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After part 1 of patent analysis, here is part 2 of it (last part).

How do search engines calculate the weight?

Search engines consider how often each word or word sequence can be found in link texts pointing to a particular page and how often the token appears in the index.

Search engines might assign the greatest importance to words that appear the least frequently in the search index. The reason for that is that those words are often more specifically related to the searched topic.

In addition, a token that appears very often in link texts that point to a special web page could be given higher weight. Tokens that appear very frequently in the search index (“site” or “best”) might be discounted because they are not relevant to the special topic.

What does this mean to your website?

All major search engines use this method to rank web pages. If you want to get high rankings on search engines, you must make sure that your web site has good inbound links with the right link texts.

Optimized web pages are important to tell search engines that your website is relevant to your keywords. Good inbound links with the right link texts will enforce the relevancy of your pages for your keywords.

What you have to do to get high rankings on Yahoo and Google?

1. Optimize your web pages for your keywords. While it is possible to get high rankings for a keyword if you have enough inbound links that contain that keyword, it is much easier to get high rankings for a special keyword if your web page has been optimized for that keyword.

2. Try to get as many inbound links as possible. The links to your website should use your targeted keywords in the link text. Do not use the exactly same text over and over. Vary your link texts and use related but different expressions for the links to your site.

The Yahoo patent confirms the methods that modern search engines use to rank web pages. If you follow the tips and tricks above, your website will get the best possible rankings on Yahoo, Google and other major search engines.

Popularity: 12% [?]

This month, Yahoo was granted a patent that describes how link texts may be used to increase the relevancy ranking of a web page. Although the patent was filed in 2002, it provides interesting details about how search engines can use link texts.

Why are link texts important?

All major search engines pay close attention to the text that is used in links pointing to web pages. A web page might be considered more relevant to a search term if the search term not only appears on the web page but is also used in the text of the link that points to the page.

Web pages can even get high rankings for a search term if they don’t contain that search term. It’s enough that many websites link to the page with the search term in the link text. This has been demonstrated with several Google bombs.

How do search engines treat link texts?

While it is clear that link texts are very important for search engines, it’s not clear how much weight search engines assign to a link text when they index a page. Are some link texts more important than others?

The patent indicates that link texts are broken into parts, called tokens:

Once an anchortext phrase is identified, it is converted into a set of tokens. For example, page 306 contains the phrase “best Louis Armstrong site” pointing to page 200. The tokenization produces the following tokens:

* “Trumpet”Best Louis Armstrong site”
* “Louis Armstrong”
* “Louis”
* “Armstrong”
* “Best”
* “Best Louis”
* “Best Armstrong”
* “Best site”

The search engine algorithm calculates a weight for each of these tokens. If the weight exceeds a threshold, the linked web page may be indexed under that token.

Click here for part 2 of this patent analysis.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Do you want to get customers from outside the United States? Is your business located in Europe or another part of the world? There are a few things to consider if your website is aimed at people outside the United States.

Google’s market share outside the US:

Google is the biggest player in the US market. They also have a big market share in other countries:

Country	Market Share
Google Germany	89.20%
Google UK	70,25%
Google Bulgaria	90.00%
Google France	89.79%
Google Netherlands	95.00%
Google Poland	90.00%
Google Israel	90.00%

Source: Lunapark

If you want to get customers from outside the US then you must make sure that your website is prepared for Google’s local versions. For example, Germans who enter Google.com in their web browsers are automatically redirected to Google.de.

Google returns different results in different countries

Google.com and Google.de return different results. For example, Google.de returns totally different results for the keyword “auto” than Google.com.

That means that websites must meet certain criteria to be listed in Google’s local versions.

What you can do to get listed in Google’s local versions

1. Get a country specific domain name

If you want to get high rankings in Google.co.uk then you should have a .co.uk domain name. This is by far the most important factor. A local domain name makes it much easier to get high rankings in country specific search engines.

2. Make your web page content relevant to your target market

If you’re trying to sell something in Germany, it is obvious that your web page content should be in German. If you’re website is aimed at people living in the UK, mention your full UK address in the footer so that search engines can associate that address with your website.

3. Check your server location

If the IP address of your server is based in France then Google can take this as an indicator that you’re targeting the French market.

Getting high rankings in Google’s local variations is easier if you follow the tips above. Note that your web pages still must be optimized for your keywords if you want to get high rankings.

In addition, Google only lists your web pages if you have good inbound links.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The top level domain of your website can have an influence on your website rankings. Last week, many websites with a special top level domain were delisted from Google’s search results.

No more visitors from Google. What has happened?

Last week, many webmasters observed that all of their websites with an .info domain name disappeared from Google’s search results.

Some websites removed traffic drops from several hundreds of visitors per day to zero visitors per day. It seemed that all websites that used the .info top level domain had been removed from Google’s index.

A few days later, the websites with the .info domains reappeared in Google’s search results.

Why did this happen?

It looks as if Google updated its filters for special domain names and went a little too far. Earlier this year, the head of Google’s anti-spam team made the following statement:

“A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations.”

Domain names with a .info ending have been available for 99 Cent for some time. It’s likely that very many .info domain names have been purchased for spamming purposes.

Google might have intended to block .info domains that spam and a bug in the algorithm wiped all .info domains from Google’s results. Fortunately, Google’s engineers fixed the bug within days.

What does this mean for your website?

Filtering all .info domains just because many of them are used for spamming is a very drastic measure. Although Google doesn’t do this, it’s clear that there is some kind of filter for these domains.

If you want to succeed with your online business, it might be better to use a .com domain or the local top level domain of your country instead of a .info domain.

Popularity: 15% [?]

People not involved in website optimization often have difficulty to understand search engine optimization and the different methods that are involved. If you have to explain the basic SEO concepts to your boss, the following list will help you:

1. Link building is important

Links are like votes for a website. The more votes a website has, the better the rankings.

2. There are different link types

Search engines consider the relevance of the links. Links from unrelated websites don’t help as much as links from relevant websites. A link from a website that has many inbound links for itself counts more than a link from an unpopular website.

3. It’s important to keep on link building

It does not help to get more links than your competing web pages. At least one of your competitors will continue to build links and pass your website. For that reason, it’s important to know that link building is an ongoing activity.

4. Buying links can get you in trouble

Search engines don’t like paid links because they consider the links to your website as editorial votes. Google has officially stated that it considers paid links as an attempt to game the system. Google penalizes websites that buy links. Even if Google cannot automatically find all paid links to your website, your competitors might report your website.

5. Redirects can cause trouble

Redirects have been used by spammers in the past and some search engines still have difficulties with that. If you have to use redirections on your website, only use 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that is defined as a permanent redirect. That means that search engines will follow the links and pass the links from the old URL to the new URL.

6. Duplicate content can cause problems

Search engines want to return as many different results as possible in their results. That is why search engines only list one copy of a document in their search results. For that reason, you shouldn’t promote more than one domain for the same website and you should have unique content on your web pages. Near copies are also considered duplicate content, for example, when the same article is listed on more than one website.

7. Why your web pages must be optimized

Search engines use simple software programs to index web pages. These web pages analyze the text on a web page to determine what it is all about. If a keyword is mentioned in the right places and in the right frequency, search engines will consider the web page relevant to that keyword. If a keyword is mentioned too often, search engines might penalize a website because it looks like a spamming attempt.

8. Keywords are the key to your success

It’s important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimization. Single word keywords can be very popular but they seldom lead to sales. Industry specific keywords can be so special that no one searches for them. The perfect keyword is targeted, has a high search volume and leads to sales.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science but it requires some work and ongoing efforts. If you understand the basic SEO concepts, it’s easier to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

Popularity: 17% [?]

During the last weeks, people in online forums observed some strange Google result changes. Rumor has it that there is a new -60 penalty that Google applies to websites in which it has lost trust.

What has happened?

Some webmasters found websites that were listed on position 61 in Google’s search results that had Google Sitelinks below their listing.

Normally, Google only displays Google Sitelinks for the first search result. Many webmasters believe that the website that was listed on position 61 with the Sitelinks was the number 1 result for that keyword but had been penalized by Google.

What does Google say about the -60 penalty?

In a Google Groups discussion about showing Sitelinks for #61 results Google employee John Mu referred to a -60 penalty discussion. Google hasn’t officially confirmed that a -60 penalty exists. However, Google employee John Mu indicated in a discussion about the -60 penalty in the official Google groups that Google penalizes websites if they contain certain spam elements.

Which spam elements trigger the -60 penalty?

It looks that Google applies this penalty to websites that buy links. Many of the websites that seem to have been penalized had many inbound links from websites that linked to them from every single page of their website (so-called site-wide links). Sitewide links are an indicator of paid links, which Google sees as an unwanted way to artificially inflate search engine rankings.

The head of Google’s anti-spam team Matt Cutts has often said that websites that buy paid links will be penalized and it looks as if Google tries to do the job properly. If this penalty for paid links really exists then even websites that follow Google’s rules can get in trouble. Your competitors could harm your website simply by buying links or by creating mini-net websites with sitewide links to your website.

Instead of penalizing seemingly “bad” links, Google should simply ignore them. That way, people could not harm competitor websites.

Popularity: 14% [?]