----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Detlef Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- July 11, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #076 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // "AdWords Quality Score" "NoFollow For Sale" "Server Response" ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> AdWords Quality Score http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060707-232523 Essentials: Watch for changes this week to the cost of Google AdWords as a result of Page Quality Score adjustments. It can be assumed that Google has long calculated user experience factors into their ranking algorithms for natural results, and has recently extended these calculations to include AdWords ranking. Jen does a great job explaining how some sites will likely be adversely affected by these changes, and we can provide an additional tip or two here. Pages with excessive text is not easily consumable. Too high a word count may count against your user experience score. A 5,000 word document would be hard to read on any machine's screen. Tiny text is also difficult to read, and choosing colors other than black text against white bckground is inadvisable. Pages with a high link count are easy for a machines to spot, and can be assumed to be low-quality in terms of measuring user experience. Each link on a page confronts users with a choice. If your link count is abnormally high, you are overwhelming users. Google has inferred in its guidelines that more than 100 links on a page might be excessive (although that number should not be considered a hard-fast rule, consider a reasonable threshold). ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> NoFollow For Sale http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060707-084143 Essentials: The inspiring idea of PageRank, (to use the democracy of the Web for calculating rankings), may be dying, ironically because of Google's own success. NoFollow was introduced by Google to thwart increasing blog spam. Now Google has to contend with the fact that NoFollow itself may be up for sale. NoFollow is really esoteric in any case, and has little to do with much outside Google. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Server Response http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/catching-up-2/ Essentials: Matt Cutts has returned from a lengthy, noticeable holiday. Many happenings went on while the Googler was away, and he is catching up responding to the most serious issues. He confirmed that Google has dealt with a cross-site scripting (XSS) problem that opened users of services like GMail to potential abuse, and he confirmed the server error response posted in DigitalPoint. The response doesn't really reveal anything useful, but is humorous with items that seem of interest: -pagerank_cutoff Guess: Thresholds for recursive calculations or iterations. -phil_max_doc_activation Guess: Normalized processing with 0.5 out of 1. -rewrite_noncompositional_compounds Guess: Spell check or language compound adaptation module. -scale_prvec4_to_prvec Guess: PageRank Vector directives, possibly normalizing at PR4. -servlets=ascorer Guess: Publishing a scoring servlet name for reference. -use_domain_match Guess: Domain limit filter to prevent flooding. -use_experimental_spamscore Guess: Exactly what it says. -use_gwd Guess: Google Working Directory, (not a GoogleDance). -use_query_classifier Guess: Reference to their query-side classification module. -use_spamscore Guess: Exactly what it says. -using_borg Guess: Exactly what it says. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? Contact the postmaster: mailto:postmaster@searchreturn.com Information on how to sponsor this publication: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/advertise.shtml Published by SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com Website Membership: http://www.searchreturn.com/register.shtml The contents of the digest do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SearchReturn or Detlef Johnson. SearchReturn and Detlef Johnson make no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents of the SearchReturn Digest. Copyright 2006 Detlef Johnson. All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------