The Truth about Google's year-end Zeitgeist data

I figured the year-end Zeitgeist data wasn't necessarily just a list of the most popular searches for the year. This hunch was confirmed by this post on the Google blog that explains how they compile the data for that report. Basically, they look for keyword searches that were unique to 2006. It makes sense to highlight these poipular searches instead of just offering up the same list of "maps", "dictionary", "yellow pages", "games", etc. every single year. I'm hoping to find some time in the next few days to review all the various "top searches in 2006" lists from the different search engines to see if I can pull anything useful from them.

I may or may not have time for that due to the extra business of getting ready for a week-long vaction the second week of January.

I’ve been tagged...5 things you didn't know about Dave Bascom

I was excited to see that I was tagged by Ryan Williams. It's this virtual chain letter thing going around the blogosphere lately where you say five things that people might not know about you and then tag five more people to do the same.

Here are my 5 things you probably didn't know about me:

1. My first job was selling donuts for Granite Bakery in Salt Lake City. I started when I was about 12 and sold them every weekday during the summers until I was 16. My boss would drop us off on our route and we would go door to door to businesses and sell half-dozen bags of donuts. I would work about 2 hours a day and make between $13-20, which I would usually spend that same day.
   
2. I started taking Taekwondo classes a few months ago. I just earned my Yellow belt this month. I'm learning a lot and I really enjoy it. Plus it's nice to be able to punch and kick people every tuesday and thursday night and not get in trouble for it.
   
3. My favorite restaurant is Benihana. That's the Japanese restaurant where they cook the food on the table right in front of you. I like the food, but mostly it's my favorite because of the whole experience. My earliest memories of going there was when I was in 1st or 2nd grade and my parents took me there for getting good grades.
   
4. I was an offensive and defensive lineman when I played little league football in junior high. The funny thing is that I was even skinnier back then and a lot smaller than other guys that I beat out because I was quicker than the chubby kids--and I guess I was tougher, or at least I tried harder. Once I got to high school I had to quit because I was too small to compete at the line and I wasn't coordinated enough to play of the skill positions.
   
5. One of my favorite pasttimes in high school was climbing things I wasn't supposed to climb. The highest one we ever climbed was the now demolished Murray Smokestacks that were just across the street from Murray High. I climbed the taller of the two stacks on several occasions. It was a very exhilarating climb and a heck of a view. I hated to see those landmarks come down, but I guess you can't stop progress.
   
6. (bonus) My wife was a nationally top-ranked inline speed skater when she was a teenager. (I know this isn't about me, but she doesn't blog and it's cooler than anything I ever did)
   

I'm tagging Gary Angel, Josh Steimle, Chris Sandberg Jon Kerby, and Nelson James.

Google and Duplicate Content - Straight from the horse's mouth

No, Adam Lasnick isn't a horse, but it's a fun figure of speech...anyway I love it that Google has a blog or two for every one of the services they offer. Now we get to hear little juicy tidbits that give us a lot more confidence about how they handle different issues that SEO-types like me deal with on a daily basis. In the latest post from Adam. He tackles the issue of duplicate content. He explains exactly what is duplicate content and what's not (translations of the same content are ok). He also goes on to offer advice on how webmasters can help Google in its quest to eliminate duplicate content. Suggestions include using robots.txt to block the non-preferred pages, 301 redirects, preferred domain option in Google's webmaster tools, and a few other ideas. He also says to not worry too much about scrapers and other sites that swipe your content because those crappy sites seldom impact the source site's presence in Google. These are all pretty common sense suggestions and ideas, but I'm glad to hear Google come out and explain (kind of) how they handle dupe content and what we can do about it.

Google Cracks down on paid links and other "non-earned" links

Once again, Google has come out against "non-earned" links...meaning link schemes, paid links, etc. The general idea of what they're saying is that if you want to achieve the best possible long-term results in Google, you've got to earn it with good content that is linked to just because it's good content. Of course, that's easier said than done, but it's definitely a strategy that will yield long-term results.

I don't completely agree with Google's stance on this one, but it's Google, so who am I to argue. They do have some valid points and on a philosophical level, it makes sense. Besides, it's always been the case that good content, tools, etc. tend to generate more/higher quality links--and it's a strategy that does a lot more to build credibility than just what you get from the SERPs. So as we come up on the new year, set the goal to add a lot more valuable content to your site. I'm setting that goal for my own sites (and my clients). It won't happen overnight, but stick with it and you'll see results.

New Hire at Web Targeted

About a week ago, I hired a new SEO employee at Web Targeted. His name is Bart Gibby. Bart is finishing his degree in Entrepreneurship at UVSC, but will be be working full time for us. He has several years' experience in search engine optimization. He has worked at a handful of local startups, so he comes in with a good working knowledge of what it takes to get great results in the search engines with a limited budget. That will serve him well as he works with our clients to achieve the best possible results from their SEO efforts. I'm excited to have Bart on board with us and I think he will really complement our existing team very well.

Year End Google Zeitgeist - top searches for 2006

The Google Zeitgeist for 2006 has been released. It's always interesting to see what the hot searches are for the year.

The top 10 searches for 2006:

1. bebo
   
2. myspace
   
3. world cup
   
4. metacafe
   
5. radioblog
   
6. wikipedia
   
7. video
   
8. rebelde
   
9. mininova
   
10. wiki
    

One Small Step for Google, One Giant Leap for Radio Advertising

Clickz reports that Google is testing audio ads. I guess they've got 20 or so advertisers who are part of the beta test. Google is trying their darndest to branch out to other, more traditional forms of advertising. They might as well, since they've got this Internet advertising thing down pretty well.

Google confirms the beta test on their Adwords blog and promises that blog readers will be the first to know.

FAQ's about Google Audio Ads

Yahoo! Top Searches of 2006

Although technically, the year's not over yet, Yahoo has released theirlist of the top searches of 2006. Not a whole lot of useful business intelligence here, but I always get a kick out of seeing what the popular search phrases are. No real surprises this year. Probably of most interest to me was the international searches, including the top searches in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

What I find amazing is that just about every one of those top search lists include Paris Hilton! (except Spain--where they prefer Angelina Jolie).

Digg Spammers Unite!

Just read this on Cnet...talking about spammers/scammers that try to get their own stuff "dugg" on Digg and other social media sites. It's obviously a problem, and I'm not sure there's any news in their article, but it's only going to become more of a problem as marketers realize the potential reach of these social networking sites. The problem with the whole Web 2.0/social media frenzy is that the quality of these sites is based on the assumption that everyone is "not evil" and has pure motives, so they would never think of trying to game the system. Problem is, they've created a system with a huge payoff for gamers, and they don't seem to have very good checks in place to keep it from being gamed. Articles like this won't do anything but give the idea to more potential scammers to flood these social media sites with more junk. Thanks, Cnet.

Sick Of Matt Cutts? Try these Googlers on for size...

Even though Danny's new site, Search Engine Land hasn't "officially" opened, there's obviously something going on over there. I just read a post from yesterday about 8 Googler Alternatives To Superstar Matt Cutts. I like the idea of reminding us search geeks that Google is made of a lot more employees than just Matt. I get the impression that Matt is more than willing to share the limelight. The poor guy is smothered by Cuttletts at every conference he sets foot in.

Anyway, it's nice to get to know some of the other people at the big G.

What Does Google Really Know About You?

My buddy Ryan McCoy wrote an interesting post about how Google tracks multiple sites from a single webmaster. I don't think Google necessarily cares about how many sites you have, but as Matt Cutts pointed out at Pubcon, they do have tools to quickly and easily figure stuff like that out and if you've got overlapping (or duplicate) content across multiple domains, it could be a problem. He goes on to ask the question of if/how Google is profiling website owners using Whois data and other resources. It has also been discussed whether or not Google can access private domain registration data. I don't think they can, but most site owners that have a lot of sites leave on obvious trail that doesn't take a rocket scientist (or google engineer) to figure out.