For those of you who use MSN to check backlinks via the link:, linkdomain: and inurl: commands. MSN recently deactivated them because of “mass automated usage for data mining”.
From this post on the official blog it seems like this is only temporary and we can expect it back up running as soon as they rectify the problem.
I don’t know what is happening behind the scene at Live Search, but it is a shame that something that is legitimately useful to so many is taken offline. I was really beginning to use MSN a bit more for research. I guess they lost me again in another facet of their business.
Back to Yahoo’s Site Explorer.
I see a growing trend, an expired domain with Google Pagerank is bought, a quick wordpress blog is then put on the site and some content (which is usually stolen or copied directly from article directories) is then put on the site.
The site then puts up a for sale sign and begins pitching “high PR” links.
Stay away from link schemes like this. These links provide no SEO benefit to your site whatsoever. You don’t even know the history of the domain, the previous owner could have been running porn on that domain. I raised these concerns on a DigitalPoint thread and I was surprised at some of the responses I go:t
“if that person has started seo work rapidly than there is no chances of lost pr in next update. i mean to say is just do more link exchange for that domain and raise your back links u can maintain the pr ever though domain age is only 2-3 months.”
I kept wondering why it seemed like I was the only sane person on the thread and then it hit me……People are still addicted to toolbar Pagerank. It seems to be the first and only thing they consider when doing any SEO.
- Check the whois information for the age of the domain, and check to see if there are any entries in the internet archive. If the site has been around for more than a year, you should be able to see history of the site.
- Check the link profile of the domain. Check its incoming and outgoing links.
- Check if the page is currently indexed and/or practicing any illegal SEO techniques
These are some simple tips that will hopefully keep someone from wasting valuable time and money. And remember, PR and Alexa rank should not be the first and only thing to consider when purchasing links.
I know that I’m not the only one that has visited websites where the copy is very unnatural to read. Its just a paragraph that is stuffed with keywords and I consider it a mild form of spam.
I personally don’t think that is difficult to write for humans and search engines. It just takes more time and thought. They can both be achieved without one compromising the other. Some people believe that you should write for humans and let things fall into place, people will find your content and link to it (a main ingredient of SEO). While this can be true, incoming links are only part of the equation. The more on page optimization you do, the less off page optimization you have to do to rank well.
Don’t become obsessed with Google and forget your human readers. Keep an even keeled approach. You will benefit both from search engine traffic, refferals from people who enjoyed your site experience and loyal readers who keep coming back.
Yahoo’s rumored NOYDIR meta tag is now working. It is a tag that allows you to remove the Yahoo Directory’s title and description from your Yahoo search results. I applied the tag a few weeks ago to the head of a client’s website and the site is no longer showing the Yahoo directory description in SERPS results.
The site was listed in the Yahoo Directory a number of years ago, well before the company had any knowleadge of Search Engine Optimization, and so a title was used that wasn’t well thought out.
The site eventually got the number two ranking for a popular keyword in Yahoo that gets thousands of searches per day but the site’s listing gets less than 500 hundred unique visitors a month. Why? Because the title and description were turning people off and were completely unrelated to the site’s focus. I asked Yahoo on numerous occasions to change the title and description but all my requests fell on dead ears.
I implemented the following meta tag about a month ago between the opening and closing header tags
<meta content="NOYDIR" name="ROBOTS" />
A few days ago I noticed a monumental increase in the amount of clicks coming from Yahoo. It was the usual keywords, no gain in any new keywords, just more traffic. I realized that the search results were now displaying the site’s proper title and description, not the outdated one from Yahoo’s Directory.
update: Just for clarification. This only applies to sites in Yahoo’s search engine results that are also listed in the Yahoo Directory.
