Based on the comprehensive survey conducted by comScore on the Internet behavior of Asia-Pacific countries, Yahoo emerged as the most visited site in the Asia-Pacific region, beating rivals Google and MSN sites. Seven of the Asia-Pacific countries studied rank Yahoo in the number one position, as against MSN (no.2) and Google (no.3).

Other significant findings of the study are:

• South Korea has the greatest Internet usage rate (65% of the population) in May, Australia (62%), New Zealand (60%) and HongKong (59%)

• China has the largest online population with 91.5 million, Japan has 53.7 million users and South Korea 26.3 million online users, with a combined 60% of the Asian-Pacific region’s Internet population,
• South Korean are the most active online population averaging 17.4 days per person Internet usage in May, 31.2 hours Internet usage viewing 4,564 pages in May,

It is not surprising that Yahoo should beat Google and MSN in terms of the frequently visited sites in the region. Yahoo has more visibility program in the region than the other two major sites. Yahoo has been aggressive in partnering with local Asia-Pacific companies and localizing Yahoo sites under the Yahoo network.

Maybe, its about time that Google intensifies its visibility program in the Asia-Pacific region before Yahoo dominates the scene.

My wife got an iPhone the day it came out. Robert Scoble got there the day before and slept in line at the Palo Alto store. We stopped by the Palo Alto store around 10 p.m. on iDay, waited less than five minutes, and got one of the last 8GB iPhones before they sold out. I decided to hold off on getting one to see how well the iPhone worked for my wife (she’s a Mac person and I’m… not).

Within a few days, I knew I was going to get an iPhone too. I got my iPhone this past Friday and I’ve got a lot to say about it. This post is more of a pre-warning that I’m thinking of doing more gadget/howto/iPhone blogging over the next few days. If you only read my blog to get thoughts on Google or search engine optimization (SEO), read this post from last year about how to subscribe to a feed that is restricted to Google/SEO posts.

Okay, now I feel ready to do some non-SEO posts.

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

All platforms running Firefox: Just posted an update to the Better GCal Firefox extension, which compiles some of the best Greasemonkey user scripts for Google Calendar into one handy package. Version 0.2 of Better GCal colors Saturday and Sunday, wraps the text of long event titles, and displays week numbers in month view, plus it offers two new skins: Air Skin and Slate. Check out some screenshots:

Google has announced some improvements to Google Code Search, Google’s search engine for finding code snippets and other geeky programming stuff.

The content of the search has been expanded to include individual code files and snippets from Web pages. Of course when I heard that I wanted to make sure that the Code Search still passed the Strawberry Shortcake Test. It does, but you get extremely weird results. They’re code all right — but the contents of databases, what looks like shopping carts, recipes (??). Anyway it passes.

Be sure to use the advanced search when working with Google Code. You’ll have the option to limit your search by language (from Ada to Yacc), by license type, package and file name, etc. You’ll also have the option of making your search case-sensitive. (Unfortunately the &as_case=y switch doesn’t work on the Web search results page, dammit.) Note that the query itself can be written as a regular expression. In fact there’s a lot of cool ways to search this database that you can’t search the Web database.

Google Code search is also inviting users to submit their own code, though the page warns that not all submitted code is included and that there’s no telling when it’ll actually turn up in the index.

In an era where Search Engines place very high importance in links and popularity for their search algorithms, we can look at different types of links to determine the best factors to use to make an educated decision on quality link building selections.

This tutorial will focus on the selection of links by types of links. In doing this we will determine a high quality link vs. a low quality link. While some experts will like all links from any source, we will focus on specific factors. Some opinions will be expressed here based on experience. Since we do not own any of the Search Engines and they only publicly release certain information, we have to make decisions based on experience rather then defined facts.

First off lets make it clear, we are talking about building links to increase rankings. We are not factoring mathematics for PageRank (PR). PR is not our concern. Rankings will be our concern.

We will discuss several factors of getting links that will include buying links, trading links, trading services for links, earning links, article links, Press Release links, resource page links, reciprocal links and content links.

We do like broadly built campaigns that include a little of everything over a campaign that focuses on one method. So just syndicating links via articles and press releases is simply not enough. I am basing this on personal experiences of successfully ranking websites on all Search Engines for extremely competitive terms and via my methodologies. In SEO many different approaches can work and each individual will have his or her own unique ideas.

One aspect that we will consider is numbers. Simply stated I hate numbers and trying to build based on numbers is wrong if not even ridiculous. To state 10 or 25 links per month is simply an amateur approach.

We build based on competitors and where they are and how they rank and more importantly “how long” they have ranked for. Sites with recent rankings are not always the best choices to model or base a campaign on as certain SEO methodologies used may not pass the test of time as the Search Engines more accurately access the linking and popularity systems used to rank the site.

We also base on the industry and what specific factors of links are being used by each individual industry. So view all competitors backlinks via Yahoo Site Explorer and see if you can target those. We also do not build in high volume, but rather for high quality which effects take time to show their best impact.

Types of links and the methodical thinking to use when considering each type of link…

Buying Links

Buying links for search ranking goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It seems acceptable if you are a large company that has large advertising budgets in paid search and natural search.

The extent of Google’s penalties on sites selling and buying links is unknown. Google has ruthlessly penalized sites for buying links in the past and in some cases never released the penalties or locked them into certain positions called the -30 penalty and -950 penalty on WebmasterWorld. It seems absurd to penalize for something you sell and acting even handed in penalties would be wise, but it is believed to not be the case.

Links are currently bought and sold daily through brokers and privately through site owners in blogrolls, sponsored link sections and even in content and blog posts.

Buying links still has powerful ranking effects for sites that are authority domains. If we look at terms like promotional products and notice that 6 or 7 of the top 10 ranking sites, they are all purchasing the same network link. Google ranks these 7 sites extremely well despite the known network of links they are on. This tells you, that if 6 or 7 of these sites are buying a link, that you have a 30% chance of getting to page one without buying the ad, or at least that is one common sense way to look at it.

Buying links can be based on competitors, keep in mind that if Google devalues the paid links for your competitor, they will also be degrading them for your site. So use with caution!

We like to believe that Google is just not-counting these links, but we fear that they tend to be heavy handed with link buying and are more inclined to penalize a site in specific industries, so again, be cautious and take it from the perspective that a Search Engine may ban you without warning and is more inclined to ban a site then forgive a site. With that kind of thinking, you should make the right decisions on link buying.

Remember Google is the only Search Engine that does not like link buying especially when it is obviously used for PageRank instead of traffic (that is becoming more difficult to determine). There is nothing morally wrong with buying a link for traffic and exposure, in fact I highly recommend those, and that is where I will tell you to ignore any Search Engines gripe with paid ads, and do what creates traffic!

BLOG : Better Listings On Google

Face it, Google is made up of bloggers and blog lovers, they place high importance on them in the current algorithm. Sidebar or BlogRoll links, blog posts which lend a content-based link are all heavily valued. Yahoo also likes blogs, but not to the extent of Google. MSN seems to be very even handed in its link value of blogs vs a more traditional site.

Blogs offer the Industry Popularity value, as they are generally written by related industry bloggers. They are also vastly becoming a portal for spam and copyright infringement. There is even the blackhat method of trying to duplicate-out competitors by reproducing the content of numerous blogs, these are usually the free blogs which, unfortunately, Google values them (might have something to do with the fact that they own them). A smart algorithm, would play down the free blog sites the same way it devalued the free webhosting sites like geocities.

Blog links are highly recommended and should be part of every SEO campaign. Some SEO firms are actually creating networks of blog sites for syndication – avoid these types of made for paid posting blogs and focus on ones that the writers care about and are not duplicated across hundreds of sites.

Web Directories

Many people will not like my opinion here, but I feel these are being devalued by Google because everyone and their mother owns a directory now. (Hey! Don’t they also own a blog?)

Don’t take this the wrong way there are a few good directories worth being listed in (future tutorial perhaps), but because there are literally millions of php directories popping up every day, and these directories all have heavy sponsorship on them, I feel that they are simply spammed-out (a pun on burnt out).

If you can weed out the few good web directories from the millions of spammy ones, then a link or two from these types of sites is really a plus.

Keep in mind, when only the home page has PR it’s a takeover site, which means the history does not match the current focus of the site. Check the Archive.org’s Wayback Time Machine to really tell what the site used to be. These types of sites by nature take longer to achieve rankings and generally have less value for a few months to even a few years if the site is not remarketed properly.

To Be Continued….

Alan Rabinowitz is the CEO of SEO Image, a New York based SEO and Internet Marketing company which focuses on corporate branding and positioning in search engines.

Mobile phone manufacturer LG is working with Google to develop a mobile phone that will allow you to upload videos directly to YouTube, according to an Adotas.

The phones should be available by the end of the year, the report stated.

"The technology will give users the ability to shoot, view and upload videos onto YouTube from their phones just as they would on their PCs. Also, videos on the site will be easily viewable," Adotas reported.

Click to read the rest of this post...

During the Search Engine Strategies Miami conference last month, when a representative from Yahoo Search Marketing was taking questions, one attendee asked “Why should I spend my money with Yahoo and not with Google?”

The question shocked me in so many ways. First of all, what is this person even doing in a search marketing role with a company if they do not even understand the concept of search marketing share or distribution.

Secondly, even if they are a beginner, shouldn’t they understand that you can’t put all of your eggs in one Google basket and ignore the other 40% of the consumer market.

The delightful response was something like “We don’t expect you to choose one over the other. We expect you to advertise with all of the major search engines.”

Dependent upon your target market or region, Google AdWords may only have a 40% to 60% share of the search pie. If you do not diversify your paid search campaigns beyond Google AdWords, you’re not only missing the boat - but losing your company money via inaction.

Also, if your competition is only advertising on Google AdWords, you’ll get the jump on them and your shared target market by diversifying your search marketing campaign.

Take initiative and start campaigns with the following major search marketing companies:

• Yahoo Search Marketing : Yahoo holds an incredible share of the search marketing stage and is the top online web destination for content, travel, shopping, news, entertainment and mail. Y!SM ads are served not only in search results, but throughout the Yahoo network.
• MSN adCenter : Microsoft’s MSN and Live.com are incredibly well trafficked networks similar to Yahoo with incredible partnerships and a search engine which is integrated into the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer. adCenter search ads can also be targeted to demographics, such as male/female and ages.
• Ask Sponsored Listings : Ask.com’s search marketing arm is also quite strong within their search properties and also the IAC network, which includes TicketMaster, CitySearch & RealEstate.com

Now, once you’ve set up & tested campaigns in the major search properties, look to these second tier search marketing companies to expand your reach even further.

• LookSmart : LookSmart is a publicly traded search company with strong partnerships and a very large reach; over 400 million daily searches.
• Miva : Major partner of portals and other properties : 2 billion search queries per month
• ABCSearch : Serves over 5 billion searches per month and provides geotargeting.
• 7Search : Frank Watson (AussieWebmaster) of FXCM loves 7Search and raves about the ROI and conversions 7Search provides, especially in the financial sector.
• SearchFeed : Similar to Miva, SearchFeed provides sponsored search results for a large amount of partnered portals and sites.
• Enhance : One of the Godfathers of paid search, Enhance’s partnerships with Yahoo, Dogpile, Snap.com and Verisign may result in quality traffic for your campaign.
• Mamma.com/Copernic Media : Much more than a meta-search engine, Mamma.com also owns Copernic Desktop Search and serves sponsored search on the very popular, controversial and conversion generating Hotbar tool.
• AMP’s adMarketplace : Sponsored search ads integrated into Ask.com, Looksmart, Marchex and other properties and offers easy setup for eBay merchants.

Are there other alternative search marketing companies which you have tested in the past or currently use and would like to recommend, critique or review?

Please feel free to leave your comments below.

It was announced earlier this week that Convera and SearchChannel have formed a strategic partnership. This relationship pairs up Convera, a vertical search engine platform provider, with SearchChannel, an e-media and search engine marketing consulting firm.

According to the announcement, SearchChannel will consult with Convera on the development of online business solutions for B-to-B publishers, and SearchChannel will provide consulting services to Convera’s customers. These services will include search engine optimization, online advertising sales training, and revenue and analytics modeling. SearchChannel also has it's own vertical search engine sites, which it will integrate with Convera's vertical search platform.

One of the major goals of the partnership appears to be to help Convera's customers drive more traffic to their vertical search engines. This makes sense, as one of the biggest challenges for vertical search is getting a user to recognize that it exists, and to recognize its added value over a horizontal search platform, such as Google. The added value needs to be substantial before people will make the switch to use a vertical search engine for their specific needs.

Valleywag’s Owen Thomas is currently claiming that Google’s Susan Wojcicki is lying about having started AdSense, referring to an article by USA Today. “AdSense was not a prototype that Wojcicki developed ... Why would Wojcicki make such a bald-faced, easily detected lie?”, Owen asks. Actually, Valleywag gets it wrong: the author of the USA Today article mixes things up a bit and forgets to mention that the technology Susan says Google came up with wasn’t called AdSense at the time – something which Susan doesn’t claim either, judging from the USA Today quotes. Here’s the chronology:

1. Google launched search-targeted contextual ads, called AdWords. Not directly connected to AdSense, but worth mentioning, and USA Today falsely dates this to 2002. (Announcement: October 23, 2000)
2. Applied Semantics announces their service called AdSense. (Announcement: October 21, 2002, with launch in November)
3. At around the same time, Google launched their contextual targeting ads into an early test phase for some limited sites. This of course means it had already been thought of and in building state (at least) earlier that year. (“Fourth quarter” 2003 2002, Traffick.com)
4. Google goes fully live with their contextual ads technology. (Announcement: March 4, 2003)
5. Shortly later, Google acquires Applied Semantics, and their contextual ads product AdSense, to (according to Google) complement their “content targeted advertising programs.” (Announcement: April 23, 2003)
6. Google then renamed their context ads program to AdSense (and probably incorporated a little, or a lot, of the Applied Semantics technology into their existing ads system). (Announcement: June 18, 2003.)

To wrap up: yes, the idea was apparently in the air around 2002, perhaps Applied Semantics came up with it first, perhaps Google, perhaps someone entirely different. (Ex-Googler Paul Buchheit in the book Founders at Work claims the idea was talked about at Google for a long time, before he actually wrote a throwaway prototype in a single day, which got things moving.) And probably, Google at the time tried to sell their product as if it was the only of its kind around; e.g. Susan told CNet in 2003, “Small sites ... didn’t have a way to reach advertisers." And if Google did copy the idea – which I don’t know, and they weren’t available for a statement yesterday – then Susan’s statements like “People were saying, ’This is a sports site, so we’ll serve a sports ad.’ And we were saying, ’No. We can actually look at the page in real time and figure out what this page is about.’” would be somewhat misleading... but Valleywag doesn’t show any proof Google copied the concept and only points to the USA Today article.

What Valleywag does say is that Susan in the USA Today article claims to have invented “AdSense,” even when in it she only says she introduced the then still novel idea of webpage-contextual ads to Google – it’s the USA Today author who refers to it as AdSense continuously instead of saying e.g. “the product that was later called AdSense.”

[With info from Danny Sullivan, AGoodMan and Figaro, who commented at Valleywag. Photo of Susan by Google.]

Update: Valleywag now changed their article – without clarifying the edit in the post. (More in the comments.)

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

French Google blog Zorgloob (where TomHTML, who you might know from the forums here, is also blogging) offers a giant, and now clickable, map of Google products. You can see popular services like Google News or more exotic ones like Google Music Trends, as well the different connections between these services. Each product is linked to a (French) description page which includes a rating, related products, and the URL of the site.

If the map’s too big for you (and big it is... I wonder if Google has something similar internally?), you can also switch to the iconified list view. At the left navigation bar, you’ll also get a random Google service with every page load.

Also see the map of Googleland, as well as the product tags on the new archive page here.

There’s also the Zorgloob blog and forum.

[Thanks Luka!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Hey, I hope everyone had a good Independence Day if you live in the United States, and a perfectly normal July 4th otherwise. My wife and I went to see fireworks at Shoreline in Mountain View, and I took my camera along:

My fireworks pictures turned out 10x better than they ever have before. It’s true that I have a tripod and digital SLR now, but the pictures would have sucked again this year, except for a wonderful little book called The Digital Photography Book, by Scott Kelby. The idea behind this book is brilliant. From the back cover:

If you and I were out on a shoot, and you asked me, “Hey, how do I get this flower to be in focus, with the background out of focus?,” I wouldn’t stand there and give you a photography lecture. In real life, I’d just say “Put on your zoom lens, set your f-stop to f/2.8, focus on the flower, and fire away.” That’s what this book is all about: you and I out shooting where I answer questions … — without all the technical explanations and techie photo speak.

For the fireworks photos, the advice was
- Set your camera to full manual mode and put it on a tripod.
- Use a three or four second shutter speed.
- Set your aperture to f/11.

That’s all I did, and my photo snapshots were great. The book is jam-packed with tips like that. I highly recommend Kelby’s book if you’re starting out in photography.

By the way, a hat-tip to Rick Klau for turning me on to this book. It was one of the books I read on summer vacation.

This post is already longer than I intended, but I just want to send a shout-out to Rick Klau and all the Feedburner folks that joined Google. In my encounters with them before they joined Google, the FeedBurner team was amazing and humorous. Plus FeedBurner just started offering a couple really useful premium services for the low, low cost of free.

I was paying for one particular FeedBurner service called MyBrand. Instead of hosting your feeds on e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/mattcutts/uJBW , the MyBrand services lets you create a CNAME subdomain so that the address of your feed can be http://feeds.mattcutts.com/mattcutts/uJBW instead. That way the “ownership” of the final feed location always stays under your control.

I’d say that anyone using FeedBurner should take advantage of the newly free MyBrand service. The best write-up I’ve seen of how to do it is this MyBrand tutorial by Danny Sullivan.

Thomas Claburn over at InformationWeek just wrote an article entitled “Is Google’s Spam Fight a Sham?” I had a bunch of spam-related work to do this morning, so I just dashed out a 15 minute reply. Of course, InformationWeek’s comment system wouldn’t let me post the comment, saying

The comment was rejected by the system. Please try again later.

plus the InformationWeek comment system works in such a way that Firefox can’t recover the comment. Bah. Luckily I’m paranoid and saved the text before I tried to post it. Here’s my very very quick reply:

Hi Thomas, I’m the head of webspam at Google. Having worked at the company for 7+ years and on webspam for 6+ years, I can say with confidence that Google’s spam fight is not a sham.

It makes sense that you’re not familiar with start pages; they’re much more common in Dutch. That’s why the second half of the post was in Dutch. Over half of Google’s traffic is from outside the U.S., so it’s only natural that we communicate about quality and spam in other languages — I believe we’re the only major U.S. search engine that does so. Google provides guidance in lots of non-English markets about individual practices in that market. For example, link exchanges are more popular in Polish and French than in English. I wouldn’t expect you to know that, but we pay attention to spam trends in lots of different languages, employ algorithms to counter webspam, and additionally try to communicate with webmasters and site owners to prevent spam in the first place.

Let’s see, you’ve got a couple other criticisms:
- We provide a way for people outside Google to report spam (That form is available in 10+ languages. Just change the “hl=en” to the language you want). We do the majority of our work internally rather than off of spam reports, but outside reports are helpful to see how we’re doing. Other major search engines solicit spam reports and feedback as well, and I believe it’s a sensible practice.
- You criticize AdSense for Domains. Before Google offered a product for parked domains, I know that some parked domains have at times hosted pop-ups and sometimes worse (things like malware). My personal opinion is that a reputable option for parked domains is a better alternative for domain owners and the web than some of the other choices; no one likes to type in a domain name and worry about malware, and AdSense for Domains lessens the chance of that happening. Note that AdSense for Domains is not my area of the company, but a quick search will turn up their FAQ at
http://www.google.com/domainpark/faq.html

”
Q: Are there any restrictions on the domains directed to the AdSense for domains service?
A: AdSense for domains must adhere strictly to Google’s AdSense policies. Domain names submitted to may not contain or link to any of the following content: illegal activity; site promotion of incentive or fraudulent clicking; violation of trademark (and related rights), copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property right of any third party; software which contains a virus, worm or other code that could be damaging or harmful to a user’s computer system or stored information; libelous, defamatory, obscene or hateful content; or any subject matter not in line with Google policy.

Q: Is Google involved in the select or registration of the domains in the AdSense for domains program?
A: Google is not involved with the selection or registration of these domain names, and is not in a position to arbitrate trademark disputes between the registrants, our partners, and trademark owners. Accordingly, we encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the registrants or registrars. As a courtesy to trademark owners, Google provides a simple publicly available complaint procedure and, once notified of a legitimate complaint against a specific domain, Google will no longer serve ads to that domain. For instructions on how to file a complaint, please refer to the Trademark Complaint Process page.
”

Okay, back to work killing webspam. Brian White found an interesting trick this morning that we’re in the process of shutting down, for example. Selina and Jos, thanks for writing your post about startpages to highlight which practices are good vs. bad. I know that the reception in the Netherlands has already been positive because Google is participating in the conversation about marketing there.

And Thomas, you’re more than welcome to listen in as we talk to site owners, webmasters, and SEOs around the world, but I wish you’d contacted someone at Google before commenting on our webspam efforts.