There are a good number of people complaining about this algorithm update.  Apparently some sites have lost their ranks to more noteworthy brands.  This certainly could be the reason why so many webmasters think big name companies are getting preference in the serps over their more relevant websites.

To put some water on this fire, Matt Cutts has publicly acknowledged that a change was recently made to Google’s algorithm.  According to Matt, this is not a major update but one of the 300-400 minor updates they make yearly.  Matt also noted that the change would probably not even be noticed by the majority of webmasters.

If you browse the top webmaster forums, you will notice there are a fair number of people complaining that their ranks have simply disappeared.  This is especially true for their homepages.

Matt Cutts spoke on a video regarding this subject.  You can view this video below.

Over at Directory Blogger, they have recently posted some coupon codes to use at some of the Web’s top directories.  Some of these coupon codes expire soon, so take advantage of it while you can.

To get these coupon codes, simply go to Directory Blogger’s web directory coupon code page and get busy. 

If you know of any other directories that have coupon codes, please comment here.  Especially in today’s economy its always nice to save some money!

Apparently from December 11th, 2008 to December 18th, 2008 all Adsense accounts will have this feature enabled.  If its not in your account yet, be patient.

Unlike most parking providers, Adsense requires participants to create A name and CNAME records for each domain added to the Adsense for Domains parking program.  Providing your domain(s) are using your Registrars nameservers, this is not a big deal unless you plan to serve Adsense on a large number of parked domains.  Hopefully Google will decide to handle each domains DNS in the future which would certainly make the parking program easier for people to use.

For more information on Google’s new Adsense for Domains program, please visit this link.

How this new program will impact existing domain parking companies is anyone’s guess.  My gut tells me it’s not going to be pretty and will significantly cut into their bottom line.  These parking companies may ultimately end up serving mostly those that do not have an Adsense account.

One thing is certain.  It will be interesting to see how much money my parking provider was actually taking!

At first there was a lot of commotion about the 9/26/2008 PR update.  Many deserving Websites lost PR and new pages, not even a week old, gained PR.  After some thought, I wonder if the PR update we saw was Google’s internal PR being exported.  The evidence seems to point in that direction.

While many people say PR only matters if you sell links, that could not be further from the truth.  PR is a status symbol and one way to quickly determine the authority of any Website.

Google has taken a positive step in correcting last weeks toolbar PR export blunder.  There are some average surfers that use PR as a gauge to trust a Website or not.  And by doing this PR rollback, until the problems can be corrected, is best for everyone involved - including Google.

Here’s some highlights of the talk going on…

In this Digital Point post, a Website owner claims that he received a PR 3 on a page that he posted just yesterday.  He claims it is not even indexed in Google Search yet.

Also in the same thread, this post from another Webmaster claims he received a PR 2 from a blog post he made just days prior.

This post claims that an under construction site attained a PR 6.

Another post that claims they got a PR 2 19 days after they launched their Website.

But there is a funny in the Digital Point forum today.  One guy was complaining that he wants Google to lower his PR because the site does not deserve it.  Here’s the thread.  Make sure you also look at the last post of that thread on the first page. :) 

Some noteworthy sites that lost PR are Digitalpoint’s forum, which went from a PR 7 to a PR 6.  Also Namepros, another large forum, went from a PR 7 to a PR 5.

Some Web directories took a beating as well.  AuthorityDirectory.com went from a PR 4 to a PR 0.  Worldlinksdirectory.com, which is still advertised as a PR 6, is now a PR 3.  But if you are the bid directory owner in this thread, using a dropped domain, you are happy to go from a PR 5 to a PR 6!

From everything I have seen, it looks like Google’s PR algorithm is simply broken.  If that is not the case, then as a Google Executive I would be questioning employees about the apparent failure of this toolbar PR export.

While Webmasters use this as a gauge to determine the health of Webpages, there are quite a few average surfers that use the toolbar PR to determine if a site/page is trustworthy.  By Google giving PR to sites/pages that do not deserve it, Google is doing a disservice to the Internet.

I’m not going to name any URLs, but just visualize this.  Two PR 3 directories, which were created about the same time, each having a much different backlink profile.  I will take a look at these in more detail in this post.

The first PR 3 directory has a total of 905 backlinks reported by Yahoo Site Explorer.  Looking at these backlinks, I can see that none have any PR.  In fact, most of the links are from other directories.

The second PR 3 directory has a total of 64,000 backlinks.  The first ten backlinks all have PR 3 or 4.  And the kicker, this PR 3 directory has a backlink from the other one!

Now it does not take a mental wizard to figure out which directory is more popular or at least better promoted.  What baffles the mind is how Google can assign the same pagerank to both directories when one has 60 times the backlinks as the other.  And these backlinks are certainly of a much higher quality.

I understand there is a lot of variables that go into PR.  And one could say that the directory with 64K backlinks has paid links.  While that may be true, the directory is quite unique among the many other directories out there.  So it has a good reason to get these backlinks by natural linking.

On a personal note, most of my sites lost 1 PR point.  The funny thing is this blog, which I do not promote, maintained its PR 1.

With each one of these PR updates I believe Google is moving further away from providing a true gauge of each page’s importance.  It almost seems as if PR is becoming nothing more then a tactic to sway the linking patterns of Webmasters.

Spam is a huge problem for bloggers.  Just last week I received over 3,000 spam comments.  Fortunately I run Akismet, a plugin for Wordpress that is intended to combat the onslaught of blog spam.  The downside to this is that good/genuine comments can be returned as a false positive.

Last week I was doing some solid blog commenting for one of my sites and noticed that on most blogs I went to a blank page after submitting my comment.  Curious as to what the problem was, I decided to comment on one of my blogs.  I got the same result!  Now the detective in me came out.  I wanted to find out what the problem was.

I used a different variation of my name to submit a comment on my own blog.  I still went to a blank page, and the comment was not recorded in my admin.  I then changed my E-mail address, and the same thing happened.  The comment still did not appear in my admin area to approve/deny.  I then changed my domain, and presto!  The comment went through.

In normal situations, the post would just go into the Akismet comment section of my admin area.  But in cases where Akismet thinks you are a spambot, your comment never even hits the admin area.  With a little research, I found that Akismet dishes out one of the following to spambots:

delay a response
HTTP error 503 (Service Unavailable), showing a simple blank page.
HTTP error 403 (Forbidden), showing a simple blank page.
HTTP error 403 (Forbidden), showing a Drupal generated page.

Ok, now that we know Akismet thinks we are a spambot, can we fix the problem?  The good news is yes, the problem can be corrected.  The bad news is that Akismet is typically very slow to respond to “unblock requests.”  By slow I mean people have waited months to get unblocked.

If you find yourself in this situation, here’s what you should do.  Contact Akismet and provide them with the following information.

Your IP Address
Your E-mail Address
Your Website Address

When you contact Akismet, let them know that you are a human and are getting a blank page after submitting comments.  Also indicate that your blog comments are genuine and that you read each post before submitting a comment.

As I noted before, Akismet can be slow to respond to unblock requests.  To speed up this process, provide them all the information you can as noted previously.  You may find that they unblock you with a day or two.

First, let’s be blunt.  Most people that spend money to be listed in a web directory are doing so because their link will appear on a page with pagerank.  This is evident by the number of people that complained after their $200+ link on Alive Directory was no longer on a page with pagerank.  The Alive Directory had been penalized, and some of the people with links in that directory claimed they got nothing for spending over $200.  But yet their sites were still listed.  The bottom line is this.  Paid directories charge a fee for a listing review, and not for pagerank.  Pagerank does fluctuate, and can be taken away at any time by unethical link building practices.  So let’s look at how you can visually identify the better directories and get a better return on your submission expenses.

The obvious sign a directory is going to soon lose its pagerank is the domain name.  There are a good number of directory owners that pick up auctioned domains with pagerank, slap a directory on it, and charge a good buck for a listing.  The easiest way to see if a domain has changed its theme recently, is to plug the URL into the Wayback Machine and see what the site looked like in the past.  But after you have been submitting directories for a while, you’ll quickly spot most of these oddball domains being used for directories.

The presence of footer links is another tell-tale sign that a web directory is flirting with a penalty.  Most footer links are well outside the field of view of visitors.  Their placement makes it extremely unlikely that any traffic will be generated from the links.  In addition to this, having many unrelated niche sites so closely linked together is proof enough to Google that the directory is selling paid links.

Sidebar links can also lead a web directory to a penalty.  Again, if the sidebar link cluster contains links to a variety of unrelated niche Websites, there is a high likelihood that Google will identify them as paid links.

Lately reciprocal link directories are also coming under the spotlight.  If a directory requires a reciprocal link as part of the listing requirements, that directory may face persecution by Google.  Remember, Google discourages most link manipulation schemes.

The types of sites listed in directories can also lead to that directory being penalized.  Generally speaking, porn throws up a major red flag to the search engines.  Gambling and pharmacy related listings do not appear to hurt the rankings of directories at the time of writing.

While website directory owner’s have every right to run their directory the way they want, we also have the right to make educated decisions where to spend our money.  It is my hope that these few tips will help you avoid paying for an express or featured listing at a directory that is begging to be penalized.

There are basically three methods to submit to free web directories.  Those methods are fully automatic, semi automatic, and manual.

Automatic directory submissions should be avoided at all costs.  Why?  Because spam bots and link spammers try to post at many of the sites that have no CAPTCHA.  There is no benefit to being listed on sites that are potentially “bad neighborhoods” filled with spammy links.

Semi automated submissions are nice, but have their limitations.  One of the most widely used semi automated directory submitters is Digixmas.  The free version will let you submit to 150 web directories.  For $15, the paid version will let you submit one URL to 1400 directories.  The Windows based software allows users to randomize titles and descriptions, which is helpful.  But meta keyword/descriptions should be randomized as well as the submitters name.  The main problem with semi automatic directory submissions is that the software will only work for specific directories.  So manual submissions are still required if one wants to get listed in as many directories as possible.

Submitting to directories manually can be time consuming, but gives one more control over the submissions.  Most people that submit to directories manually still use a form filler like Roboform.  Every now and then they change the settings in their form filling software and continue submitting.

When submitting to directories manually, one needs a quality source of free directories.  Yes, we all know of Directory Critic.  Unfortunately the quality of their lists lately leaves little to be desired (dead links, paid directories, etc.).  I suggest trying AddURL.nu (808 listings) and the VMOptions Directory List (1,300 listings).  If needed, use a combination of the two.

There is a myth that submitting to directories too quickly will get your site penalized.  The fact is that most directories take days, and even months, to review submissions.  Besides this delay, it also takes search engines some time to index those new links.  I have never seen a site penalized for submitting to web directories too quickly using semi automatic or manual submission techniques.

When submitting to web directories, make sure that your title contains the keywords you are trying to rank for.  It’s the text of those links (anchor text) that helps the search engines determine which keywords and position you should rank for.  Vary the anchor text and other submission text as well.  This way your listing detail pages will not risk being interpreted as duplicate content.  Since your submissions need to pass a human review, make sure your submission contains accurate information.

There are those that say submitting to free directories is a waste of time.  That is completely false.  I took a client’s site that was ranked position 110 in Google for his primary keyword and moved it to position 19 in one month.  Additionally, improved rankings for his other long/medium tailed keywords improved across the board.  And this success was also evident in Live/MSN and Yahoo.  The ranking report was run just a few days ago, so this analysis is current.

While directory submissions are an easy way to build backlinks, it is only one component of a standard link building campaign.  As you are submitting to directories, don’t overlook the main goal - to create rich and interesting content other Webmasters may link to. 

Every few months I get an offer for one of my domains.  The initial price they suggest is always around $300-$400.  Then I get into discussions with the person and they ask how much I want to sell it for.  I tell them $x,xxx, which I feel is a good value.  They always respond saying the most they will pay is $800.

The domain name I am talking about gets on average 2,100 unique visitors a month.  This domain is parked, and earns me $150 per month.  I earned much more ($200+ per month) in previous months before the economy started its slide.  The traffic is 99%+ type in, so my earnings are not dependent on ranking in any search engine or from backlinks to the domain.  It’s a very catchy name, and would be a breeze to brand.

How much I think it is worth is besides the point, because this same potential buyer will not budge off his $800 offer.  That’s not even close to the value of this domain name.  In better economic times, I earned $2,500+ a year off this domain.  Even now, as advertisers spend less on PPC campaigns, the domain is still making good money being parked.  Traffic has not increased or decreased any measurable amount in 10+ years, so I think I will hold onto this domain.  To me, it’s more of an investment.

The latest offer on this domain name has come through Godaddy’s Domain Buy service.  I have never dealt with them before, so this ought to be an interesting change from the common sales routes I’ve been involved with before.

My first impression with Godaddy was good.  They called me on the phone and said they had a person interested in my domain.  They sent me an E-mail and instructed me to click on the link if I was interested in selling the name, so I did.  I was told in a few days I would receive an offer by E-mail.  Over a week later, I had received nothing, so I gave them a call.  The rep on the phone did not know why the offer was not sent, so she sent it within a few minutes.  The offer amount?  You guessed it, $300.

According to Godaddy’s information on their Domain Buy service, they appraise the domain name for their client.  It’s been a few years since I had this domain appraised, so I decided to order one from another appraiser.  If nothing else, I want to stop this domain stalker from wasting anymore of my time.  I will consider my appraisal and counter with a fair offer that adds in a little little negotiating room.

Once I get my appraisal completed, I will contact Godaddy and refuse their initial offer of $300.  They have requested that I provide them with a suggested sales price, and they will take it back to their client.  I suspect their final offer will top off at $800, as is the case in previous dealing with this same person that has been badgering me about this domain name for years.

The likelihood of this domain name getting traffic five years down the road is excellent.  As I noted before, this domain gets about the same traffic now as it did over ten years ago.  And since the domain traffic is semi-targeted, it would provide a new owner free targeted traffic for years to come.

That’s the problem with some of these “brick and mortar” businessmen.  They don’t consider the traffic value of a domain.  They are stuck on the fact that domains cost around $10 bucks to register nowadays, so anything they pay above that is giving into a domain sellers greed.

In my last dealing with this “interested buyer” before, I provided him full traffic and revenue statistics.  He told me that those people are looking for something other then his product so the traffic does not matter.  I told him that at $200 a month, within four months I will earn what he offered me.  I also told him this traffic was semi-targeted, and if he were to pay for this traffic with Adwords it would cost him in excess of $600 a month.  What’s the point of having a Website?  To get traffic to it and expose people to your product or service!

I’m beyond frustrated by this domain name stalker.  If he does not get off his wallet this time, he will find the future price has increased substantially.

I suspect my negotiations with Godaddy will be short.  I would be surprised if this interested buyer submits an offer even close to Godaddy’s own appraisal.  But as my negotiations move forward, I will post the results.  If nothing else, this is a good test case of Godaddy’s Domain Buy service, which costs the buyer $59.99 plus a 10% commission.