This is what we found this week:

• Google’s Matt Cutts On Keywords In The URL
• How will Twitter monetize?
• Search Google Images By Color
• Big Brand Media Wants A Google Bailout
• Proof Google Treats Underscores & Hyphens Differently?
• Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter
• Two new improvements to Google results pages
• Twitter Tweaks Its Title Tags For Better Google Juice
• Googles Disappearing Blog Post Phenomenon
• Google’s Wonder Wheel Experiment, and More
• Google Patent Granted on Web Link Spam
• Google’s Matt Cutts Answers Link: Operator Questions
• Twitter Confirms Paid Pro Accounts On The Way
• An Impressive Case Study in Link Acquisition: OpenCube.com
• My SEO Toolbox
• YouTube Adds A Twitter Button
• Flat Site Architecture
• Do Search Engines Look at Keywords in URLs?

As we all know, creative content does the best in the social bookmarking realm. Photos seem to have a very high success rate. This could be due to the fact that they do not take long to process, they can be shared quickly, and everyone likes looking at art (I think so?). Outside of direct keyword searches, photos have historically been the #2 item searched for on the web, of the 4 Google verticals. News comes in at #3 and Videos are #4. With blended search results, news and video searches are definitely on the rise, but photo searches still dominate the web.

So, you promoted your image to a social bookmarking site, it hits the homepage, it sends a large amount of traffic, and you might even get a few links back to your site. Wow it was that simple! Well not really, getting your content to homepage of a social bookmarking site is very difficult and I will save that for another day.

Well what about all those people that now use your image in their blog posts or webpages, but don’t link to you? How do you find these juicy potential back links?

Simple you have two sources: Tineye and Google Image Search!

Tineye

Tineye is a reverse image search engine. It is amazing cause all you have to do is place the url source of your image and hit go! It does its thing and returns very accurate results of pages that have used your image.

Google Image Search

Google image search is a little bit tricker. You need to search for your image with various keywords till you see your image being used by another website.

Once you compile the list of sites using your image simple contact the owners or leave a comment if its a blog post asking for credit of the image.

I really liked your article about “…………”. I think “Say something insightful”…

BTW I noticed you used our “image name / description” in your post. “Drop link to your site that references that the image is yours”

Would it be possible to get credit for our image? A simple link back would do.

Thanks again.

Now, these website owners do not have to link back to you at all, but if you ask nicely 8 out of 10 times they will drop you a link back.

It’s that simple!

Now for a quick real life example to show you that this actually works and is worth your time.

Last year we created a “Google Bot” that hit the home page of digg. YEA!! We got a bunch of traffic and some backlinks. Fast forward 3 months later we start ranking in Google Image Search for the term google bot. I then noticed that other website were ranking as well, but with our image! So, I contacted the webmaster or dropped a few comments and bam BACKLINKS!

Today I used Tineye and found even more potential links.

So, there you go folks! Have fun Tracking Down Your Lost Link Love From Your Creative Images!

Hey remember to follow us eVisibility and me(ImNotADoctor) on Twitter! If you need any search engine marketing services you know who to call!

As Commissioner of the eVisibility office March Madness Pool, I am regrettably here to inform Google that it no longer holds the golden gloves of helping unfortunate souls find their winning streaks It takes more than a voluptuous search trend line to make to the Big Dance they call March Madness. A bracketeer must know the ins and outs of a 5-12 upset, the odds against a 16 seed team going into the tourney facing a number1 seed, and the likelihood of a number 13 seed making it past the sweet 16.

Unbeknownst to Dan Redman, a poor Google Analytics sheep, he overestimated the excitement of this year’s Madness and picked some very outrageous upsets. This year, if you’re going to call it “madness,” a number 1,2, or 3 seed is going to have to lose. I remember when filling out brackets used to be about more than just correctly identifying numbers. This year’s tournament has about as much personality as that new American Idol judge, the girl with no reason for being there. As it turns out, the number one seeds are favored to win, though struggling by, and as much as Google trends would like to predict a pac-10 victory by 75%, it just isn’t going to happen; the overrated Big East seems to want it, despite Jim Calhoun being absent for most of the tournament.

With that said, Google Trends gets a FAIL as Dan is the first to be eliminated with 32 points (save for a possible 4 more points should Arizona take out Louisville). The winner, not much of an improvement as far as effort being put into the bracket, is a solid 22 points ahead of Google (at least Danny was able to find an expert online that made their bracket printable).

Click to Enlarge

Update:

Barry Schwartz let me know that is feature has been around for awhile “October of 2008. Surprised I missed this one.

Last week I noticed a change on how Google is displaying results for website forums. They are now showing, or a least I am seeing, additional information like: How Many Posts, How Many Authors, and Last Post Date. I have not seen any websites talking about this so, if this is an old feature let me know.

Check it out yourself “.htaccess 301 redirect forum”

Screenshot below:

I am impressed that Google has the ability to crawl forums and pull this data out. Reminds me of how big brother is always watching over us.

It is good to see that Google is always trying to test and update the way they display search results to their users. It makes for a better user experience. Even today they announced Two new improvements to Google results pages.

Google will be better refinement for their related searches and will be giving it more prominent placements in the SERPS. This means that keyword research just got a whole lot more interesting. For instance, a search for “principles of physics” provides suggestions for some of the more popular principles like “big bang” and “special relativity.” This will enhance user experience greatly but it also means that you need to be weary of related topics that you have not yet optimized for!

They are also increasing the amount of content that will be displayed on longer tail searches. So a search for something like “earth’s rotation axis tilt and distance from sun” will pull SERPS with expanded content snippets. Makes sense since that is a lot of words to find on a given page. This also means that having better, and more, on page content will benefit you. If you do not have enough content you will be missing out on a lot of long tail traffic, which is valuable.

So Google is enhancing the user experience, good. But they are also telling Web site owners that they need better content and more of it, good.

Comment below if you have any thing to add.

Lets the Madness Begin! This is what we found this week:

• What are the Top Phrases for Your Website?
• WeFollow - New Twitter Directory From Kevin Rose
• Getting Links From Professors & College Students
• How to Get Awesome Links
• Google Settles On Finding Related Site, But Not Specific Page?
• Reciprocal Link Cloaking”, SEO “Experts” and why you need to be very careful
• How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard
• Myths, Penalties and Spam
• How Many 301s Are Too Many?
• 2009 St. Patrick’s Day Search Logos
• Do Not Overlook the Importance of the Display URLs in PPC Ads
• Page-Level Algorithmic Penalties On The Rise From Google
• 120 Free Icon Sets to Enhance User Interfaces
• Query Deserves Freshness
• 404 Pages Should Not Return 200 Status Codes
• My Reputation Management Presentation from Think Visbibility
• Politics and Link Campaigns in the Blogosphere
• Keyword Analytics In Google Analytics: 5 Minute Video
• SXSW talk by Gary Vaynerchuk

I determined that since I’ve had such poor luck in the past prognosticating the March Madness tournament that I would rely 100% on the omnipresence of Google to come through in the clutch. Using Google Insights for Search

I only advanced a team in my bracket if their respective school had a higher search volume than their opponent.

There are numerous early and late surprises on this completed bracket. In the early rounds; Siena advances by search volume over Ohio State, and Akron defeats Gonzaga in a search shocker.

Overall, the Pac-10 conference is heavily favored, placing 3 of the final four teams.

Click the enlarge

Check back as we will be updating the progression of the tournament to see how Google fairs against the rest of the eVisibility office.