Get your iGoogle in 42 languages

Earlier this week, iGoogle launched in 13 new languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 42 and the total number of country domains supported to over 70. For those of you who don't know, iGoogle is a personalized version of the Google homepage that lets you select the content that matters to you most from across the web and arrange it in a way that you find useful and fun. People rely on iGoogle to save time by putting all the information and services they need in one place. They also use it to discover new content through the iGoogle gadget directory.

With this launch, more than 99% of Internet users can take advantage of these features in their native language, which is really exciting for us. We're particularly curious to see what iGoogle ends up looking like in these new languages. For example, who would have guessed that 'Tu Nombre en Japonés' (Your name in Japanese) would be among the top 20 gadgets in Chile and Spain? (Mine is Jえすしか, by the way.) Because users and developers ultimately decide what iGoogle will look like in each of these new domains, we can't be sure what will be popular, which is part of the fun.

If you're a developer who speaks one of the languages below, now is a great opportunity to get your cool gadget idea out to a fresh audience. For more information, visit our Gadget APIs page. Who knows, maybe it'll be the next 'Tu Nombre en Japonés.'

Here's a list of the new languages available:

* Arabic
* Bulgarian
* Catalan
* Croatian
* Icelandic
* Indonesian
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Malay
* Serbian
* Slovak
* Slovenian
* Tagalog

Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

China accused of rerouting search traffic to Baidu

Reports have surfaced that China is redirecting traffic from foreign search engines operated by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to homegrown Baidu.com.

According to various reports online, some online users in China attempting to access Google.com, Microsoft's Live.com and Yahoo.com search sites have been redirected to China-based Baidu.com.

Blog site TechCrunch reported that Chinese traffic to Google's blog search engine was being rerouted to Baidu. TechCrunch later published another article saying a similar situation was observed with the other two search giants.

Vivian Wong, a manager at CB Richard Ellis in Shanghai, said visits to the three search engines showed Baidu's home page instead.

Beijing-based David Feng wrote in his blog on Thursday that he was able to gain access to both Google and Yahoo, but not Microsoft's Live.com or Yahoo-owned search engine AltaVista.

However, Ori Elraviv, chief executive of Dragon Ports in Beijing, said he had no problems getting through to the sites. "I find such an occurrence really hard to believe. Blocking a service is one thing; diverting it to a competitor is a completely different story." Dragon Ports is a developer of mobile applications.

Google has, however, confirmed the traffic-rerouting episodes. In response to queries, Google sent similar statements to The Register and search engine blogger Danny Sullivan, noting: "While this is clearly unfortunate, we've seen this happen before and are confident that service will be restored to our users in the very near future."

China has been involved in previous allegations of Internet censorship, though the government has denied such claims.

Incidentally, Google sold its minority stake in Baidu last year, explaining that it was doing so to focus on building the Chinese version of its search engine, Google.cn.

Source: news.com

Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?

Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can't say that we were not warned about this. Danny Sullivan wrote Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google over two weeks ago, and now it appears many sites are getting hit with a drop in PageRank.

Here is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit overnight:

* http://www.washingtonpost.com ==> / PR7 to PR5
* http://www.forbes.com/ ==> PR7 to PR5
* http://www.suntimes.com/ ==> PR7 to PR5
* http://www.sfgate.com/ ==> PR7 to PR5
* http://www.statcounter.com/ ==> PR10 to PR6
* http://www.masternewmedia.org/ ==> PR7 to PR4
* http://www.autoblog.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.engadget.com/ ==> PR7 to PR5
* http://www.problogger.net/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.copyblogger.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.joystiq.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.tuaw.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.searchengineguide.com/ ==> PR7 to PR4
* http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ ==> PR7 to PR4
* http://www.johnchow.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ ==> PR6 to PR3
* http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4
* http://andybeard.eu/ ==> PR5 to PR3
* http://www.seroundtable.com/ ==> PR7 to PR4
* http://www.blogherald.com/ ==> PR6 to PR4

For more information please visit: searchengineland.com

Google October 2007 Page Rank Update

Looks like the toolbar PR updated today, with many sites losing lots of greenbars I have received message from friends in international and alerted me to it, since i have notice that some website PR went decrese to a 4, However, I’ve still got great rankings and traffic for things I track, so there’s no direct reflection there.

The toolbar data is months out of date, so the changes in SERP (if there were any) likely already happened weeks or months ago.

Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Danny Sullivan wrote Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google over …

Let see, wait and watch for upcoming happenings.

Source: Topseo.org

How long does it take until a new site ranks in Google, Yahoo and MSN?

As explained in one of your previous newsletters, Google has some filters for new websites. How long does it take exactly until search engines list a new site in the top 10 rankings?

How long does it take until Google, Yahoo and MSN list a new site?

In a recent test, a webmaster optimized his site for a four word keyword. After about three weeks, Yahoo and MSN showed the website in the top 10 results. Even after several weeks, the same website was nowhere to be seen in Google's top 10 results. The highest result that the website could obtain on Google was position 30.

What does this mean for you?

It looks like Yahoo and MSN are much faster to list new websites in their result pages. The test confirmed that Google has filters for new websites.

For webmasters, the results of this test mean that they have to overcome Google's filters for new sites if they want to have top 10 rankings.

It's difficult for new websites to get high rankings on Google but it is possible. You have to make sure that Google trusts your site.

For searchers, the results of this little test mean that Google might not always have the best search resaults, particularly when it's a search for new content. Yahoo and MSN might be the better choice for some searches.

Is your website still not listed in Google's top 10 for your keyword?

Is your website still not listed in Google's top 10 results although your site is several months old?

Your keywords might be the reason for the problem. If you target very competitive keywords, then it will take much longer until your website is listed in the top 10 rankings.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, then you need very many good inbound links that contain your keyword in the anchor text.

If you target keywords that consist of one or two words then you might want to reconsider them. One word keywords usually don't lead to sales because these keywords are too general.

Keywords that consist of four words are much more likely to convert to sales than shorter keywords.

Keys To Improve Search Engine Ranking

Search engine optimization is the hottest thing to hit the internet since the arrival of the social networks. What is search engine optimization and what does it do? There are many different types of search engine optimization techniques but they all focus on the same goal. That goal is to get your websites higher ranking on the search engines, attract more traffic to your website so that your website gains enough exposure to actually show up in the top 10 spots of the search engines when people search for certain keywords. The reason why this is such a hot topic is because once your website gets ranked on the first page of the search engines, you will see a dramatic increase in your monthly profits.

Once a website is created it is very weak and although it looks good there is no way for the search engines to find your site among the other billion websites on the internet. To tell you the truth it truly is like finding a needle in a hay stack. Over a period of time, the search engines will eventually find and send their robots to crawl your website so that they can add this to their index. This is how the search engines not only find your site but also rate your site and see where it should be placed in the search engine rankings. If you can wait a year or so and let your website grow without any help from search engine optimization then that's fine. The truth is even when the website is mature it most likely will not receive the exposure that you are looking for. I know some people that have had their websites for over 5 years and they have a page rank of one and they are still not ranking anywhere for the most common keywords for their business. By the way, page rank is how the search engines value your website. Although it is very hard to achieve page rank, the more page rank you have the better ranking you will see. Most people with disagree with the page ranking but supposedly that may change in the very near future.

How can I Improve search engine rankings you may ask? There are many different ways to improve search engine rank and to improve the exposure of your website but you have to start out with a good structure first then move on to the more technical techniques. If you are ready to take that next step and learn two of the most important techniques of search engine optimization, then keep reading and enjoy.

The first way to improve search engine placement and in my opinion are the most important technique to focus on are onsite search engine optimization. This technique is very powerful. I will give you a few hints on how this technique works.

First, we are going to talk about onsite optimization. This is one of my favorite techniques because it does wonders to your website. This is one of the most important tasks you must do to help the search engines find your web pages. You have to make your pages stick out like a lighthouse on a foggy night so the search engines can see them easier. Make sure that all pages in your website have good title tags. These are located at the top of each website you arrive on and they describe what the page is about. Make sure that you don't have just your business name as the title because if no one knows about your business then how are they going to know what the name of your business is when they do a search for it. If you are going to be branding you business name and you think the business name will send you the traffic you want the by all means do it. Just like Nike, everyone knows what Nike is so people will use the keyword Nike to search for shoes and sports apparel.

Place some good keywords in the title tags that you think people will use to search for your business. This is a very powerful tool to help get your site more exposure. Next, make sure your "meta tags" description has a good compelling content for people to view and come to your site. Make the description about two sentences in length. This next step is very important. Make sure your "Meta Tag" keywords have all the good keywords that will help the search engines and people find your website pages. Now whatever keywords you place in this area, you need to also place these keywords all over inside the content of your website pages.

The content of your website has to be very compelling and you should also add these keywords here and there inside the content. Make sure the keywords you are using are related to your product you are selling on your website. If the content is not good and is just spammed with key words then you risk the chance of having the search engines boot your website. If this happens you will have a very slim chance of getting back into the search engine index. It's not worth it to spam keywords, if you get caught you may have to start a whole new website over and loose any leads or income you have worked so hard to get.

This is one of the key tools to help improve search engine ranking. If you follow this tool and implement this on your website you will see a great change in the traffic to your website. It is not going to happen overnight but if you do it correctly I promise you it will happen over time. Remember, your website is a long term investment that will only get better with age. If you can be patient and use these tools I have shown you, you will see the difference.

Source: Articlebase.com

Google officially launches AdSense for mobile

Google has just launched AdSense for mobile, which can help you expand your online content to new platforms. If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers.

When you add the new AdSense for mobile code to your site, we'll display relevant ads using the same targeting technology that you are familiar with for existing AdSense products.

To get started:
1) Sign in to your account.
2) Select the AdSense Setup tab and click on AdSense for mobile.
3) Follow the instructions to customize your ad unit for AdSense for mobile.

We've just launched AdSense for mobile, which can help you expand your online content to new platforms. If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers.

When you add the new AdSense for mobile code to your site, we'll display relevant ads using the same targeting technology that you are familiar with for existing AdSense products.

To get started:
1) Sign in to your account.
2) Select the AdSense Setup tab and click on AdSense for mobile.
3) Follow the instructions to customize your ad unit for AdSense for mobile : https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11951&sourceid=aso&subid=ww-en-et-asblog_2007-09-19&medium=link

Source: adsense.blogspot.com

Google introduces Google Presentations

Google Inc. has expanded its online suite of office software to include a business presentation tool similar to Microsoft Corp.'s popular PowerPoint, adding the latest twist in a high-stakes rivalry.

The Mountain View-based company planned to unveil the presentation software late Monday, about five months after Chief Executive Eric Schmidt announced Google would add the application to its software arsenal.

The new program will be included in Google's free software bundle, called "Docs," which users must be online to employ. And the company will sell a souped-up version to businesses, universities and government agencies for $50 a year per user.

As PowerPoint does, Google's presentation software enables users to create a series of slides with a mixture of text and graphics on each. PowerPoint is widely used in business meetings.

Google's software suite already included word processing, spreadsheet and calendar management programs. Microsoft has been reaping huge profits from similar applications for years. Unlike Google's applications, Microsoft's programs are usually installed directly on the hard drives of computers.

Google executives have consistently depicted the company's software applications as counterparts to Microsoft's products.

Source: smh.com.au/

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Seems Dead

A DigitalPoint Forums member reports that the Yahoo! Overture Keyword Tool is no longer providing results.

It looks like the Overture tool is finally gone unless this is a bug. YahooSarah said in January that Overture would be offline until an updated product was released. Does this mean the product is ready? After all, in May, Yahoo stopped updating the Overture tool. It has been four months so hopefully a new tool will be announced shortly.

Since so many tools use the Overture API, I certainly hope that this is the case. DigitalPoint Forums members agree.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=476913

Source: seroundtable.com

Tips Of Driving Search Engine Traffic To Your Site

Search engine traffic to your website can be improved by measuring certain aspects and resolving the changes undertaken in your site. These aspects depend on the nature of your site. Each site is built up with some specific site goals. The best way to find out how well your site attracts and retains visitors to meet these goals is to categorize all possible reasons why a user would visit your Web site. The reasons may be as followed:

* To get detail information on products/services * For an email or phone contacts to ask questions about products/services * Purchase products/services * Compare pricing of products/services * Check status of pending order for products/services * Get more information or tips on using purchased products * To get customer service aid * Report a failure of online forms or shopping cart * Register for newsletters, product updates, marketing brochures, white papers, etc. * Discover new products/servces * Join an online community * Read updated news regarding the business, industry, etc. * Study information on accessories for purchased products/services * Sort out problems related to purchased products/service

Once you make out the reason of the visitors visiting to your website, you can assign desired actions to visitor clusters and track their movements within your site to determine how successfully you are receiving valuable Search engine traffic.

For instant increase in Search Engine Traffic

* Write better, specific, relevant and unique content. * Give People reasons to link to you. * Provide what your visitors want. * Get quality external inbound links. * Traffic Analysis Data * Evaluating SEM Campaign Performance.

Search engine traffic depends upon the study of the above data, checking visitor behaviors to test the marketing message on your site, the efficiency of your offer, the choice of various SEM marketing procedures (site/content optimization, linking strategy, paid inclusion, paid placement, etc.), the choice of search engines (MSN, AOL, Yahoo!, Google, Lycos, AskJeeves, AltaVista, etc.), and many other elements of your marketing campaign. Change in your campaign will likely result in increased Search engine traffic - conversions, lower acquisition costs, and improved ROI.

Source: seoarticles4u.com