Web development, design, and site optimization

A little Internet company based out of Halifax Nova Scotia is on the verge of making some big waves internationally with its built in-house search technology and algorithms. I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Mark Harper who is the VP of Strategic Relations at GenieKnows and I was given an in person demo of the yet to be launched (at the time) new version 1.0 of their Local search service. The service was officially launched yesterday.

What is GenieKnows Local? It is a search portal that allows you to find business listings (various categories) within a given area. You can provide a specific address from which you want to search around, or you can be more generic and just type in the city.

One feature I really really like, as a frequent traveler, is that I can type in an address (hotel address for example) and then once the map shows up (very quick) choose from the side “Category” menu the type of business nearby I am interested in finding. For instance when I travel I like to know all of my nearby dining choices. Once you click on the category of your choice, you immediately receive a list of businesses in that category to your left along with their relevant contact info and each one is marked on your map for easy viewing.

If you click on any of the business results you can view a business-card like site which include contact information, website information, products sold, store hours, etc. I am told that with the next release they will also implement user reviews for added interactivity.

GenieKnows is not trying to re-invent the wheel here but they are trying to refine it and build upon what exists today. My early impressions of the service are that it is going to be top notch.

Sometime soon I will also have an interview to share with Mark about the company and where they are going

Be sure to visit:
http://local.genieknows.com

As you may or may not know, Google and other search engines have various algorithms in place to make sure their search results are relevant and that everyone is starting on a level and fair playing field. Those sites who do not play nicely…. they get blacklisted, usually FOREVER!

Are you aware of some of the things that may get you blacklisted? Here is a great read courtesy of WhiteHatMedia.com:

How To Get Blacklisted By The Search Engines: Black Hat Techniques

Cloaking

As a general rule, websites designed for ease of use by visitors will attract search engine spiders. That doesn’t stop some less than reputable individuals from disguising their pages in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. What you see is most definitely not what you get.

The information presented to the search engine is not the same that the human visitor gets to see. One example is to put in some text the same colour as the background. In this way, the spiders but not the human eye can pick up keywords. This enables the website owner to present well written content but give the search engine the impression that the copy is filled with keywords, thereby attracting searches for those keywords.

That said, it is not difficult for competitors to detect such practices. Rest assured, that if the offending site were holding a high search engine position, it would be spotted, reported and banned from search engines.

Duplicate Sites

Search engines would prefer to find unique content throughout the net. When affiliate schemes first became popular, some web owners would post duplicate sites in an attempt to outrank the site being promoted and siphon off sales from the original. Subsequently, the search engines now have procedures in place to stop duplicate sites. Sites that may have been altered slightly to avoid detection can be spotted by competitors, reported and banned.

Keyword Stuffing

The easiest to spot and most common example of “black hat” methods, keyword stuffing relies on targeted keywords being placed en masse on a web page in the anticipation of being picked up and indexed by the search engines. Usually found written in a tiny font size at the bottom of a web page in order for the main content to make sense.

Link farms

Link farms have evolved from the strategy of building inbound links in order to raise search engine rankings. Sites have been built specifically to provide links, which are not particularly relevant to the site concerned.

Search engines expect links between websites to be based on relevant content. Sites that build links of no relevance, purely for the sake of search engine optimisation, can be banned from search engines, maybe for life.

Doorway Pages

Probably the easiest way to get blacklisted and lose even genuinely earned rankings, doorway pages are appended to a website, giving no value to a visitor. The page exists solely to attract search engines to the targeted keyword or phrase. These pages are usually mass-produced and posted automatically by software.

Redirects

Used in connection with doorways, redirects automatically move the visitor to a genuine page. Illegal methods are constantly being devised to beat attempts by search engines to detect this practice. The search engines do generally catch up with them and ban the sites. If not, competitors do pick up what’s going on and report the offenders.

What colour is your hat?

Many of these practices are blatantly in use today. Some webmasters tread the thin line between illegality and shady practices. Search engine rankings can still be achieved by operating a “black hat” strategy. Generally though, any gain is at best temporary and offenders do face the prospect of being blacklisted by the search engines. SEO agencies that operate legitimately will not tolerate competitors getting an unfair advantage and will report offenders. Some bans can be permanent, but even in cases where a site is only banned for a temporary period; it is increasingly difficult to get back up the ladder.

Best advice: play it clean!

By Mark Raby Wednesday, February 27, 2008 13:05

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36238/118/

New York (NY) - A lawsuit has been filed against Network Solutions because it buys up domain names that people search for to ensure that they don’t shop around other domain services.

According to the suit filed Monday in a Los Angeles US District Court, when users check a domain name’s availability at Network Solutions, the Internet company would sometimes buy that domain and essentially “hold” it. Users could still ultimately purchase it at the standard Network Solutions price, but the move prevented them from buying it at another domain servie provider.

Florida resident Chris McElroy brought the suit forward, saying he experienced this when checking the availability of a certain website and then was forced to purchase the domain from Network Solutions.

The company provides domain hosting for around $35 per month, as much as three or four times what other services charge.

McElroy is seeking unspecified damages and an end to the practice. He also wants to bring it to class-action status.

Free directories have for many years now been used by website and blog owners to drive traffic and to boost their SEO (search engine optimization) via link-trading. The question is “Is it worth the time and effort to submit your site to them?”.

Google, the king of search is well known for having its own system of ranking sites and search results based on the number of links to a particular site. This in itself has created the growing fad of directories whose primary function is to provide users a way to boost their site’s popularity with the search giant. In theory anyway. The thing is Google looks at much more than just the amount of links to a site. Their algorithm also takes into consideration the source of the link and that site’s ranking. Links from these directory sites are typically considered of low value. Especially generic, “anyone can submit regardless of topic” directories.

Another downfall with most free directories is that they often harvest e-mail addresses (which they often require upon signup) to be used in either their own spamming or to sell to other companies. This is by no means a practice that only directories take on. When a service is provided for free, revenues generally need to come from somewhere. If a free service looks shady to you, it likely is.

Free directories are still of some use though. They are especially useful in getting a new site indexed on search engines and to help get traffic from zero to… something. But I would still look to focus on directories that are more niche focused (focused on your site topics) and that do not require a reciprocal link.

At the end of the day, especially for bloggers, I think your time will be better spent by being an active participant on other blogs, forums, and any other interactive medium where you can share your knowledge and plug your site from time to time. This in combination with a little patience will get you better results over time then any free directory.

The following was shared with me today by Mike Mann. Enjoy:

First off I have never done domain tasting, nor did BuyDomains.com
when I managed it, and our new domain trading and building platform,
DomainMarket.com, doesn’t either. When we and others first began
thinking about it around 5 years ago it was bad protocol at best, and
really considered a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against the
Netsol/Verisign registry system since robots slam the systems to buy
thousands of name at once; so it was against NSI/VRSN rules and
possibly illegal too.

However once Verisign realized how many domains would ultimately be
registered to their benefit (eventhough I imagine 99% of the
inventory is never paid for and is re-deleted back to the
unregistered pool of potential new domains) they decided domain
tasting for 5 days to measure the PPC traffic and value and buy the
statistical gems was OK.

However domain tasting is indiscriminate and buyers end up having
their robots purchase other peoples’ clear trademarks, as well as a
lot of lewdly suggestive names, or names that once resolved to
questionable content. So again its nothing Id want my team to take part in.

In the past I thought nobody should do it. Today I think it should
actually be done by others carefully for one simple reason: It’s good
for the economy. People are typing in and clicking on legacy domain
links for expired domains, and if they get a 404 error it’s a waste
of time, energy and bandwidth - and nobody gets paid, however if it
lands on a tasting speculators PPC page or monetizable site then
someone is getting paid, and they can pay their employees, taxes, and
tips at the local restaurant, etc. So domain tasting while lame in
most respects is still good for the economy.

I’ve rethought this subject and I think it’s good for others as long
as they don’t buy trademarks or domains that they deem offensive.
Outside of moral considerations they need to be concerned about being
sued or harassed somehow, which could have negative financial
consequences, balanced by the value of the trickle down economics
accidentally applied to attorneys and their caddies.

Thats all, LMK what you think. Cheers

-Mike
http://mikemann.com/