Some cool SEO tools for Firefox

Meta Tag Analyzer
Meta Tag Analyzer examines the Meta information of the given URL and lets you know if the content is Search Engine Friendly or not. Find it here
From: www.rankquest.com Author: Vincent S Brown

Keyword Suggestions for Google
SEO Tools - Keyword Suggestions for Google. Find it here
From: www.seochat.com Author: Thaminda Wijeratne

Link Explorer
Link Explorer, Explores links in the URL provided and creates a tree view of the same. Find it here
From: www.rankquest.com Author: Vincent S Brown

Backlink
Find all sites that link to this page (i.e., backlinks). Find it here
From: www.cs.umass.edu Author: Guray Alsac

Keyword Finder
Keyword Finder lists the keywords present in meta keyword tag of given url / site. Find it here
From: www.rankquest.com Author: Vincent S Brown

No security to Privacy and Identity on the net

No am not talking about hacking am not at all talking about porn sites or low grade sites. I am talking about Yahoo! and Google.

According to a report by a consortium of telecoms and finance companies, including BT, Yahoo and Lloyds TSB, 8% of internet users have been victims of online fraud. Almost double that proportion know someone who has been targeted by criminals through their computers.

In the year 2003, a Chinese pro-democratic activist, Wang Xiaoning was arrested by the police with the help of his private information that Yahoo provided the police. Wang had been using an anonymous e-mail account to participate in a Yahoo Group to disseminate his political views. He advocated open elections, a multi-party system, and separation of powers within the government. In addition, he called the Chinese government despotic.

Google was thought to be very strict and protective in regard to the identity and private details of its users until recently, when three software professionals were arrested by the Pune police with the help of Google India.co. Google traced the telephone number that was indexing the profiles of these people and supplied this information to Cyber crime officials of Pune. All these guys did was they used bad language against a king named Shivaji who used to live centuries ago. This was surely bad behavior but the question here is 'Do they deserve to get arrested?' A Warning from the Google or account removal would have been enough punishment.

Lets put aside freedom of speech and expression and concentrate on the privacy and identity threat onliners are facing. This is indeed an ethical break down on the part of these online service providers. Another example of forgotten ethics by Yahoo is the recent removal of Iran from its list of world countries in its sign up page. Where does the fault lie? Is it with the officials working in the gain companies or is it that the companies should revive and tighten their privacy policy?



> A letter written to Yahoo! by an young Iranian journalist.

Vodafone adds Google Maps

Vodafone has joined hands with Google to develop and provide 'Maps' to their clients.These maps have the potential to gain huge revenue if local ads are placed along with the results.These maps are not only going to be popular but also addictive because people would use them to locate famous shopping malls, holiday spots, medical shop, book stalls etc through these maps.In some places like Japan, people use their mobiles to organise important business trnasactions and meetings through these mobile search locators.Google maps on mobiles have a large revenue erning potential if Google Ads are Indexed beside the maps.

Yahoo has already introduced advertising on its mobile-specific Web sites display advertising on its mobile-specific Web sites in 19 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. The move, which follows a year of aggressive expansion in the wireless space, marks Yahoo's first formal rollout of graphical ads on its sites around the world.

Recent Microsoft mobile 6.0, then Google's and Yahoo! 's interest in mobile industry shows that Internet is no more pertained to computers and to those who are computer professionals.

Google Webmaster Central

Google webmaster central is a great place to hang out.After Google developed its Webmaster Tools , the webmaster central has turned out to be a heaven for webmasters.This was in response to the dismissal of 'site:' command.Webmaster central provides information about your visitors,where they are coming from,which sites link to your pages,what are the outgoing links from your site,traffic statistics etc and much more.These surely help you a lot in improving your site's performance.A brief outline of some services available at Google webmaster central.

• The Site status tool shows whether your site is indexed by Google or not.
• The Site map helps you to present more information about your site pages to Google.
• Google base is a newly launched tool which has a lot of interesting stuff in it for Googlers.You can submit your content on the topic of your choice from this place.
• The Webmaster central blog informs you about the latest updates and developments in Google webmaster tools.
• The Google's discussion group for webmasters to talk about and share your feed backs with Google.

All these services are available at this page.Use them in your own way.

YouTube Story

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen,the YouTube founders became millionaires overnight after Google bought the video sharing site last November.

Chen and met Hurley in 1999, while working at PayPal, three years before the online financial transaction service was bought by Internet auction site eBay for 1.5 billion dollars.Hurley left PayPal to work for himself as a consultant. Chen remained at PayPal and worked on the company's expansion into China.

The friends first discussed wanting an easy way to share home videos online while at a dinner with other former PayPal employees in February 2005.
Hurley, Chen and former PayPal colleague Jawed Karim launched YouTube in April 2005.

Google bought YouTube in November in a 1.65-billion-dollar stock deal that marked the search engine's most expensive acquisition and crowned the young start-up an enviable success story.
YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares, valued at nearly 328 million dollars on Thursday. Hurley got another 41,242 shares of Google stock, valued at 19.5 million dollars, which were placed in a trust fund.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen received 625,366 shares valued at 295.5 million dollars and another 68,721 shares worth 32.47 million dollars that were placed in a trust fund, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Google's third founder, Jawed Karim, received 137,443 shares of Google stock with a market value of 64.9 million dollars.

Sequoia Capital, which financed YouTube to the tune of 11.5 million dollars, got a payoff of 941,027 shares worth 444.64 million dollars, the SEC filing indicated.

Google, the supreme search engine,indexes videos from the top video sharing site,YouTube.Thus they enhanced each others efficiency.

Google - Expanding Gmail

Google has made its Gmail e-mail service more widely available. The company has now removed the 'invitation only' restrictions on its Gmail service in several regions including European countries, Middle East, Africa and Brazil.

The service has been already open to all in several other parts of the world, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Egypt since quite some time.
Google also said that the restrictions (invitations) would be removed in other markets pretty soon.

Though Gmail is far behind Yahoo! and MSN in e-mail services,Gmail has its own fans (most of them are Google search fans or Blogger fans) Gmail has to improve a lot to be able to compete with Yahoo! and MSN in e-mail service market.One of the main accusation is that Gmail is that user privacy is at stake because of Gmail.This is mainly attributed to the fact that Gmail scans all the mails to be able to put up relevant Ads beside the mail.But Google's says that 'The Ad program is to enhance the services' they provide to the users.And that they 'take user privacy very seriously'

Google Search Engine - Not a bot anymore

Google is successful from time and again to give its search engines all the requirements which can turn it live.Google search engine is not a bot anymore.It has gone too far from naming it as an 'engine' or 'robot'.It behaves just like a human being.If you are thinking why? and how? , Take a look at these self explanatory points -

• Ignoring Meta tags - Google search now ignores meta tags completely because of their over-usage by webmasters.
• Checking Keyword density in the page - Google search engine ignores pages in which keywords have been packed densely (just to attract the search engine).This is to stop the growing number of 'keyword spammers' who want to attract Google search engine with the large quantity of keywords in their pages.
• Checking English and grammar - Google prefers to index pages which have well formed sentences with good grammar to ill organised pages.
• Ignoring Duplicates - Duplicate site content is not only ignored but infact given a negative ranking (just like link spam) by the search engine.Duplicate content may be a content which is repeatedly posted in the same site or content posted in a site from another site.
• Checking Link spam - Google has made its search engine immune to link spammers.Link farms which contain a bulk of link lists are just ignored by Google.Google looks at the exact location where the link is placed and the content preceding and following the link.
Search History - Google has recently made 'personalised search' as default.This enables Google to maintain your search history and record your web activities.On one hand Google wants to provide its users better and user friendly search results and on the other hand,it can trace your search history and start ignoring your tricks and tactics to optimise your site to Google search.

An article by John Fowler from searchenginecollege.com -

If I write half a page
and you write thirty four
I can use three keywords
whilst you get forty more
I can be brief and concise
and speedily spit pages out
but your one and only masterpiece
Carries far more clout,
I am but a comic strip
to your Tolstoyan drama
I am all wild excitement
whilst you are perfect karma,
I have few words to play with
to juggle in a subtle key
whilst you have an epic
to aid keyword density
the old bull takes his time
never rushing, always serene
he has created multiple options
whilst young bull was over keen,
so when you code your pages
don't undersell your wording
or you'll be virtually alone
when you should be herding,
ten keywords in a thousand
dilutes the trend to oversell
and makes the reader relax
from the instinct he can tell
that a little page is but a ploy
to put him onto a sales hook,
whereas an interesting article
is worth a second look.

Click - Google's recommendations about SEO.It is clear that Google wants to Index 'clean' and 'fair' sites and that it would not tolerate spammers manupilating the search engine for better ranks.So SEO is becoming a hard task day by day.While Social media optimization is as free and simple as it has always been.

When did Google last visit my site?

To know when Google last visited your site and what all information Google has stored up about your site pages, just follow these steps

• Go to Google.com main page
• Enter info:your site name.com (don't type www or http://)
• Click search and Google will show you what all information it has got regarding your site.
• Click on 'Google's Cache' , it will show you the Google's snap shot of your site and when did Google visited your site the last time.
• Other information you can find - Pages that link to your site,Pages that are similar to your site,web pages from your site,sites which contain your site's URL.

By this,you can know how often Google search engine has indexed your site.If Google visited your page recently and frequently,it means that Google search engine finds your site friendly enough.If Google has not crawled up your site for quite a long time, then try to improve your link popularity,introduce your site to like minded people and increase the visibility of your site in social networking places.

Google personalised search

When we create an account at Google accounts,we see the following statement below the re-enter password box saying
"Creating a Google Account will enable Search History. Search History is a feature that will provide you with a more personalized experience on Google that includes more relevant search results and recommendations. Learn More "

This is a great service but at the cost of your privacy.Google stores your search history and data along with your Name,account details.If you don't mind your search history being stored,you will find this a wonderful service.But if you think the other way,you would feel that Google is being unfair.Google has a solution for this problem too.Go to This page and click on "Pause Settings".This option will stop Google from recording your search history unless and until you change the option to 'Resume settings'.
Also while signing up at Google accounts, don't forget to 'uncheck' the Enable 'Search History' box if you don't want your search history to be recorded.

Baidu - Google of China

Google is the top search engine world wide, except in China.It derives its name from an old Chinese poem by Song Dynasty.In Chinese,Baidu means 'hundreds of times'.The name is apt for a search engine because people use it again and again i.e hundreds of times.
This is yet another example which explains the importance of estimating the market.Google is facing serious problems in China.

• First , Chinese language is too complex and the local company, Baidu naturally knows its people better than Google.Moreover people of China consider Google as a foreign search engine.People use Google and Yahoo only for foreign information.Revenue in China's search-engine market topped $53 million in the third quarter of 2006,Baidu's share was $30 million, exceeded the combined revenues of Google and Yahoo in China.
• Second problem Google has got is with the heavy government censorship in China.
• Thirdly,the delayed arrival of Google (or early success of Baidu) in China is also being considered as one of the reasons for the failure of Google in China.

Another similar example is the severe competition Honda and Yamaha are facing with Home based two wheeler company,Bajaj.In spite of superior equipment and latest technology, giants like Google,Honda,Yamaha are thriving to survive in these regions.This shows the importance of market estimation and marketing strategies in the success of a product or company.

Microsoft's AdCenter

Microsoft has launched adCenter where advertisers can place their ads at targeted sites.A new release of adCenter is expected in the next 2 months, with many of the new features resulting from testing and customer feedback collected through adLabs.

Silient features of adCenter are

• Advertisers can see when the clicks (on their Ads) lead to sales.
• Ads can be targeted to places and constumers of the advertisers' choice.
• Built in tool to get keywords.
• Detail reports of Ads to the advertisers.
• Chose your own price for your Ads.
• Pay only when the Ads are clicked.(the last two are same as any other advertising service)

Keyword service platform :
Keyword optimization efforts are built upon the Keyword Service Platform (KSP), a set of services that third-party developers can use through APIs to build Web applications to analyze keywords.
Product manager James Colborn says "We're making it an open network by publishing and sharing the algorithm" "We're excited to see how our partners will build on the KSP."
This feature gives adCenter a clear competitive advantage over Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft also previewed video hyperlink technology, which will allow marketers to create ad links on products shown in videos. The company said it will make that technology available on MSN starting in the spring.

Colborn also said "For now, Microsoft is testing the feature on Microsoft's network of sites, but the company plans to extend it to other publishers"

While Microsoft has an advantage over its competitors through KSP,MSN is suffering from low search engine popularity and search engine users.This poses a great threat to adCenter because search engine indexing plays very important role in targeting traffic to its Ads.This is one of the main reasons for the success of Google.
comScore reported that MSN garnered just 10.5% of search traffic, compared to Google's 47.3% and Yahoo's 28.5%. This clearly shows that MSN is lagging behind in the race and will have to take lot of pains inorder to compete with Google and Yahoo.

SEO Tips

Tip 1 : Target the first 10 Google rankings


IBP is the award-winning web site promotion suite that helps you to get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines.
IBP helps you with all important aspects of on-site web site promotion. It includes more than 15 professional website promotion tools, including tools for keyword generation, a top 10 search engine ranking optimization, search engine submission, directory submission, ranking checking and more.




Tip 2 : Arelis
ARELIS is a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily. It's the top rated website promotion software tool for off-site promotion.It imrpoves your link popularity,targetted traffic.


Tip 3 : Optimize your ROI, lower your costs and íncrease your profits
Axandra's Marketing ROI Optimizer (AxROI) shows you the effectiveness of all your online ads, including pay per clíck ads, banner ads, text link ads and even non-paid search engine rankings.
AxROI helps you to quickly identify which campaigns work and which campaigns are just a waste of time and money. It has many advantages over other ROI tracking solutions. Find out what really works for your business.

Tip 4 : Regular pinging and site submission
Submit your site to search engines and directories regularly.Keep your blog updated with regular pinging.

Tip 5 : Alerts
Create Google and Yahoo alerts about the topic which interests your blog.Keep yourself updated with latest advances,introductions and changes in products which relates you and your site.

Tip 6 : Blog Alert
Google has launched new 'Blog alert' which is a very promising tool to popularise your site.Blog alert sends you a message through email whenever a new blog or blog post is added in the category in which you are interested.Create an alert and let newbies know and mention you in their blogs.

Tip 7 : Don't lose the Inner circle
Don't lose contact with old regular readers in search of new ones.Maintain a firm 'inner circle' of contacts who admire your articles.Once strong at home,you are free to explore the world.

Tip 8 : Regular posting
Quantity of the posts is as important as the quality.Regular posting is very important because there is a definite connection between the post frequency and the blog authority.Most of the Technorati top ranking sites have an average of 2 posts per day.

Nofollow to Check Link Spam

Google Introduced 'Nofollow', a special tag system.
Due to the burst of blogs and eMarketers, comments span,link spam has been increasing.People leave comments and their links as comments or somehow manage to add their site link at other sites.This has created a nuisance in the blogosphere.

This is what Google says : If you're a blogger (or a blog reader), you're painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites' search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like "Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site." This is called comment spam, we don't like it either, and we've been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists

Msn search and Yahoo have given their support to Google in this regard.Many sofware companies have already come up and engaged themselves with Google in building the nofollow software.Once the software is uploaded,all the links in the comments (links which appear after 'posted by') will include the 'nofollow' tag,that means all those links would be useless ( to the author and to the commenters).

Wikipedia is going to be affected a lot by this 'Nofollow' tag.Because Wikepedia is built by innumerable people whose took lot of pain to nourish it all these days.Now their links would be left out,their links would only have an importance of a 'wikipedia' inbound link,losing their individuality.It may lose its reputation and the number of interested authors at wikipedia would dramatically fall down.
Nofollow also has some good news for wikepedia.Wikipedia is the largest target of Link spam.Though it disagreed to 'nofollow' in the beginning,now it has accepted to adopt nofollow.But most of the SEO gurus are optimistic that wikipedia would develop another software for itself in near future in order to save its authors.

While thats the case with Wikipedia,even bloggers have their own share of bad news.Nofollow would not only check comment spam but also legitimate links which are supposed to improve their page rank.It is being considered as a double endged knife by SEO experts.For Bloggers, only a few bloggers are going to get benefited from this 'nofollow' because those who get comment and link spams must be daily users of the internet and the only reason why they keep the comments in their page is to increase their page rank.Removing a few comments a day wont be a big problem for daily users.

On the whole, there is going to be a dramtic and sudden change in SEO because of 'nofollow'

How to get the Google and My Yahoo Buttons on your Site

If you do not know your Site Feed URL,and want to get the Add to Google and My Yahoo Buttons,

1.First Signup at feedburner.com
2.Copy paste your site URL at Feedburner and activate your site's feed URL.
3.Once you get your Feed URL,go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/add.html
4.Copy and paste the Feed URL in the and click on 'Create HTML' Button.You will get the HTML code. Copy and paste that Code in your site where you want to see the Google Button.

For My Yahoo Button,Copy paste your Feed URL at http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html the HTML code.Copy paste that code on your site to see the My Yahoo Button.