Where did my PageRank Go?!

This week I stumbled upon an interesting forum thread on Google Webmaster Central. It appears that Google Webmaster Tools has removed the PageRank metric from their site reports. In the post, a Google employee provides details on why PageRank was removed from the tool:

We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. :-)

More details on why not to obsess over PageRank here:

http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq--crawling--indexing---ranking#pagerank

Time for some sleuthing. It has been known for some time in the SEO world that PageRank is simply a helpful indication of a website's authority, but not the entire picture. The point above reinforces the idea that you should not focus on metrics like PageRank when looking for linking opportunities or your website's search engine rankings. It's important to keep the "big picture" in mind when building your site. Creating good content that people would link to naturally is the ultimate goal.

Is your company consumed with the PageRank on it's website? What metrics do you use to help measure success?

What is Google Wave anyway?

With all the hype recently, I thought it would be good to get the word out about what Google Wave actually does and how it is helpful. Below is a simple video that helps explain Google Wave in plain English.

(thanks to cmilburndesign)

Brother can you spare a Google Wave invite?

A while back I posted about Google Wave, the new chat, video, sharing wiz-a-ma-jig from Google. I would like to provide a review but I am still waiting for an invite to this app and would appreciate anyone who has an invite to share. If you do, please email or DM me on Twitter. I would be happy to link to you or do a review on your product or company.

SEO and Google SideWiki

Recently, Google released a new feature called SideWiki to add to their Internet browser toolbar. The goal of SideWiki is to allow users to input comments and share information about web sites all over the Internet. When visiting a site with the Google SideWiki toolbar enabled, a small blue arrow and comment icon appear to the left of your browser window. When clicked, SideWiki expands to reveal details about the current site and include comments shared by other toolbar users who entered comments.



Why should I care about SideWiki?

SideWiki allows anyone to comment on your site. This means that people can say what ever they want about your products and services. This is important for companies who want to maintain positive PR. It's also important that companies pay attention to what their customers are saying on SideWiki. It's likely that SideWiki users are early adopter types who's opinions can sway early majority customers to buy or ignore your products.

It's unclear as to what impact SideWiki will have on search engine optimization. It's likely SEO impact will be minimal, but could provide Google's algorithm with similar keywords customers are using to describe your products and services. If someone were to comment in SideWiki; "I really like their new Widget and use it every day." it's likely the mention of products will help add relevance to search results. It's unlikely that tons of spam SideWiki entries for "widget" will have any effect.

Have you downloaded SideWiki for your browser? What are your thoughts so far?

Could Google Wave change email?

For anyone who hates reading through a long list of email chains, Wave may be the solution. Google Wave combines real time chat features, video and Twitter like conversation streams. If chat, email, and Twitter had a love child, it might look something like Wave. It will be interesting to see how Wave will impact current email marketing, Twitter and other chat technologies.

What About Bing?

I'll save you from all the cheesy post titles out there like, "Bada Bing", "It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that Bing..." and so on. There is a lot of hype, including commercials, about how Microsoft's new search engine Bing can help cut through the search clutter to help us make better decisions. While I do like the enhanced image search I still feel like the search engine has not done enough to pull me from the grasp of Google. The universal search features are impressive and I do enjoy the image of the day.

What will become of Bing?

Microsoft has come a long way from their early days of search. Yahoo's #2 status in the search engine space may be in trouble with the release of Bing. Yahoo's role as a web portal may be enough for them to hold off Bing for a while, but that value is slowly decreasing over time.

What Google has to offer over Bing are all the value added web based programs, such as Google Docs. These services are the difference maker for many search engine users. I use search engines to do research, but spend more time using Gmail and Google Docs. Until Bing offers some truly unique web based services, I will still be "Googling" and not "Binging".

View Ads About?

For some reason, my Google AdSense ads on another site started appearing with a search box including "view ads about:". My first reaction was that Google is testing a different way to display ads, but I can't see why someone would enter a topic and click through. I did a little research and it appears that this is what displays by default when Google AdSense fails to recognize a match for the content on your site. This does make sense, but there is still a lot of keywords that could match some ads on the site. Why doesn't Google keep track of the content theme of your site and just display default ads for your site theme. I'm a little disappointed at their search box approach. They should at least list this as an option in their ad display list. What are your thoughts?

Getting Creative with Google Adsense

While doing some research, I came across this creative approach to displaying Google Adsense ads within your website worthy of a post on the topic. In the graphic above, the ads are displayed with a clear heading as being sponsored, but the approach is very creative. The designer of this law firm website places an attractive female to the right of the sponsored listings, looking into them to draw attention to the ads. Do you think this is a little "over the top"? Perhaps, but I can imagine this is very effective for the site owner.

Google G1 "gPhone" is finally here!

In a post a while back, I poked fun at what was just rumors at the time about Google's gPhone. Now that the actual Google G1 phone has been released on a T-Mobile microsite, I've very excited about getting my hands on one. It seems to combine the best of what the BlackBerry and iPhone have to offer. The G1 seems to offer more of a desktop like experience rather than a whole new interface, which I feel is a plus. The flip out keyboard is also a great feature. I've tried using Apple's iPhone touch screen and I'm not sold on using it for everyday text messaging. I have yet to handle one of these phones, but from the demos, it's clear that this is a good first shot for Google into the mobile phone market.

Google Android Phones Coming this Fall

Google will be releasing phones based on the Android platform as early as this fall. One is on my wish list!!! The Android phones will have an interface similar to the one used by the palm treo or the blackberry. There is even a demo of one interface similar to the iPhone on Google's Android page.

gphone prototype released

Well, here it is. The new gphone prototype everyone has been talking about. But seriously, I'm excited to hear Google's new phone is in the works.

Clicky Web Analytics

Found Clicky, an alternative to Google Analytics with some interesting features you will not find in most analytics tools. One of my favorites is the "Spy" feature. This feature allows you to view activity on your web site in real-time as users click, download or page through your site. Very cool stuff.


Clicky seems like a good solution for small to medium size businesses, web designers or developers getting started in web analytics. I'm also impressed with the data capabilities and easy integration with other technologies such as Google Maps and WordPress.

"Checkout" this button!

I'm starting to gather some information on how effective the new Google Checkout buttons have been in increasing click through rates for SEM (Search Engine Marketing). I have to imagine that the ads are gaining some lift from the rather large buttons that appear just below the paid search results. It's also interesting to see what advantage ads farther down the results gain from using Google Checkout as a payment method. In the game of search engine marketing, every advantage counts.