Google and Yahoo are working out their last-minute deal on trading search advertising campaigns.  Basically, it will allow Google to advertise on Yahoo while vice-versa for Yahoo to Google.

I think this is a great marriage between the two biggest search engines in the world.  I am so glad that Yahoo-Microsoft deal never went through, it would’ve just killed Yahoo while making Microsoft bigger.

Anyways, here’s an excerpt from NYTimes on the GooHoo deal:

The advertising deal calls for Google to place ads next to some Web search results on Yahoo, lifting Yahoo’s revenue. Under the revised terms, the deal would be shortened to 2 years, from as many as 10, said the person, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because the discussions remained confidential.

In addition, the amount that Yahoo could earn from ads placed by Google would be capped at 25 percent of Yahoo’s search advertising revenue, the person said. Previously, Yahoo had the discretion to decide how much of its search ads to turn over to Google.

Google and Yahoo submitted the new proposal to the Justice Department over the weekend. It is not clear whether the limitations will be enough to satisfy antitrust investigators, who have raised objections to the planned partnership.

via nytimes

The other day, I accidently used Google Korea (Google.co.kr) to search “zedomax” and found that Google has been working on new video and image search results.

Basically, the new video and image search results replace sponsored ads for certain search terms to improve users’ search experience.  Now, these results go away though when there’s sponsored ads.

I think this is a really great idea as Google is now having to compete against search engines like Cuil where search results are displayed with images.

Google and Yahoo has always been testing out their new stuff in other countries.  When the beta tests are done, I expect it to see on the regular English Google soon.

Google(GOOG) has just announced public opening of their new wiki-knowledge product called “Knol”.

After months of deliberation since December of last year, this project is finally open for people to use.

Let’s take a quick look:

For responding to a Knol subject such as this Lung Cancer article, the user can leave a review with a rating.  This supposedly validates the experts’ writing and becomes part of Knol’s rating system.

Knol also let’s you leave comments.  I believe the comments section is really for those quick comments but the review section should be used for expert reviewers of that subject.

Let’s take a look at the writing aspects of Knol.  You can write a new Knol yourself but you need to stay within these guidelines:

The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and veracity of information.

Knols are indexed by the big search engines, of course. And well-written knols become popular the same as regular web pages. The Knol site allows anyone to write and manage knols through a browser on any computer.

Writing a good Knol can definitely boost your SEO and online visibility, especially you are good at what you write about.

Here’s a screenshot of writing a new Knol.  It looks pretty simple and basically it’s like Wikipedia but easier to use.

I don’t know how popular this Knol Project will become but I am sure many webmasters will take advantage of the early SEO you can gain from writing expertise articles.

Knol Resources

Knol Website

How to Write Good Knols

Basics of Writing Knols

Check out this couple who arranged and managed pretty much everything they can using Google’s products including GoogleDocs, GoogleMaps, etc…etc…

This might be an overkill for your marriage but Google is starting to prove that their applications can pretty much replace anything that Microsoft has done before.

On the other side of the globe, Microsoft is wetting its pants trying to buy search engines or anything that might save their company in the new Web 2.0 era.

via google blog

Well, today I will explain to you a little details on how search engines work and how knowing about this “secret” can help your blog grow 2-3 times.

When I first started blogging, my blog was on a shared server with about 10 other sites.  After my blog got “digged” several times, I had more visitors than my server could handle.  So I did upgrade it to a dedicated server.

Now, what’s so special about upgrading to a dedicated server?

Well, let me first tell you the “secret” behind search engines.

You see, search engines “crawl” your site and index your pages based on the different words, keywords, etc…etc…

Now if the search engine can “crawl” your site within 1-3 seconds, you are probably okay.  But if you are on a shared server and it takes more than 3 seconds to “crawl” your site, the search engine will not come back to your site as often and your pages won’t get indexed as fast and some pages will come up missing.

What you need to do is make sure your site is always at 25% of full capacity on the server.

So if your daily traffic is like 500 uniques, it should be able to handle at least 2,000 uniques.

Search engines WILL crawl your site much more efficiently and send you more traffic only if your server can handle it.

If you are on a shared server and it take the search engines 10 seconds to “crawl” your site, they are not going to want to send you traffic because your site will be very very slow and cannot handle more traffic.

You see, Google’s branding is about bringing the “fastest” information to you.  Now if someone searched for something and the site loads very very slow, that’s going to look bad on Google.

Of course, you need the content first and foremost, but after that, it’s all about SPEED.

That’s the worst kept secret that no book will teach you and you won’t understand unless you’ve experienced it.

It’s logical and common sense.  Now, go apply it on your blog and start receiving 2-3 times more traffic simply because your server can handle more traffic.

What do you need to do?

You need to forsee how much traffic you will be getting over the next 1-3 months.  If your server slows down a lot, it’s time for hardware upgrade.  If you don’t upgrade, you will lose valuable visitors.

Here’s comes Twellow, a search engine for twitters basically.  I typed, “zedomax” and found my twitter account which is cool I guess.

Beyond that, there are other functions like you can search by categories and whatnot.

I think this is a really good idea as search engines have proven to make a lot of money. (Google???)

Twellow is a great new search tool and directory for discovering Twitter users that could fundamentally change the way people use the microblogging service.

Launched by the same people behind the tech news site WebProNews, Twellow has indexed more than 300,000 users and sorted them into categories like programming, marketing, graphic design, and dozens of others to help you find users who list those characteristics in their Twitter biographies. There are also sub-categories, so within “Programming” you can browse users who list PHP, Ruby on Rails, or another programming ski

via mashable

In an effort to test how stupid social networking can be, Money.co.uk has posted a fake story where a 13 year old steals his dad’s credit card to buy hookers.

Although the original story has been updated as, “This story is a parody and is not intended to be taken seriously,” we can take a lesson on how to drive traffic to your website through an innovative marketing. (or is it scam?)

Regardless whether the story is true of not, this concept has proven to bring about 6,000 backlinks and made front page of digg.

Interesting fact is that the story was intended to target the keyword, “credit card” on search engines and I bet whoever is behind this did profit a little just couples days of this stint.

What can you learn from this?

Well, do not go out there and write a fake story but use something “viral” that everyone will find “unbelievable” or “looks too fake”.

When money.co.uk posted a story titled 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers, the idea was that it could be read as a humorous parody piece that could get attention from social media sites, yield quality backlinks, and draw in hundreds of thousands of visitors. The backlinks would help the site achieve higher rankings on search engines, especially for the target keyword phrases that would include the words “Credit Card”.

via nowpublic

(click to enlarge)

To prove that quantity rules in the blogging world, I averaged about 5-10 blog posts per day on this site, Zedomax.net over the last week or so.

Before that, I rarely updated the site and wasn’t trying to bring any traffic.

As you can see, with lots of hard work blogging, you can easily go from 20-30 visitors to 200-300 visitors within a week or two as seen in the above statcounter graph.

Now, my next goal is to hit around 500-1000 visitors within the next 2 weeks. I probably won’t achieve it but it’s a good goal.  On the other hand, there is also good chance I just might get there if I push to 24 blog posts per day.

Another secret I can tell you about why “quantity” works is that Google search engine is “all” about finding new information fast and giving that to the consumers.

The reason why the top 100 bloggers have minimum of 24 posts per day is because our world is full of information. Think of how many new things that happen daily. Do you think you can cover all the new information in just 24 blog posts? No, the answer is that who ever is providing new information quicker to the search engines will get a boost in traffic from the people who search for that information.

Now, the secret is, “you gotta blog about something new”.

If you look carefully, almost every blog post on this blog was about some new company that launched something. Next time someone wants to find out about that new company, guess who’s getting that traffic?

Well, enough about blogging secrets, you will have to wait till next time for more. Make sure to subscribe to the blog!

Keetsa Blog, an eco-friendly and green blog in the Zedomax Network, launches Gooef.com, an eco-friendly and green search engine.

We did launch Goohack.com and Goodrunk.com last week, we figure these search engines are fun and decided to add more.

Keetsa launches a new eco-friendly and green search engine called, Gooef.com.

We decided on acronyms ef for “eco-friendly” since Googreen.com and Gooeco.com were taken. Besides, Gooef is a lot shorter than Googreen.

How to use it?

Well, we’ve handpicked some eco-friendly and green blogs and sites so you only get eco-friendly and green search results.

For example, you can type “designer bags” on Gooef and get a good list of eco-friendly designer bags back as the result.

Here’s a current list of sites included in the new eco-friendly and green search engine:

keetsa.com | groovyvegetarian.com | inhabitat.com | treehugger.com | buildinggreentv.com | bdpollution.blogspot.com | blog.jollygreengirl.com | equitygreen.typepad.com | victoria-e.com | ecoshopper.net | g2bgreen.com | carteroosterhouse.com | re-nest.com

via keetsa