PinoyMoneyTalk.com

Just how powerful is Google in delivering traffic to a website?

Very powerful, no doubt — and car insurance comparison site GoCompare.com learned this the hard way.

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While checking the updated ranking of entries in the $75 Pinoy Money Talk SEO Contest, I noticed that Google has activated the “more results from this site” feature for PinoyMoneyTalk.com.

Below is a screenshot of the “more results from pinoymoneytalk.com” — a feature which shows additional links and articles from our site.

I’ve read about this feature last year in Matt Cutts’s blog but it was only today that I saw this at work in the PMT search results. I searched for other popular Pinoy blogs to see whether Google has this feature and I discovered that it is working for Macalua.com, Yugatech.com, and Selaplana.com but not yet for Macuha.com, PinoyBlogero.com, or Jehzlau-Concepts.com.

I think the additional links can drive more traffic to one’s site because users who chanced upon the search results will have more options to choose from or, more appropriately, more links to click on.

Does Google show more results for your site too? Do you think this is a useful feature in Google search?

A lot of people have long glorified the idea of working for Google, the search engine giant, supposedly because of the laid-back environment, the free-flowing food, the beanbag chairs, and a lot more yadah-yadah.

Here’s another one that they add to the list: an office space so cool it looks more than the set of a beach party movie than an actual workplace.

Presenting: pics from the Google Zurich office in Switzerland.

Google graffiti on the wall

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Where have all the Pinoy scandals gone?

A while ago, I saw the words “Pinoy Scandals” advertised on the Google text links ad unit at the right sidebar of this page. Out of curiosity, I decided to click on the text link to find out what sites are being advertised. (Seriously, I’m just curious…)

(FYI, clicking on the text link per se does not violate Google Adsense’s policies. Publishers are not paid for clicks on the initial topics, but on the ad clicks on the linked page.)

What appeared after clicking the “Pinoy Scandals” text link topic?

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The world is looking for an iPhone, so says the latest Zeitgeist 2007 report, a report published by search engine giant Google.com detailing the popular keywords searched by people around the world.

The iPhone (?) — Apple’s mobile phone launched this year –  is the fastest rising Google search word in the US and worldwide. (Related article: Cheap iPhones in the Philippines)

Social networking and video sharing sites are also popular search terms. Badoo (?), a multi-lingual London-based social networking website is #2 worldwide. US-based networking site Facebook (?), on the other hand, is #9 in the US and #3 worldwide. Myspace (?) is the 7th fastest rising search keyword in the US.

People in the US and in other countries are also searching for video sites YouTube (?) and DailyMotion (?).

The Zeitgeist list:

Other fast rising search keywords in 2007 include:

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Boy, and we thought the Google PageRank (PR) update was over.

I’ve gone bloghopping today and noticed through my Google Toolbar that some of the sites I frequent have dropped PR. Nope, this was not the same PageRank update in late October that saw a lot of sites got penalized. When I checked the PR of those sites in October 30, it showed a different (read: higher) PR. Now, the latest update has got the following Philippine sites affected.

New list of Philippine sites with reduced PageRank (checked November 8)

Original list of Philippine sites that got penalized (updated November 8)

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Search engine giant Google ended today months of speculation of the existence of a Google Phone (or GPhone) by announcing that the GPhone is actually not a mobile phone but, rather, a free cell phone software package.

The Open Handset Alliance (OHA), to which Google is a member of, is to release an open-source platform called Android, named for and based on the technology of a company acquired by Google in 2005.

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Last week, we wrote about WidgetBucks not appearing in the Google search results and hinted that www.widgetbucks.com might be banned by Google because of hidden text links.

A representative from WidgetBucks, Greg Harrison, responded and posted a comment in our article WidgetBucks is banned in Google and they know why denying our “conspiracy theory.”

Mr. Harrison explains that the Widgetbucks site had “page content issues that were causing the page not to be indexed properly.”

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It’s now confirmed. The Google PageRank (PR) update on October 25 that downgraded the PRs of hundreds of sites and blogs was Google’s way of saying it is serious in the campaign against buying and selling advertising links.

This was confirmed by Google employee and popular blogger Matt Cutts himself in an email sent to Search Engine Journal. The gist of the email:

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

Google has, for several months now, reiterated its aversion against the growing trend of paid text links in websites. Although Google’s Webmasters’ Guidelines has long advised site owners not to “participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank,” the recent PR downgrade was one of Google’s first clear moves to curb this trend.

Some sites incorrectly penalized

Interestingly, however, a few websites that have not participated or have stopped participating in buying and selling of links were also penalized. Google initially slapped these websites with a PR penalty but revoked it after confirming that the sites are not (anymore) involved in paid links.

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Is Google evil?

At the same time Google (GOOG)’s stock price eerily struck the $666.66 level (see screenshot), webmasters and blog publishers are abuzz with the recent PageRank update, where several popular sites were apparently slapped by Google with a PR downgrade.

PageRank or PR is Google’s own algorithm that analyzes link structure to indicate the value of an individual page. A higher PR generally means that a page is more “important” relative to other pages with lower PR.

The recent PR update showed that a lot of sites, mostly popular ones, were penalized with a -2 PageRank reduction.

Read more to see a list of local and international sites that got a PR downgrade and discover for yourself what might be its cause.

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