If you are logged in to a Google account and you promote a search result using the SearchWiki icons, the web page is automatically saved to Google Bookmarks. For some reason, Google labels the web page using your query, so you’ll end up with a long list of labels.

The list of SearchWiki annotations is already available at http://www.google.com/reviews/w, but it’s not searchable. Now the list of annotations is more discoverable, but it makes it more difficult to find your bookmarks.

Some users customize Google’s results using SearchWiki to associate searches with their favorite web pages. Marissa Mayer said that, on average, “40% of searches on any given day are repeat searches for that user”.

Has your site ever dropped suddenly from the index or disappeared mysteriously from search results? Have you ever received a notice that your site is using cloaking techniques? Unfortunately, sometimes a malicious party “hacks” a website: they penetrate the security of a site and insert undesirable content. Sophisticated attackers can camouflage this spammy or dangerous content so that it doesn’t appear for normal users, and appears only to Googlebot, which could negatively impact your site in Google’s results.

Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)!

This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight.  Since it’s now officially the “Holidays,” I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light

Is it just me, or do too many agencies claim to be able to perform organic search optimization for clients? I mean, really. An agency that charges someone for doing “SEO” as part of a site build should be able to understand how to populate meta descriptions, and what to populate them with. Right? Sitemaps should be easily handled as well. None of that grab-a-third-party-tool and send over whatever output it coughed up as a legit sitemap – especially if that sitemap happens to include advertising links embedded in it and links to competitor’s websites.

At a recent international search marketing conference in London the most frequent question asked by the audience was “How do I get my content found and indexed by global and local search engines?”

During the breaks I talked to a few people who indicated little or none of their local market content was being indexed by the major engines. Close examination of these sites revealed that they were all using some form of language detection. In two cases they were doing language detection because they saw Google doing it and assumed that this was the best approach.

Recently, I was reading Julie Joyce’s Link Week article, 8 Tips To Make PPC Work With Link Building Efforts, and really enjoyed the premise of combining two disciplines that are often very separate in a marketing organization. Julie’s article got me thinking about some of the work we have been doing in the area of landing page optimization, and how those efforts are sometimes being tied to social media marketing and lead nurturing efforts that do not traditionally “talk” to, or integrate with, PPC Marketing.

“Search is the world’s largest focus group.” A while ago, someone said this to me (I can’t remember who, but buy yourself an eclair if it’s you: you’ve earned it), and it struck me as pure brilliance. We tend to get so focused on the challenge of showing up in search results that we frequently forget that we’re bringing real people with real needs to our website, and unlike other traffic sources, these people have already told us exactly what they’re looking for. Searchers are an analyst’s dream because of this fact: in many cases, we know why they came to our site, and this helps us put their actions into some sort of context.

Google has written two spam related posts over the Thanksgiving period on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. The first was named hard facts about comment spam and the second was named generic cialis on my website?

The first post explains how having comment spam on your blog or web site can hurt your web sites ability to pass link weight to other web sites an internally. In addition, if you did performed the comment spam yourself and Google penalized you for it, then you will have to clean up that spam (somehow) and submit a reconsideration request. In short, Google is penalizing for comment spam on both sides of the fence and expect both sides to take action to prevent it. Otherwise, Google won’t rank either site as well as they should be in the Google index.

We’ve all experienced the Boxing Day let-down, expecting those stellar sales only to find big discounts on a few things.  SFU Consumer Affairs economist Lindsay Meredith says you can expect the same south of the border, with retailers offering a few of what he calls ‘loss leaders’.  “Do shoppers eventually start to figure this out?  Of course they do and eventually what that means is the ‘Boxing Day’ sales don’t have the same impact they used to have.  People are getting wise to the whole idea.”

Thanksgiving has always been associated with family, cooking and lots of food to me. That’s the time when I have to forget about my diet because it is impossible to resist the temptation.

And for those who is looking for more delicious recipe ideas for this year’s Thanksgiving, here are my personal picks.

Best recipe search engines:

If you’re traveling through Boston’s Logan Airport (BOS) or Seattle-Tacoma Airport (SEA) today, you have the chance to be one of 1,000 lucky people randomly selected to get a MasterCard cash gift card worth $15. That’s the price of checking luggage on some airlines.

Bing is doing these random-acts-of-publicity the day before you stuff your face full of sweet potatoes and marshmallows.

Why Boston Logan and Seattle-Tacoma? These are the two airports that were used to launch the original Price Predictor.

Good luck, and safe travels to you.

The Associated Press reported that Italian prosecutors are seeking “six-month to a year sentences for four Google executives Wednesday over an Internet video showing the bullying of a teenager with Down’s Syndrome.”

The Italian government believes Google had a responsibility of the published video when it was placed on YouTube, one of their properties.

The Google executives on trial are David Carl Drummond, the head of Google Italy’s managing board at the time; George De Los Reyes, a board member who has since quit; Peter Fleitcher, in charge of privacy protection in Europe; and Arvind Desikan, head of videos for Europe.

Affiliate Convention starts next week in Los Angeles and if you act fast there is still the chance to get full access for free until Friday.

WebmasterRadio.FM and AffEuro.com are bringing the second Affiliate Convention to the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles California on Thursday December 3rd and Friday 4th. Free registration for affiliates closes on Friday November 27th though paid tickets are available online or at the event for those who miss the cut-off date.

The sign up is available here.

The name of the game in SEO is to find out what makes a page rank — and abuse the heck out of that tactic until Google shuts it down. Thus, the ever-evolving list of what works and what doesn’t work. A pain for Web site owners, but job security for SEOs like me!

This cycle was evident when incoming links gained popularity as a ranking factor. Although Google hasn’t gotten to the “shut it down” phase yet, excessive reciprocal links along with paid links have been devalued.

The link building component of your SEO strategy can be the most important, as well as the most difficult and time consuming, task that you undertake.

A firm foundation of quality links will help you achieve your goals, unless you’re already a large brand and have tons of natural links.

For many SEO companies and individuals, the solution is simple: buy links. And, as many already know, this is expressly prohibited in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

I won’t lie. I’ve seen paid links work and deliver results more often than I’ve seen them hurt a company.

There is a lot of confusion in the landing page optimization community regarding personas, cognitive styles, and roles. These terms are often used loosely or interchangeably, with unfortunate results.

It’s time to set the record straight and cover the basics.

Roles

Roles correspond to specific classes of visitors interacting with your site. They are defined by their relationship to your Web site and call to action. The role breakdown can be basic, or it may need to be slightly more nuanced depending on your circumstances.

Here are some representative examples of possible roles: