Leading Search Engines Baidu and Yandex to Speak at International Search Summit Seattle
Leading Chinese and Russian search engines Baidu and Yandex will be speaking at the International Search Summit @ SMX Advanced in Seattle on June 9th.

(Vocus/PRWEB) March 30, 2011

While many small businesses rush to use the power of the net to gain new online visitors and customers through Search Engine Optimization, an SEO specialist wonders if all these hasty Search Engine Optimization steps are leading to a disaster.

To the uninitiated, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines and often small businesses employ the services of SEO Consultants to improve their site’s ranking online, so that traffic and sales from search engine users can follow.

As Kishore shared, “Last week I was sitting with a friend whose retail-business had collapsed because his website had disappeared from the front page of a major search-engine, when I realized how vulnerable small business sites were. Like many small business owners, he had fallen prey to a smooth-talking SEO expert who promised him quick ranking on all search engines.”

Kishore added, “The sad part of the situation was that the unethical SEO consultant that my retail business friend had used, did manage to catapult his site to the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing. As soon as the site reached the front page of all 3 search engines, my retail friend’s business was flooded with new orders, and in his delight he made the mistake of shutting off all other marketing channels.”

“Many small business owners have no clue about SEO,” Kishore explained, “and don’t realize that artificial ranking can be achieved through black-hat techniques like blog commenting, bookmarking, video blasting and backlink farming. But Search Engines have smartened up and sniff out such sites quickly. By the time the Small Business owner realizes his site has been de-indexed or pushed out by the search engines, he would have invested a lot in his SEO effort or come to rely on online channels for sales. Both can be fatal for a small business.”

“The only way to retain consistent top ranking,” says Kishore, “is to provide relevant information and true value to customers. If you know what your customers want and can cater to their needs, your site is automatically qualified to be on the front page. All search engines are trying to provide their users with relevant information and if your site is the one that is most relevant to their user, your site has a good chance to take the top position.”

When done with scientific precision, SEO can outrank every other channel of marketing and yield amazing results within short periods. Search Engine Optimization is particularly effective for businesses that need to acquire customers at a very low cost.

To know more about powerful SEO strategies and how it can explode small business profits, visit instantSEOsystem.com or reach Kishore Dharmarajan directly at (+97150) 698-6164.

For media inquiries, please visit instantSEOsystem.com/media-room for immediate download of the Instant SEO System media kit.

ABOUT:

Kishore Dharmarajan is an SEO Specialist and author of 3 books including the upcoming ‘Sniper Marketing’. Besides working with diverse companies as Search Engine Optimization consultant, Kishore holds seminars and has spoken in front of thousands of people on topics as SEO and Small Business Marketing. instantSEOsystem.com

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The New York Times launched its paywall globally today, and Ive been putting the barrier through its paces. Visits from search engines like Google, for convoluted reasons, are limited to five per day. But as it turns out, visits from any Google site search or not appear blocked.

To test how the new paywall works and interacts with search engines I triggered it for myself in Firefox. At first, I had no luck. After clicking on well past the allowed 20 views per month, I couldnt get the wall to appear.

Restarting my browser (I was in Firefox) finally got the paywall to trigger. As was promised, I was still able to get past this when I came from links on social sites such as Twitter. In addition, I was able to get past the paywall when I came from an ordinary link, such as from River Of Times, which is a collection of New York Times links.

Blocked From Google, Yahoo amp; Bing

Search engines are also supposed to let you past the paywall, if youve hit it, but only for up to five visits per day. Thats a barrier that the New York Times has erected against whatever it considers to be a major search engine.

To discover which search engines got this special attention, I went to the Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com, Ask.com and Blekko.com, found five stories from the New York Times in each of them, and clicked through.

When I tried to view more than five, I was blocked when coming from these:

I wasnt blocked when coming from Ask and Blekko. In addition, I wasnt blocked when I came from any of these country-specific versions of Google that I tested:

With Google UK (google.co.uk), I specifically tested to see if I could view more than five articles, in case the New York Time was perhaps applying a different limit for each version of Google. This doesnt appear to be the case. I was able to view more than five pages, when coming from Google UK.

Blocking Google Reader

Next, I wondered if the New York Times was only metering Google search-related visits (which is what the New York Times said it would do) or instead metering visits from other Google services. As it turns out, any Google service may get blocked.

For example, I subscribe to the RSS feed from the New York Times in Google Reader. Once the paywall was triggered, I could no longer view articles from Google Reader without a paywall block coming up.

This shouldnt happen. For one, the New York Times has said that links from social media sites wouldnt be blocked, and Id say Google Reader qualifies as a social media site. But more important, the New York Times has also previously said that ANY link from another site will let visitors through, unmetered, except in the case of search engines.

Google Reader isnt a search engine, but the New York Times is treating it that way. More crazy, if I subscribed to the RSS feed in my browser, the New York Times consistently let me view whatever I wanted.

Blocking Google Buzz

Few would argue that Google Buzz isnt a social media outlet. It might not be anywhere near as popular as Facebook or Twitter, but it is clearly a social media service. But in my testing, I wasnt able to view an article I shared on Google Buzz, because Id hit the paywall limit.

Again, this shouldnt have been the case.

Blocking Gmail

I tried another test. I emailed myself a link to a New York Times article to my Gmail account, which is run by Google. Again, I got blocked. The same thing happened when I clicked from an emailed link sent to my Yahoo Mail account.

Im pretty sure that if Id clicked on these links from an email account not also run by a major search engine that Id have gotten through but that really shouldnt be the case.

Postscript: HTTPS To Blame?

After I wrote my story above, a reader wrote suggesting that perhaps the secure connection (https) that Google provides for services like Google Reader, Buzz and Gmail might be to blame. The connection might not be passing referrer information that indicates someone is coming from these services, and so the paywall goes up.

I dont think this is the case, but its worth noting. I did some further testing on the morning of March 29, the day after I wrote this. I found:

I also found clicks from Twitter, even from a secure connection, were allowed through the paywall. So, theres more going on. Secure connections can pass referrer information, if they want, to my understanding. Its also possible that the secure connection might redirect a click in a variety of ways to pass on different referrer information.

More Paywall Observations

The paywall is pretty leaky. Its not going to stop anyone who wants to get past and knows even a little bit about the internet. Aside from admitting people via any link, you can also get through by:

There are other tips, too, such as those Mashable has compiled.

Youre Blocking Search Engines Why?

The purpose of me writing about this isnt to encourage people to avoid the paywall. Heck, the New York Times is deliberately going out of its way to keep it from triggering for many people who come to the site.

Instead, its to revisit the absurdity of how search engines ended up getting slapped with one of the few limits out there. It all started with the New York Times trying to keep limits that Google allows publishers as part of its First Click Free program, limits that make little sense when pretty much its Any Click Free now at the New York Times.

After questions were raised about why Google was getting singled out, the New York Times then had to concoct a story about how all major search engines would get blocked, with a confusing message suggesting that the New York Times was using tools that the search engines themselves provide for this.

They dont. The blocking and metering is all done by the New York Times itself and done so poorly, right now, that it is inadvertently blocking non-search services from these companies. Personally, I think the search engine limits should just get dropped.

Further Background

My article below covers more background on the New York Times blocking of search engines and the confusing statements it has made:

Over at my personal blog, I also did a send-up of the pricing plans for digital subscriptions (in short buy a print subscription. You get digital access, should you really think you need it, for a much better price)

And below are some further background articles on search engines and newspaper sites.

Related Topics: Featured | Top News

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Northern Light (www.northernlight.com) CEO C. David Seuss has taken his vision of meaning extraction an advanced application of text analytics technology that he believes is the future of search to the pages of one of the most prestigious technology journals, Proceedings of the IEEE. The IEEE is the worlds oldest and largest professional society, with 410,000 members in over 170 countries.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110324/NE70672 )

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20030522/NLTLOGO )

In an article entitled, In-Depth Understanding: Teaching Search Engines to Interpret Meaning, which appears as the Point of View article in the magazines April 2011 edition published this week, Seuss laments that mainstream search engines are largely unchanged over the past 17 years. The cure, he proposes, is meaning extraction, an emerging technology that identifies concepts contained within documents and document repositories, and surfaces combinations of these concepts that imply meaning in the context of the business, professional, or technical purpose of the search process.

In the article, Seuss writes, Search engines must evolve to have an in-depth understanding of the searched material and the associated ways of knowing in the users domain of knowledge. It is necessary that search engines grasp the professional purpose for a given search and that search goes beyond presenting document lists to users. Search engines must interpret and analyze the search results and then present findings that would be considered most significant by the users if they were able to read all of the documents retrieved in the search process.

For members of the IEEE, the article can be accessed directly from IEEE at: http://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=5733920

Northern Light has posted a downloadable copy of the article on its home page at www.northernlight.com.

Today, meaning extraction is beginning to be applied by companies to search electronic document repositories and various online resources to dramatically improve and accelerate a researchers ability to gain insight into a topic and answer specific research questions, according to Seuss. The technology is incorporated into Northern Lights SinglePoint strategic research portal, the only turnkey enterprise search application that provides centralized search, analysis, and access for diverse sources of internal, external, and licensed market intelligence.SinglePoint portals are used by many of the worlds leading research-driven companies in IT, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, financial services and other industries for competitive intelligence and market research, strategic planning, product development, marketing, and sales.

Seusss article is based on a presentation he gave at the IEEE Workshop on the Future of Information in Washington, DC last May, where he was part of a group of IT industry thought leaders that offered perspectives on how information will be captured, processed and consumed 10 years from now. The three-day conference featured presentations by industry notables, including Vinton G. Cerf, vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google and often called the father of the internet; Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Daniel E. Atkins, professor of information and EECS at the University of Michigan; as well as research executives from Microsoft Corp. and IBM. The conference was organized by a team under the direction of Anthony Durniak of IEEE and William B. Rouse, executive director of the Tennenbaum Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Seuss has spent much of his career in the IT industry. Prior to joining Northern Light as its founding CEO in 1996, Seuss founded Spinnaker Software, which he led from inception to a publicly-traded company listed on NASDAQ. Before Spinnaker, Seuss was a manager and consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. He holds a MBA from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor of industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, and is a member of the board of advisors of the Tennenbaum Institute of Georgia Tech.

About Northern Light

Northern Light has been providing strategic research portals, business research content, and search technology to global enterprises since 1996. Northern Lights current clients include Fortune 100 market leaders in information technology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, energy, financial services and insurance, transportation, retailing, and electronics. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a development center in St. Petersburg, Russia, Northern Light Group LLC is a profitable, privately-held, self-funded company with more than 50 employees.

SOURCE Northern Light

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To sell your own products and services on the web, you need targeted visitors. Search Engines will send you targeted traffic, and lots of it, if youre using selected strategies.

The 1st step in your search engine marketing and advertising strategy is not search engine optimization. Your first step is to have an understanding of the net and the way to properly work with it to advertise your own goods and services.

The Internet is a subject material driven medium. Searchers are searching for information. These people usually do not wish to be marketed to. They want value. It is possible to offer this kind of value with the content material you write for your Internet site, in addition to the particular subject material youre posting for your promotions.

For this reason, you have to build a comprehensive, content managing method. Your content managing technique ought to be customer developed, written content driven, and enhanced regarding the various search engines.

Your current content management method should consider both of the on page and also off page optimization factors. On page aspects include things like refining your page regarding keywords and phrases relevant to your site, page titles, and also web page descriptions. Off page aspects incorporate link swapping and also backlink building.

Once you have decided on the subject for the site, you have to produce your Internet site. Decide just what content material you might compose. Your content must include things like content articles, press announcements, as well as product or service reviews. You may also generate free information products like e books, reports in addition to news letters, provided the details you incorporate will be useful to your website guest.

Ahead of working on your subject material, you have to do your investigation. Uncover what your readers are searching for. There are many free programs as well as software available on the web that will help you accomplish this task. Simply, do a search in the search engines for a keyword phrase similar to keyword and key phrase recommendation tools.

As soon as youre ready to create your content, choose two to three keywords to make use of all the way through the actual written text for the web page. Write your own subject material and then optimize your site for all these keyword phrases.

Though on page optimization will benefit you if perhaps there isnt a great deal of competition for the keywords and key phrases you chosen, its not at all enough if you are focusing on higher competition words. To raise your rankings, you will have to get a link from high traffic Internet sites along with a good Google page rank. Setting up backlinks coming from various other web pages can even help you raise your own website rankings.

Try a search within your favorite search engine in order to come across web pages youll be able to link to. Study these websites. Check to see precisely what key phrases they used to enhance their pages. Find out if these sites trade hyperlinks, and if thats the case, ask for a web link trade.

The secret weapon to success when using search engine optimization techniques would be to do your homework before you produce your website. The final point here is that it doesnt matter how many one way links you have got aiming at your Internet site, or even just how good you optimize your web page for the various search engines, you may not gain a high position for the keywords which are too competitive without a long time and also lots of energy put in, it could even take up to a couple of years.

You also need to be aware that you may not flourish in any online business that you arent passionate about. Select a topic you prefer, which has a marketplace after which you can build a content rich, search engine friendly site. Get your name out there and also continue to keep marketing your merchandise. You certainly will be successful in the long run.

Most people already know the importance of using a Search Engine Submission and backlink building service, for people who do not yet fully grasp why this is essential you can find 2 video clips that explain the incredible importance of these kinds of strategies at our website. You can find us at: Search Engine Submission Service.

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laquo; Infographic: Answers.com Ask What Should You Get your Girlfriend for Valentines Day? |

Main

| Google Outsourcing Spam Checking To You, Could Be Abused raquo;

February 14, 2011

Valentines Day 2011: Search Engines Feelin the Love

Googles Robert Indiana Doodle wasnt the only special logo or Valentines Day treat put out by the search engines. Bing, Yahoo, Ask, DuckDuckGo, and even Wolfram|Alpha are also feeling the love in their own ways today.

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Firefoxs search bar offers direct access to one search engine and pulldown access to all configured search engines. One search engine is always selected as the default search engine and used for searches unless another is selected manually by the user first. Users who often switch between search engines may like the new Firefox add-on Quick Search Bar which replaces the standard layout of the search bar.

The add-on replaces the search bar with icons of the supported search engines. A click on a search engine icon turns the display into the standard search form which means that the number of clicks to perform a search remains the same.

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-E (Ctrlcommand K) activates the first search engine in the list which means that it works exactly the same as before.

Only some of the available search engines may be displayed directly. This depends solely on the width of the search box in the Firefox interface. The remaining search engines are shown with a click on the down icon on the right side of the search element.

A middle-click opens the select search engine in a new tab. This behavior can be changed in the program preferences.

A right-click on the search bar opens a context menu with options to manage the installed search engines and to access the add-ons preferences.

The Manage Search Engines List can be used to add or remove search engines. The available search engines can be sorted easily and the change is shown directly after the window is closed. New search engines can be dragged and dropped on to the search bar as well.

The add-on preferences are extensive and offer several interesting options. It is for instance possible to enable mouse wheel scrolling of search engines, select another default search engine for the search keyboard shortcut and to change backgrounds and dividers. A slight problem is the inability to change the search engine icon which only becomes apparent if two search engines from the same company are displayed (for instance Google Search and Google Encrypted Search).

Quick Search Bar is a handy add-on that helps Firefox users saves clicks when searching with different search engines. The extension is only compatible with Firefox 4.

Related Articles:Search With Firefox Extension
How To Add Google Encrypted Search Engine To Firefox, Opera, Chrome And Internet Explorer
Add Google Sandbox Search Engine To Web Browsers
Change the Firefox Location Bar Search Engine
Add any Search Box to Firefox Search

Tags:firefox, firefox search, firefox-add on, quick search bar
Categories:Browsing, firefox

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Tampa, FL (PRWEB) February 2, 2011

A recent internal study by the SEO Software provider, SEO Engine(TM), a new type of Search Engine that reveals how Search Engines rank and score Websites, confirmed the long-standing belief that a large majority of the Websites it has crawled to-date are afflicted with Link Imbalance. On the SEO Engines Website, proper Link Balance is defined as the condition when the distribution of Link Flow(R) corresponds from the order of the most competitive markets to the least competitive markets.

Link Flow is a trademarked term which represents a more accurate Page Rank, says Scott Allen Stouffer, President of Technology at the SEO Engine. When a Website has Link Imbalance, that means the wrong Link Flow Distributions are flowing to the wrong Webpages within a Website. It is kind of like a car that has its wheels out of alignment. The faster you drive that car, the more unstable it becomes. Unfortunately, many Internet Marketing firms are doing just that for their clients, says Stouffer, the more Links a Website obtains, or the more External Incoming Link Flow it has, the more Link Flow Distribution becomes important. With proper Link Balance, all of the Webpages in a Website start ranking higher on Search Engines, not just a few Webpages.

The accumulative effect that proper Link Balance has is dramatic, says Stouffer. We have seen clients report back a 100x traffic increase, simply from balancing their Link Flow Distributions. Link Flow Distribution is simply a Search Engines way of viewing the order of importance of each Webpage in a Website. As Websites gain popularity, they are often linked to by other Webpages on the Internet. This linking causes Search Engines to attribute more importance to that linked Webpage. But the internal linking structure of a Website continues to pass that importance on to other Webpages in that Website. When a Website has proper Link Balance, the importance is distributed to the most competitive Webpages first.

Stouffer explains that, the SEO Engine first calculates the competitiveness of each Webpage in a Website. Then, it assigns a Target Link Flow Distribution % based on which Webpages need the most Link Flow. The more competitive a Market Focus(TM) is, the more Link Flow a Webpage needs. For instance, a Webpage that shows up for the phrase cars is going to need much more Link Flow than a Webpage that shows up for the phrase 1979 Lincoln Versailles. The difference between the Actual Link Flow Distribution % and the Target Link Flow Distribution % is what the new Link Flow Balance screen inside the SEO Engine shows. By making very small adjustments to the internal linking architecture of a Website, major increases in Search Engine rankings can be achieved.

Localize It, an Internet Marketing firm and one of the thousands of SEO Engine customers using this new type of Search Engine, reveals how important the Link Flow calculations are to SEO. With years of experience, and through countless spreadsheets of calculating Link Flow, the value of Links has always been a process. Seeing and utilizing the SEO Engine has taken a lot of the guess work out of what a site is delivering in terms of Link Flow, both incoming and outgoing, says Localize Its Director, Aaron Greene.

The new Link Flow Balance screen can be viewed by clicking on any of the Link Flow Distribution percentages on any screen inside the SEO Engine. By purchasing an SEOPass(TM) to SEO Engine data, the user can jump inside of the Search Engine to see exactly how Webpages and Links are scored. The SEO Engine sells these SEOPasses to individual Websites, and has an OEM Program for SEO professionals which includes many additional business features like Lead Generation and Tracking. For those Website owners who need help with Search Engine Optimization, the SEO Engine has a list of qualified Internet Marketing Companies that it recommends.

ABOUT: The SEO Engine is a new kind of Interactive Search Engine that provides accurate and powerful Internet Marketing Tools for Online Marketing Agencies, SEOs, and Webmasters. The Search Engine reveals vital Website Ranking Data via a unique Web-based interface. Try it free by going to www.seoengine.com and entering a URL.

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Strategically, It is a process by which you can promote your website or increase traffic or number of visitors to your website. It is done by utilizing the technological aspects of the Search Engines.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) includes Paid Inclusion or Pay Per Click Adds. These can be of greater advantage and in contrast to Search Engine Optimisation Process or for short SEO, these SEM practices can deliver the desired results in a specific period of time. And you know what…. Search Engines charge you for this and it would be a bit costly as well. So do you want to go for SEM or would you like to know is there any other way by which you can promote your website or gain an increase in your sales?

The answer to the above question is YES. Certainly, there is a way. You just need to make use of these opportunities. SEO is suitable for all those business organisations who want not to make great investments……

Most of the poeple those who do not want to spend a lot of money go for SEO services.

You can make your site better with SEO services. Dont you want to bring visitors to your site? Dont you want to turn your visitors into your customers??

If there are visitors to your site then there are customers….

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO is not a form of advertising your site. It is an art. A way it provides by which you can gain new visitors or new customers, much easier.

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a process by the help of which driving traffic to ones website is easier. Increase the number of visitors to your website by making use of these services. If your website is facing absence on internet then it is high time that you pay some attention to this. if you own a website then It is indispensable to gain visitors to your site. You dont have to pay to the search engines.

What do most of the internet users do?

There is no doubt that there are millions of websites but do all these websites have any noticeable position on the internet? Do they anytime make their presence feel to their visitors or to their already existing buyers?

There are lot many websites. But not all the websites get position on Search Page of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing etc,. Internet users often do not take time in clicking through all Search Result Pages. If you are one of those who want to see your website on the top of the Search Result Page then for you it is this article which can tell you something on HOW to be on the top most postion?

What do search engines do?

When the internet user enters the key words and click on the Search Button then the Search Engine Page selects the website that which is more relevant to the keywords being fed there. The website that which show more relevance will get the top most position. Ranking is done according to the frequency of the connectivity to the relevant key word entered by the internet user. Search returns are called Organic as you dont have to pay to any Search Engines.

SEO gives Organic Search Results where as Sponsored results are SEM oriented.

Why SEO is a necesary thing in the present internet world?

With lot many companies coming up and with many websites being developed, there has been noticed an increase in the number of online competitors. Competition is very stiff and every website is strugling to achieve the top most position…

So, where do you want to see your website???

Search Optimisation is all the more necessary as it is a way to gain maximum internet exposure.

Often a website feels absence Why?

You own a website but what if you dont have the visitors to your site?

It is requisite that you divert your attention to this. If your website is not known to others then what is the use of it? You need to gain internet presence and wipe out your absence. Many a business organisaitons have gained an increase in their business promotions by making use of these services. You can reach out to millions of internet users through out the world. Why keep your business presence limited to just one particular area or a region when you can spread your presence in nearly all parts of the world? SEO is an opportunity to enchance or improve ones own business activities. It is a door to gain internet presence. You will have to be a part of this web-trafficking campaign. You will have to optimise your site to get the visitors to itself or else you will lose your business. You will have to now consider this opportunity and make use of it.

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