I always love finding official Google responses to various questions posed to them about search engine optimization. Most of the time they are pretty generic responses, but once in awhile you find a gem.

I have discovered a very simple way to track official Google responses by using their own tool against them. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

All you have to do is use Google Alerts and setup a Group alert for various Google employee handles.

By setting this type of alert up you will be able to track all official Google responses and advice in Google Groups.

So far I only know of three Google handles:

• Adam Lasnik
• JohnMu
• Jonathan Simon
• Reid

*Update thanks to John Honeck

• Amanda Camp
• Andrey Stroilov
• Berghausen “Bergy”
• Chark
• Evan T
• Jessica W.
• John Mueller
• Jonathan Simon
• Maile Ohye
• Mariya
• Matt Cutts *Doh can’t believe I missed that one
• Matt D
• Nathan Johns
• Nelson
• Patrick
• Rebecca
• Riona MacNamara
• Sahala
• Susan Moskwa
• Thu Tu
• Wysz

Make sure to use quotes so you get exact match search phrase or you will get some funky alerts.

If you know more Google handles let me know and I will update the post!

This morning I was doing some searching in Google using brand terms and noticed a new link showing up.

A link that said “More results from sample.com »”.

When I clicked on the link it performed a site: search command for the brand term I was searching for on the domain. “site:sample.com keywords you were searching for”

Here is an example when I searched “Search Engine Roundtable“.

I clicked on it and got:

Then I went back to the original search engine result page and noticed the “More results from sample.com »” farther down around result number 6 or 7.

Then I clicked on it:

So, to me this looks like a new feature Google is rolling out. It is very similar to the recently launched Google Tests Additional Sitewide Searchbox Within SERPs.

Why is Google doing this?

Google always is striving to improve the search experience and results, so people will come back time and time again. Offering a keyword search, within the SERPS, for sites in Google’s index is an effort to keep people on Google longer. Increasing their time on site should allow them to make more money with Adwords ads. Although currently you do not get Adwords ads when you perform a site: search, but that may come in the near future. It really is a brilliant move because from a UI standpoint it offers site search for sites that do not have a decent search function within themselves. And from a business standpoint they could increase their ad revenues by keeping people on their site longer and serving ads.

While drinking my coffee this morning I noticed Google doing something new in their SERPS. I noticed that Google is putting plus map boxes on search engine result listing that have address information on that page.

Take a look when your search “eVisibility“. Notice the third listing down. It is our SEMPO profile with a map plus box.

Click on the plus sign and you get:

Also, take look at “Wynn Hotel” 9th result. It also has a map plus box and it looks like it is pulling from their profile www.i4vegas.com.

To me this looks very similar to what Yahoo is doing with their “Search Monkey” project.

All in all, I like this feature, but business owners be aware that the information is being pulled directly off third-party websites. So, if your information is outdated on these websites Google may still display it!

It would be nice if Google would reference the business owners Google local business center account address before displaying it.

Have fun chasing down and updating all your third party business listings! Let us know if you are seeing the same results by dropping a comment here, and let us know what sites you are getting the plus box from. If we get enough people to list the sites they get the plus box it could make it a bit easier to edit these third-party sites if need be.

UPDATE:

It is important to note that not everyone that has a listing on any of these sites will get you a plus box. We are not sure what is triggering these results in Google yet. I am also noticing that it is very random and that some of the more obscure sites are showing the plus box.

OK, I’ll get the list going here. So we are seeing the Google Map plus boxes from the following sites.
SEMPO
Alexa
TopSEOs
AboutUs.org
WilsonWeb.com
my3cents.com
investorwords.com
sectorpages.com
etc…

**With recent event unfolding on how pagerank sculpting works with the nofollow tag please refer to Google Finally Makes Up Their Mind About PageRank Sculpting With The No Follow Tag **

Learning to implement “nofollow” tags is fairly easy. Learning how to apply them in the proper way does require some skill. This post was created in order to educate the average webmaster, or website owner, on what “nofollow” tags can do for your site.

The use of “nofollow” tags can serve many different purposes. They can be used to limit the amount of link juice that flows out of a page to external pages of different domains, or they can be used to control where the link juice will flow to within a site and its internal pages.

Today, we’ll talk about the use of “nofollow” tags to control the amount of link juice flowing within a site and its internal pages. To better explain this I came up with an illustration that should help the “not so technical” crowd understand this process.

If you would, please visualize your homepage as a bucket, and the subpages as sub-buckets. See the image below:

Your total search engine authority can be represented by what I’m going to call “SEO Juice”.

Now, imagine that every link you have, in every page of your site, is a hole in the bucket. Once the different Search Engines pour their “SEO Juice” into your homepage bucket, the juice leaks out to your sub-pages, and external pages, through every link you have.

The problem is that some of your sub-buckets (sub-pages) don’t need that “SEO Juice” as much, while others need a lot of it. A good example is having those “Privacy Policy”, “Shipping Info” types of pages that really don’t need to rank highly in any SERP. So, instead of spreading your “SEO Juice” thin, you’d direct it to where it is most needed. Your site could have an extremely relevant, and high converting sub-page that you want to boost, this would be a good place to start.

The “nofollow” tags help you plug the holes of different buckets and let most of the juice flow where you want more Search Engine authority. See the image below:

Once you’ve drawn the “nofollow” strategy map for your site, and decide on what pages need more search engine authority, the implementation part is quite simple.

Now that you understand what “nofollow” tags can do for your site, make sure you look into taking advantage of this awesome tool, and take control of where your “SEO Juice” is flowing!

Still confused? Let us help you out! Check out our full list of search engine optimization services.

I am super fired up for this session! The session starts off with the idea that you need to audit your SEO on a monthly, if not, continual basis backed by robust analytics and reporting. We know how to optimize these days, small sites are easy to optimize. But when you start to deal with the large dynamic sites. It is funny because people are talking about theming pages, which eVisibility has been doing since day one. We call it the keyword assignment or SEO road map, this matches what keywords are optimized for in what pages. Part of this strategy is also centered around theming the page around the main term of that page. For example, if your page is about laptops then that is the main term for that page. But the secondary terms would support that term by following its theme, so then we get cheap laptops, lightweight laptops, affordable laptops, etc.

When optimizing large corporate sites you really need to lay things out for the company’s tech team, you need to train them. Create a knowledge base, explain why certain elements on each page are important, and be sure to audit each page continually and give them the recommendations on how to better optimize the page. Software is the bet way to manage this process as you can imagine, because of the sheer number of pages on these large corporate sites. Define and deploy a too framework for analytics, management, and reporting. You MUST be able to give one bullet for the CEO or head honcho each month at least. It gives visibility to your efforts and can help facilitate deployment. Of course prioritize the best performing keywords over lesser ones. At eVisibility we optimize for many terms but know that it is important to focus on a smaller set of the “money” terms until they get to where you want them and then move the focus on to the next most important bucket of keywords. If you try to hit ALL of the terms at the same time your strategy will lack the focus necessary the rank for those tough money terms.

Marshall Simmons from Hearst Publishing (NY Times) steps up and notes that you need audits and reassessments, actionable SEO checklists, and ongoing training for all staff including content team and project managers. I would add the sales team and high level management to that training schedule. Fortunately for eVisibility our President and Founder, Danny DeMichele, really understands organic SEO well (shameless plug: thanks for sending us to SMX West Danny!) Something that many people need to work better on is planning for seasonality. Setting a marketing calendar is something that really helps facilitate this. I think that this is especially important for the paid search and online media departments!

Q & A time. Most of the time we start optimizing well after the site has launched so you need to help build off of existing strengths and look for the quick wins. This has been one of my personal mantras for a very long time now. Anyone of our sales people have heard my pitch on this! The rest of the session goes on to talk about different tools that can be used to audit large sites. At eVisibility we have some of our own tools built in-house and it seems that most of the panelists agree that building in-house tools is usually necessary. It can be expensive but hey if it were easy then there would already be a solution out there for everyone to use!

Overall I was hoping for more insights from the various Internet marketing companies in this session but I am beginning to realize that we are actually doing all the right things already! Maybe I should be on some of these panels… no scratch that I should and I will.

Note to self…. if you want to get a table spot up front for keynotes and sessions then get there early. As I type I am sandwiched between two large gentlemen and fighting for space. At least I am not standing like the handfuls of people swaggering in late!

Danny Sullivan launches the event today with a quick history behind the creation of SMX and a rundown of the tools like SMX connect and the rest of the event.

Now the keynote, Search 3.0, 4.0, and beyond! These numbers (2.0, 3.0, etc) note the improvements in search over the past few years. 2.o notes the beginning of link analysis and off-page factors that were of course quickly gamed by early SEOs. This spawned the evolution of PageRank and anchor text. Anyone remember “miserable failure?” This was an era of manipulation.

Search 3.0

3.o marks the beginning of blended results and the idea that the answer to everything is not in a Web page alone, but should include images and other specialized vertical searches intertwined. Google Universal, Ask 3D morph, and Yahoo! Answers, are just some of the examples of this. The idea is that PageRank is dead and that optimizing for specific vertical searches is the future. Heck, who wouldn’t like to claim the top spots for your keywords with a Web, image, video, news, and product search result? The relevancy of each vertical’s results are measured against others. With local search now taking up the top 10 spots and with product search results showing up in the same prime real estate, it is crucial that you optimize not only for Web search but also the other verticals!

Search 4.0

Search 4.0 is all about personal search and social search. Now this is where it gets scary, this means that the search engines will know ALOT about you. Results are reordered based on what is deemed to be your personal preferences, shifting the rankings up and down based on what they think you like. iGoogle is a great example of this, along with Google Bookmarks, search history, etc. I kind of have a problem with this level of search for a few reasons. The first being privacy issues and the second being, how the heck am I going to optimize against personalized SERPS! Another thing is that what if the search engine is totally wrong about what they “think” you want? No thanks, I like to do my own searching.

Search 5.0

OK, search 5.0 equals human refinement! Now I like this idea. Mahalo.com is making a great attempt at this as well as Search Wikia. When you type in search for current events like this year’s Malibu fires Google was still showing the news results from the Malibu fires a few years back. While MSN has adapted well by showing news results for the current fires. The idea of making news “recent” is very logical and is something that search engines struggle with. I guess computers really cannot do everything. Thank God us humans are not obsolete yet!

Extra Innings

Danny goes on to cover the Microhoo merger and notes that the main reason for a merger is that by combining the traffic that both engines garner, it can allow real competition for Google. He then moves on to Video for Adwords is a cool new medium that should inject new opportunities for paid search. Next he covers the economic recession and the its impact on our industry. basically it probably will not but the jury is still out. Finally he covers the reputation of search marketing and SEO. We all know that many people have been burned by bad SEO firms and individuals. At eVisibility we hear how our clients have been burned by a former company or individual all too often. Danny notes his recent conversation with Shoemoney and the bad reputation that SEO has. He notes that despite all of this, SEO continues to grow at a good rate! The idea of creating some standards in our industry is his proposed solution to this. I argued this last night with someone and I am not sure if standards will make a huge different or not. I just have a hard time with “standards” in such a dynamic industry. If there were accepted standards they would have to change almost every month, and perhaps every week! I think that a strong track record, success in the SERPS for your own site, client references, and accountability will win the day!