called “anchor text”. Google takes anchor text very seriously. They use it to categorize pages. (Yahoo & MSN take the anchor text less seriously).

For a funny demonstration of this, google “here”. Number one on a google search for "here" is Adobe’s download page for acrobat because almost every website has the same line on it somewhere:

“click here to download adobe acrobat”

So if you are looking for "here", google thinks you want some adobe acrobat. And it is the world's best search engine! :->





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Search Engine Relationships

People will do the most amazing things for links. Here is one of the most interesting linkbaits that I've seen: An interactive chart showing the relationship between the search engines over time!

You can see who is using whose search results and advertising at what point in history.

It's very cool. I'm pleased to reference this useless intriguing amusing gadget. It does make the point that there are only a few sources of search engine results and not that many more sources of context sensitive advertising.

See it for yourself. Now! Free! The amazing Search Engine Relationship Chart!


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Top Ten Factors Affecting Your Search Engine Position

Here are the top ten ways to improve your position in the search engines.
They are in order of Most Important to Least Important! (in my opinion)

1. Quality inbound links from relevant pages with relevant anchor text to relevant pages.
2. Quality Inbound Relevent Links
3. Original content with each page built around a few targetted keyphrases with correct use of page title and URL.
4. Keyphrase-based domain name
5. Quality Directory Listings
6. Large Websites
7. Quality Relevent Outbound links
8. Site map
9. Correct use of H1, H2, Meta, and Alt tags
10. Correct use of keyword density & metatags (important to Yahoo & MSN)

Insignificant:
Quality HTML with no errors
No broken internal links
Having friends at Google.

What will hurt you:
All and any blackhat techniques
Spam
Lots of non-original content
Links to spam & trash sites

Homeschool Education - Googles rankings

Homeschool Curriculum #1
Homeschooling curriculum #8
homeschool #7
home school #17
homeschooling #18

home education - not in top 100 (overture reports 6057 terms)...interesting. My poor position here is interesting since this is part of the title of my home page, the most linked to page on my site and a PR 6. I wonder if this one link will make a difference?

Whats the difference between a "SEO Consultant" and

Whats the difference between a "SEO Consultant" and a used car salesman? Answer: The used car salesman knows when he's lying. First, let me apologize to those of you have have taken offense at that seo joke. Many used car salesman have been calling to complain ..... (be da ding!) Yes, that second seo joke was bad. Sadly, the seo industry includes many bad jokes.... (be da ding! be da ding!) Seriously folks, I've receive alot of calls from SEO sales people and frankly, it would be hard to find a more-misguided group of people. And it's not that they mean to lie, its' just that they "get confused" and carried away and don't seem to really understand much. My impression is that many of them were part of a SEO effort that resulted in some site coming out number one on some search engine for some keyphrase at some time. At the time, they might have just been the secretary at the advertising agency that worked with the client. But, in the course of time, these details got lost. Through the course of exxageration and confusion, they lost track of what their actual role was and what was actually accomplished. Many of them are now boasting: "My last client used this technique and got to number 1 in 3 days!!!!" When they explain to me what they are planning to do, it seems to me to be very unlikely. And now, they are "SEO Consultants" (salepeople) peddling long term contracts with monthly payments. They act like that they really do know how to do SEO cost-effectively, that they really can take any site and make it do well in all the search engines, and that we should be gratified that they "prepared a customer analysis for you for free" (ie ran a few keyphrases thru some sort of analysis). Then, this is a true recent story, I found myself at a lunch with the firm president (saleguy) pushing for a signature on a contract for $5,000 month with no cancellation clause and no "level of effort" commitment or reporting by the contractor?" If you think I'm exaggerating, I'll show you such a contract. The SEO company that I was meeting with was the one pushed by a hosting firm(Webstream) at that time and they were promoting them on the phone and across their site. The company pushed the contract to me repeatedly and really expected me to sign. yick.... ***** In reality, there are really only two people who actually understand how the search engines work. Of course, they disagree....(yes, thats part of the show....) ******* My directory of SEO Jokes, Jokes about SEO, and Jokes about Search Engine Optimizers (OK. That one was a subtle. Did you miss the keyphrase threepeat? Are you paying attention?) Here's a few that I've found from around the web...with bylines and links.... www.stuntdubl.com/2006/03/24/seos-and-lawyers-its-a-joke/ including: - SEOs are safe from the threat of automation taking over their professions. No one would build a robot to do nothing. - If it weren’t for SEOs, we wouldn’t need them. - Talk is cheap…until SEOs get involved. ba ba bing... they just keep coming... Do you know an SEO's definition of SPAM? (thanks to http://www.webnauts.net/) S = SITES P = PLACED A = ABOVE M = MINE sad - this seo joke made me laugh out loud - from http://www.threadwatch.org/node/7134 SEO Anonymous Meeting Hi, My name is Michael and in the past 5 years the longest I've gone without checking stats or email messages is 3 days ..