Norwegian blogger Lasse Dahl recently wrote about search engine optimization. The article is insightful and full of good advice of what to do and not to do: - Søkemotoroptimalisering. Only problem: Its in Norwegian.

Arve Bersvendsen (another Norwegian) has taken the time to translate and expand on some of the advice in Lasses article. Its an article well worth taking a look at. Especially before spending any money on one of the zillion SEO companies out there. An "investment" that could soon become a great loss when your site is punished for search engine spam..

Virtuelvis: Search Engine Optimization

Virtuelvis writes about Googles decision to remove Radisson SAS (major hotel chain) from their search engine after intentionally spamming Googles database.

Spam and be punished

Norwegian digi.no is reporting as their main headline of the day that the Radisson SAS chain of hotels were thrown out of Google for Search Engine Spam.

The most interesting thing here is that the CEO of SAS Radisson knew about the spamming, and said the following (thank you to Virtuelvis for translating the norwegian quote):

We take this critique seriously, and will run this through our legal department once more. However, our IT departement in Copenhagen disagree with Google on what should and should not be allowed.

References:
Virtuelvis - Spam and be punished
Digi.no (norwegian): Ble kastet ut av Google etter triksing
E-guiden (norwegian): Radisson SAS driver omfattende juks for å få topplasseringer på søkemotorene

Its been interesting to follow the Google Blog since its birth the 10th of may. Its still early days and just a few posts out. But when a large company like Google releases an official blog, its bound to be reactions.

Today Doug Edwards addresses some of the feedback this way:

Well, we managed to break rules with our very first couple of posts here. We started our blog with a post about recruiting and didn't sign it. Then we changed it once it was up. You just don't do that with a blog, according to half the Google staff and all the Blogger folk.

Seems like they are keeping their ears to the ground, which is always a good thing. Doug mentions that could expect Larry or Sergey to post to the blog too. That would really be a good thing IMHO.

You can read the full entry here: Whaddya mean, "we"?

I've been fascinated with Google since they first started offering their service. When they first started all the other available search engines was full of spam and it was almost impossible to find anything useful with them. Google revolutionised search engines with their new approach to search. So ever since I first saw them I have been curious to know how it all works.

Thought I would share some of the resources I have found that speaks about Google and how it works. If you have any good links, I really hope you will contribute them in the comments section.

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine - probably the paper to read about how Google works, written by Sergey Brin and Lawrance Page (aka, the founders of Google).

How Google Works - is an article by GoogleGuide (not affiliated with Google). It also casts some light on how Google works.

More information about Google and other search engines can be found in my search engines category.

Nice article with many good tips from fellow norwegian blogger Anders Jacobsen: Optimizing Movable Type - Keyword links

While it will be interesting to see if the keywords will help making the search engines find blog entries, his tip will help you make content in your blog be more accessible to your users via MTs own search.

He also lists a lot of other good tips for making MT blogs more accessible, and of course - more visible in search engines.

Interesting article by Brian Berstein about Tools that refine web searches.

Brian writes about Vivisimo that groups searches from Google in a more intuitive way. Seems to work OK for English, but not so good for other languages.

While Brian writes extensively about Vivisimo, he also touches on some other interesting search refinement tools, such as Grokker, Touchgraph and a few search engines that rival Google.

Ari Paparo has put together an impressive list of Blog Search Engines

I honestly didn't know that there was so many services out there to search blogs and their feeds.

[Via Digme via Weblog Hype]

Bill Thompson at BBC World Service asks the question Is Google good for you?

He talks about how Google has become more commercial, and claims that we are all suffering because of it. He actually goes as far as suggesting that search is now so important that it should be regulated, just like telecom and broadcasters are in the UK.

While I will admit I don't mind regulation of several areas, and that I am missing the regulation of power companies that we enjoyed in Norway until last year, I don't think the solution in this case is regulation.

As Google has so skillfully showed us, emerging from nothing only a few years ago, if a service is good enough it will attract users.

Google has showed respect for its users by avoiding paid placement in its search engine. Unlike Overture and Yahoo - its largest competitors today.

The way to get Google off of its "throne" as the number one search engine is not to regulate, but for someone to come up with a search engine as user friendly and powerful as Google or preferably a lot better. Until that happens Google will remain the prominent search engine on the web.

BTW: Bill is promising to diversify his searches in the year to come. Let me suggest taking a look at Alltheweb.com, which in my humble opinion is one of Googles most worthy competitors today.

[Via JD on MX]

Google Weblog: Big News! New Google Operator

So what is the big deal? The ~ operator adds the ability to search for synonyms of the keyword marked with the "~".

Example: weblog help and weblog ~help

According to the Google Blog the ~ character was chosen because it's shorthand for approximate and a good way for users to express their wish to expand searches to include synonyms.

More information at Google's search help

[Via Google Blog]

The Google Weblog has discovered that you can check out what ads would be shown on any given website. Interesting stuff: Try Before You Sell

Not everyone believe that Google Adsense is a good idea:

Pamela Parker at ClickZ Today writes about her initial response in her article Does Google's AdSense Make Sense?

Her point is that Google's advertising won't work as good when placed on web sites, as when it is displayed on their search pages, because people act differently when they are in search mode, as opposed to when they are in surf mode.

BTW: My weblog was rejected from the program. And I have to agree with Google about rejecting it. But I am afraid that they will have the headache of many grey cases, and a lot of noise where they admit one site and reject another similar one. Especially since site inclusion in the program is decided case-by-case and probably by different people.

Googles new advertisment service Google AdSense was launched this week, and I have had the chance to test it for a couple of days, and I must say I am very impressed.

It seems natural to asume that this new service from Google is based on technology they aquired when buying Applied Semantics and their AdSense software (among other technologies).

The system promises to do for advertisment what Google has done for web search, that is - revolutionize it! The technology for placing appropriate ads on web pages based on the content on the pages is really good, the system really manages to do its job placing highly targeted ads based on content on the pages.

I have been testing Google AdSense at Flashmagazine.com for a few days now, and there we see a click-through rate of 4%, which is really impressive. The only other text ads system I know of with simular results is Googles own ads placements on their search results. Something tells me AdSense will become a block-buster advertisement channel. I would love to see the total statistics for ads served and click-through rate of the whole system.

What is even more impressive with Google AdSense is that they have opened the program to small sites. Almost any site can participate. But as always, there are limitations, so take a look at their program policies to see if your site will be approved into the program.

Among the limitations are that no personal pages are allowed into the program, which makes it hard for bloggers to know if they are allowed into the program. SearchEngineWatch writes:

"In general, we're looking for at this stage web sites with more standardized content," Wojcicki said. "Blogs are an example of a gray area, and we will review them on a case-by-case basis to see if they fit our network."

This will be a difficult area for Google, because blogging tools aren't just used by those wishing to express personal views. Some use them simply because they are an easier way to publish a web site focused on a particular topic.

Personally I see that my site is in that exact grey area. While my blog is listed as a Flash blog in many circumstances, and is heavy on technology it is also filled with my own personal perspective on other un-related areas.

More information about AdSense:
Google AdSense FAQ
SearchEngineWatch: Google Expands Contextual Ad Placement Program To Small Sites
Daypop: Adsense
GoogleGuy Says also has a lot of info on AdSense

This is very interesting: A blog with quotes from Google staff's Usenet postings.

Instead of having to keep updated on various Usenet groups and Google staffs postings there, all I have to do is add GoogleGuy Says to my blog-reader and I'm automatically updated on postings. Just wish I could put more blogs than Evan's to the list of Google staff blogging.

BTW: If you want to keep updated on new results for searches in Google, then you might want to check out the excelent e-mail service from Google Alert (read to FAQ to get to know more about the service). Looks like a ready good service if you want to keep updated on a subject, or just want to know whenever the search for your name changes ;-)

[Via JD on MX]

In the news today (Google news): The purchase of AllTheWeb.com and its technology from Fast Search and Transfer to Overture Services Inc for 100 million US dollars.

That, just a week after they announced their takeover of the Altavista search engine. Its going to be interesting to see if Overture, which made its money from pay-for-placement search, will add more of the same to both AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

To me, it seems like AllTheWeb soon will be filled with pay-for-placement ads, and that it will become less of a competitor to Google.

[Via andersja's blog]

Interesting article in Wired: Google vs. Evil, its about the challenges facing Google as it (to use Wired's words) matures into teenage, its interesting to get small glimpses into the culture that drives Google.

A cool new way to watch search results are shown with the Google Viewer, fresh out of the Google labs. I am ever amazed how fresh and clued this company is :-)

Must be perfect for people that just want to browse through search results, although using it on my 800x600 laptop wasn't 100% perfect.

Its nice to see Fast (Alltheweb.com, Lycos, Scandinavia Online, InfoSpace, T-Online, and Tiscali) start to include information gathered from swfs in their search index. From before Google and Atomz have been indexing SWFs for their search engines. Atomz recently expanded their offer of indexing SWFs to their enterprise search engine, used by many company sites, including Macromedia.com and Hotwired.com. (And not to mention by this weblog ;-D

[Via Flashmagazine.com]

Interesting Google resource - Zeitgeist, it gives insight into what has been on peoples minds in the way that it shows what people have been looking for at Google.

[Via Mario Klingemann]

Ok, this is just vanity stuff, I don't have a vanity plate (if I did, it would probably be jdb something or the other), but I can have my fun with a vanity search.

How about my first name on Google? Google Search: jarle

Today I am no. 1 when searching "for pages written in any language", and no.3 when searching in just norwegian pages.

What is more surprising is that I am no.1 when searching for "jdb", no. 9 and 10 too. Mind you. (This may very well change, but thats how it is when I am writing this).

Yes, I know. I am childish :-D And it would probably not have been equally easy if my name was Dave, Mike or John

The last days, trying to keep updated on the Macromedia Studio MX releases, its been fun to keep updated with the Google API. The resources at Macromedia instantly showed up at Google almost at the time they were released, and the search result for "Macromedia MX" changes all the time, if not hour by hour so day by day.

(The top 10 search results for "Macromedia MX" is shown on the right side a little further down on this page).

This is great news for people wanting to hook into the most powerful search engine on the web. Google has released its API (basically an interface towards its huge database of websites)

Google Web APIs

With the Google Web APIs service, software developers can query more than 2 billion web documents directly from their own computer programs. Google uses the SOAP and WSDL standards so a developer can program in his or her favorite environment - such as Java, Perl, or Visual Studio .NET.

Dave Winer of Userland provides some more links to get aquinted with Google's API:

- Using the Google API
- Rael Dornfest on the Google Web API

And Dave himself with:
- Google is just the juice