Hey SEO’s, what’s wrong with this Google AdSense advertisement? Don’t you love the way that two businesses have to co-exist on the same Google AdSense ad? One way to avoid SEO malpractice is to restrain yourself from the practice of guaranteed SEO:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.

Perhaps the above quote from the Google Search Engine Optimization Guidelines should read No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google except a Google advertiser.

Did you notice the ads during this political season? The ad pictured above depicting Democrat incumbant senator Barbara Boxer bull running in Spain is sponsored by her Republican opponent Carly Fiorina. If you hold your mouse over the subtle “i” you will see that the ad is also sponsored by Google. I like the ad, but I have never seen Google show any hint of wanting to hide the “Ads by Google” message that prevents the blurring of website content with advertising. Perhaps Google doesn’t mind a little confusion within political ads that range from tame (like this one), to offensive, (more common). After all, these ads don’t involve ecommerce, just the future of the country.

What I searched:

http://www.google.com/search?q=irfanview+clickfire

Don’t ask why I searched Google for irfanview clickfire the other day, but the results I received surprised me. I’d seen the rare Google double indented search results, but never more than two results per search query appear. What’s going on here?

A few observations come to mind.

• All the results come from the www and not the blog or news subdomains (all 3 contain content about Irfanview)
• The indented results are missing the URL, cached link, and similar pages link commonly returned.
• The results could be replicated during the browser session with similar terms. Later, however, I was not able to reproduce them.
• 3 out of 4 of the  snippet portions of the results (normally the description meta tag or abstract) appear to show items from the global clickfire menus (top, left column).

It almost looks like Google is trying to show similar results, but from within the site itself.

Any thoughts on these types of results? Seen this before?

Wikipedia beats Google, Google Webmaster Central and Matt Cutts Blog when “Googlebot” is searched.

Update: Wikipedia also wins for Sergey Brin.

I just had some fun making up fictitious Google technologies on April Fool’s Day. I left out one product that is not funny and just might be real: Google Rollercoaster. A better amusement park analogy would be one of those rides that takes up hundreds of feet in the air, stops for a while, then drops you suddenly like The Great Gasp. That’s what happened to me. Let me explain.

March 22: I realized that something really strange was going on with the Google search results. Not only had Clickfire lost most of its rankings, but other sites appeared perched atop the first page where we once sat. Here is what I observed for searches on brand names:

• First and second pages flooded with brand subdomains, some very odd
• Third party registered domain names that include brand names (still seeing some of this)
• Commission Junction affiliate domains–not affiliate sites, but pointing directly to jdoc..-whatever .com

For any keyword phrase that did not have a brand name in it, the results look much better (except for the fact that I wasn’t there anymore). I was starting to get worried. My traffic had dropped by around 70%. Affiliate and AdSense revenue had shriveled to nearly nothing. Is it me or is it Google? Will I ever know? I would give my right navigation to know what aspect of my site might have tripped this filter of grief. Worrying wasn’t helping, so I hit the forums and blogs in search of an answer.

April 2nd, Barry Schwartz of SEO Roundtable posted that that Matt Cutts was seeking feedback on a new update called “Dewey.” Uh oh. But Matt seemed to be seeking differences in SERPs on 2 datacenters and not so much on poof cases like mine, where pretty much all rankings from aged white hat sites had disappeared. However, I did notice a few posters here and there who had reported cases similar to mine. I felt a little better. Was this mysterious google update an algorithm update? Was it a software upate. Was it a… hmm… could it be? No… was it a datacenter update? Bigdaddy, yes, I’ve been here before. I remember that during the Google Bigdaddy datacenter, I saw the exact same goings ons in the SERPs during almost the exact same time period in 2006. Had Bigdaddy come back to haunt me?

April 9th: whatever this misery was, it began to go away.

This experience was a reminder that we who rely on organic search results are just one update away from a brick and mortar job.

That which does not kill me, only serves to make me stronger.

Nietzsche might have been a good SEO.

A new product from the search engine giant released April 1st…

I don’t normally post a lot of news, but I heard that Google Bedroom beta is slated for a 2Q release!

This one has been kept under the covers, but from I understand, Google Bedroom is best described as a giant digital baby monitor for Internet users. Originally conceived as a highly extensible component of Google personalized search, the new product creates a trackable, search engine friendly, XML compliant live feed of every event that occurs in user equipped bedrooms from snoring to pillow fights. The new product has kept privacy advocates up late trying to figure out how far Google will go to deliver relevancy. The FBI is reportedly interested in learning how the new technology can be applied to politicians. A later phase of Google Bedroom will be integrated Google revenue generating products like AdWords and AdSense. There’s already a WordPress plugin. It remains to be seen if Google Bedroom will be the sleeping giant that delivers the final wake up call to the competition.

Other Google Products Due This Year:

• Google Colonoscomy
• Google Personalized Frisk
• Google Girlfriend
• Google Afterlife Ads
• Google Lost Dog Search
• Google Snipe Find
• Google “Where’s the Remote?”
• Report Yahoo/MSN Link
• Google UFO Search
• SEO ID Card
• Google Yahoo

And another batch just in…

• Gmail Custom Time
• Virgle
• Google Wake Up Kit

To prove I am not hallucinating and just in case they get yanked, here is what I am seeing in my browser for a Google search on the word, “clickfire.” I don’t see Sitelinks appearing for any other terms, but I’ll take what I can get!

“Yeah, that’s a good’un.”

Every webmaster seems to be talking about his new Google Sitelinks. I am seeing more of these, are you? We had mentioned Google’s recent display of generosity. Well, finally, after being in line for 10 years, I got ‘em! Did you hear me? I said I actually have those little shortcuts generated algorithmically by Google when I rank number one for my brand name! Or do I? Now that we can all log into Google Webmaster Tools and view Sitelinks, I see them. There. But, I do not yet see them where they count: the search results. Below is what appears in Google Webmaster tools, but alas, a search for “clickfire” returns the same old results.

For those of you who have achieved Google Sitelinks, how are you finding them?

O! You better link out
You better not buy
You better nofollow
Or your pr will die
GoogleGuy is coming to town

He’s making an index
And caching it twice
Gonna find out who’s buying PageRank
GoogleGuy is coming to town

He crawls you when you’re sleeping
He scores you when you’re awake
He knows if your hat’s black or white
So wear white for Google’s sake!

O! You better link out
You better not buy
You better nofollow
Or your pr will die
GoogleGuy is coming to town

With little ten SERPs and little toy tools
Ranky tank tanks and linky link juice
GoogleGuy is coming to town