Google announced today, and that announcement was re-broadcast via unofficial Google spokesman Matt Cutts to make sure people actually noticed, that the company had released a long-awaited command line tool for accessing Google.

Well, sort of. If by accessing Google, you mean accessing everything except for the core Google service of search.

Ready made for the “much ado about nothing” files, come the Google Command Line Tool and Google API. Unoriginally titled, GoogleCL, Google Command Line (I guess) is a Python application build using Python gdata libraries in order to make Google Data API calls from a command line. This would be so very important and a great tool for web developers and search engine researchers everywhere, if it only had any functionality at all related to search. Instead, GoogleCL allows you to play with a bunch of the toy Google products and services.

Want to upload a bunch of pictures to Picasa from the command line? Sure, no problem.

Want to create Calendar events from your command line? You can do that too!

Want to read about Southwest airlines rewards credit card? Oh, wait, that’s my thing. Oops.

What about managing contacts from the command line? You bet!

How about posting YouTube videos? Of course.

If it is a tangential side Google service developed in order to show up Microsoft or Apple, then it can be accessed using the Google command line tool.

How About Command Line Search Tool and API?

No! What are you crazy? People would use that to poke holes in the already fragile Google search index and search results rankings by being able to automate tedious processes like checking search ranking positions, whether or not a particular webpage has been indexed or not, and how many incoming links point to a webpage, and where they come from.

Google wants you to like them, and wants you to think that they are the best source of cool, free, open-source tools in the galaxy, but they aren’t dumb. Search makes money. Sure, AdWords brings in the actual dollars, but the only reason anyone bothers is because advertisers know that “everyone” uses Google search regardless of operating system, browser, and in many cases, even location.

The reason everyone uses Google’s search is because it is the best search engine on the Internet. Of course, the entire underpinnings of the company’s search rankings is coming apart at the seems as more and more content publishers seek to manipulate Google’s search rankings for their own benefit. Now that SEO is something that everyone, everywhere, does and pretty much everyone does the same way, the only thing that really matters any more is link count and how close the title tag matches the search. A command line interface might expose that reality to more people (or at least allow it to be proven beyond doubt).

So, enjoy the latest plaything from Google. Just don’t expect it to change your life.

Have a great day.

Google has forced us to change a lot of what we do. In particular, writers and marketers were forced to dance to a different drummer, one who asked us to do things in a way that was inferior to what we used to do. Convoluted titles (plus title tags with the right keywords) and silly domain names are a couple of examples of things that Google hath wrought.

Another involves branding. Any company that hopes to be successful for the long term needs to think about branding. Branding means distinguishing yourself from others who do, or claim to do, similar things to your company. That is why it is Coke vs. Pepsi, not Great Cola Soda vs. Tasty Cola Soda. Both of the latter would be regarded as cheap generic knockoffs, not high-end brands.

Incidentally, this is one of the best ways to distinguish an ongoing concern with concern for the long-term future from one that just hopes to make a splash on the Internet. Trabach Motors (or whatever) is probably a lot more serious about their future in making cars while Best Top Motor Cars is probably a lot more serious about their website generating cash flow in any way possible.

However, in the last few days, I’ve noticed some things that are search optimized even though they were created before there was such a thing as a search engine, or at least before anyone cared what the search engines were looking for. This post, is dedicated to them.

Search Optimized Brands – Accidentally SEO Ready Brands

• Pur – The water purifier brand kills a handful of birds with one stone. First, it’s very name catches the most probably typo or spelling error. No need to register another domain for that. Also, "pur" is part of the word pure. No doubt, this counts at least a little bit when both pur and pure show up in the website text in a way that seems both natural, and like it exists thanks to "stemming." Finally, pur.com (somebody beat them to it) or even purwater.com would be great domain names, especially if they had been savvy enough to grab pure.com and purewater.com too.

Others Coming

Yes, I have others. I just have to find that notebook. It would help if I developed better organizational skills.

Ok, the title is overstated, but I’m tired of writing boring titles to get better search results.

Today, I have questions rattling around in my brain, some of which are more important than others, some of which could change the way do things or handle my workflow, and some of which are nothing more than minor concerns that an inquiring mind wants to know about.

1. Is it really worthwhile / doable / smart to use WordPress to manage a normal "static" website?  The truth is that static websites generally aren’t really all that static, but they do have a more set structure, unlike a blog. Often, the changes and tweaks made to a page are relatively minor and it seems like overkill to fire up Dreamweaver CS4 just to add a link to a freelance writing samples page, for example.  On the other hand, I get more flexibility and understand more of what is going on from a non-WordPress angle. (My HTML / XHTML / CSS is stronger than my PHP / mySQL.)
2. Why can’t I find a non-complicated way to make lists on a website with explanation text?  Take the list you are looking at. Ideally, there would be a number followed by the question.  Then, underneath that there would be this explanatory text instead of having to rely on the bold to separate the question from the text.  I know it can be done, but it’s just so much effort to click all the buttons to make it happen or keep all of the <ol> <ul> <li> code straight.
3. Is Technorati (or any others) really that important? Unfortunately, the worlds of web design, search engines, SEO, and social networking are all dominated by techie types.  That means that when it comes to things like Technorati, Digg, Twitter, or whatever, the volume tends to be disproportionately loud.  Is getting indexed, listed, or whatever on these sites worth the time and effort?  Or, more specifically…
4. Is It Better To Add Technorati Specific Tags to Posts, or Will WordPress’ Ping Take Care of It?  Considering that I have no real interest in trying to force my way to the top of Technorati or any other site by any means other than writing good stuff, do I get any benefit from taking the extra time to "tag" my posts with Technorati tags? 
5. Do All Those Incoming Yahoo Glue Links Count for Anything?  My incoming links for some of my sites are filled with links that come from Yahoo Glue.  Do I get anything out of those? 
6. What If Google Knows What It Is Doing? Pretty much all SEO techniques both on-page SEO tactics, and off-site SEO linking, assume that Google needs a lot of help getting its index and search rankings results right. In other words, that Google isn’t a very good search engine.  That doesn’t seem right does it?  I mean, it’s the #1 Search Engine in the world for a reason.  Microsoft has tried 3 times to create something that even comes close and couldn’t.  Does it really make sense then that Google’s search results are so delicate that they can be heavily influenced by something as simple as changing a few HTML tags?
7. If Google Knows What It Is Doing, Then Why Do So Many Search Results Suck? As a corollary to the above, why are some search results so terrible?  Is it that Google’s famed reliance on incoming links, or links pointing to a webpage or website, makes it too vulnerable to being conned into ranking lesser sites above better ones?  This seems especially true when it comes to authoritative websites.  Consider this search for california school rankings

The obvious authoritative source is the actual rankings published by California.  In fact, both of the sites that rank higher are nothing more than interfaces tacked onto the data provided by the third link.  A search for california school ratings produces a similar result except that the #4 result becomes the #2 result.

There are much worse examples, this is just the one I came up with off the top of my head for a quick blog post.  Fortunately, the other sites listed above the official one aren’t scam sites or obvious web spam.  They are both trying to milk free publicly available information to show advertising and get people to sign up (get email addresses) and perhaps even pay for "premium" information.

The fact that the official California API results ranks so high, however, is a testament to Question #3.  Look at the Academic Performance Index (API) page from the California Department of Education, and you will see a website that has no redeemable SEO qualities whatsoever – in the traditional sense, at least.  And, yet, there it is at #3.

Like most "official" websites, they have better things to do than keyword research, emailing other websites to beg for links, and so on.  On more competitive keywords, this is often much worse, with scam sites or obvious web spam ranking above the official resources. 

The worst examples are often those where the higher ranking sites offer biased or otherwise slanted information, while the official, unbiased, sites rank much lower.  This is because of a combination of using every SEO trick in the book, and then the fact that like minded supporters will link to the websites that promote their point of view, rather than the straight factual websites which might include information that they don’t like.

Search your favorite, financial, political, governmental, or judicial topic to find examples.

Back to Work

Ok, I’ve spent too much time writing this today already.  Off to make money freelance writing.  Don’t worry, I’ll be back later.

Microsoft Bing was recently released.  Early reviews suggested that it was an enormous improvement over the original MSN based search, as well as an improvement over Microsoft’s Live Search.

Although many reviewers reserved judgment about whether Bing was better than Google, a few search engine reviews were so bold as to claim that Bing was equal to Google Search.  No major reviewer would make the claim that Bing was better than Google Search.  All of which begs the question, "Why should anyone bother to switch?"

One possible motivator is privacy.  Google keeps user’s search data for 90 days.  But, that isn’t all that Google collects.  Google Ads have been installed an countless websites around the web, each of which potentially collects another data point about you and your Internet habits.  Google Analytics has been installed on even more websites resulting in yet another potential collection.  In short, Google can already see you coming and going, maybe it would be best to perform your searches somewhere else, if another search engine was just as good as Google searches.

Unfortunately, Bing is not as good as Google Search.  I haven’t performed any tests, and I haven’t bothered reading anyone else’s tests or searching reviews, or search engine results.  I don’t have to.  I can tell you that Microsoft Bing is not as good as Google Search without performing a single search query.

How?

Microsoft’s Bing search service offers no method to restrict your searches by date.  The lack of a time restricted search is just one reason I never took Live Search seriously either.

Nothing knocks quite as much web spam off the first page of search results like restricting a search to the past month, or past year.  Sites looking to snooker you into clicking to see their ad-filled pages built up high-ranking sites and then move on.  Revisiting those pages risks unintentionally making edits which lowers the search engine ranking.

More importantly, there are numerous topics for which information that is two years old is no longer accurate.  Things like taxes, computer programs, electronics, media, real estate, investing, jobs and careers, and even fields like medicine can have important changes that take what was once true and make it inaccurate, at best, and completely false at worst.

Without a way to limit your searches by time, there is no way to know if the information you find is out of date, unless you already know something about what you are searching for.  Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of a search engine?

After all, if you know something about what you are searching for, you might already have a good idea where to find some good information.

In "News" searches only, you can choose to sort by most recent instead of by best match.  Of course, that trades one issue for another.  Instead of having to wade through the search engine results of a regular web search to find links that a recent, you get to comb through the results by date looking for ones that are relevant.  Neither choice is worth doing.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Maybe you’re curious about Microsoft’s current search efforts, but you aren’t a huge techie and you don’t know what this year’s search engine is named.

Try this search on Bing: "microsoft search engine"

Actual Screenshot from Microsoft Bing 7/29/09 

That 3rd result about "Microsoft’s New Search Engine" looks promising, doesn’t it?  (Too bad it’s about Microsoft’s previous search engine.  Oh, wait.  It is actually about the attempt BEFORE the last attempt!  In fact, it is about the beta release of Microsoft’s MSN search engine at search.msn.com!  If you’re wondering that is from 2004, five years ago.

Google recently rolled out a "More Options" link on every search page that allows you to use time-based criteria easier and more effectively for any search.  Before that innovation, Google allowed you to search within a specific time frame from its "Advanced Search" screen. 

In other words, Google has offered date based searching for a long time.  Microsoft, a company that has made its entire living off of playing copy cat to other’s innovations, missed the boat on this particular feature.  Or, perhaps, they are simply incapable of delivering such queries and results at this time.  Either way, the lack of date based searching makes MS Bing a non-starter for this user before a single search is performed.

*************************

************************

Does that title suck or what?

You bet it does, but it would rank awesome for search engine traffic if that was what you were going for.  People always search for things like “Top 10″ or “Best whatever”.  The problem is that everyone involved in building and designing websites knows that too.

Some web publishers will deliberately write articles for search terms and key phrases like these in order to generate maximum organic traffic.  That is fine.  There is nothing wrong with playing the game.

What I HATE though is unscrupulous websites who will title their articles like this, even when the article does not fulfill the title!  Take this article which I have deliberately linked to in a way to be mostly worthless to the other site.  The title of the article is “The World’s Best Dividend Stocks”, clearly an attempt to hit some solid keywords.  Again, I have no problem with this IF the article meets the expectations of the title!  This one does not.

Instead, this article is about the much more prosaic (and not searched on) topic that foreign companies also pay good dividends and that you should look at them too.

WHAT?!?!

In what way does that satisfy “The World’s Best Dividend Stocks”?

It doesn’t.  Not at all.

If someone, say me, were looking for some international equities that have historically paid high dividends, I would be interested in an article with such a title, as that website knew I would.  Of course, upon reading this “No duh” article, I have no additional information about the world’s best dividend paying stocks.  All I know is that there are 3 US stocks were the “best” S&P 500 stocks for 50 years or so.  Later, the author reports that 40% of foreign dividend paying stocks that trade on a US exchange have doubled in the past six years.  And, that makes them the world’s best paying dividend stocks how?  Is it the author’s contention that all the foreign dividend paying stocks that do not trade on a US exchange cannot be some of the world’s best dividend paying stocks, or is the author simply too lazy to find a tool that would allow him to research non-US stocks?

It gets worse.

The next section is about how foreign countries may tax your dividends.  NOT IF YOU ARE BUYING THE STOCKS THAT TRADE ON A US EXHANGE!

Before Google came along, this article might have had a more accurate title, something along the lines of “Don’t Forget International Stocks When Looking For Dividends.”  But, that has too many “stop words,” and way more people search for “Top Dividend Stocks” or “Best Dividend Stocks”, so the world’s thinnest connection to a title optimized for search engines will have to satisfy those who actually want information about international high yielding dividend stocks, which will be how I refine my search to exclude the shifty and banal results I got from my last search.

A few years ago, Google used its muscle within the search engine world, and on the Internet in general to push through the acceptance of a new concept regarding links to webpages.

Google implemented, and the other major search engines followed, a system where any link tagged with the attribute “nofollow” would not count as an endorsement of the linked site.

To understand how this perverts the very search rankings that are the lifeblood of Google, a little background is required.

Google Power Juice and Links

In its crudest form, the concept behind Google’s search engine rankings is that a site with more links to it is considered to be a more important, or authoritative site than one with less links pointing to it.  The idea is that the more people who think a webpage or site is worth reading, the more likely it is to be worthwhile. 

To avoid an automated army of websites linking without regard to certain web pages for the sake of boosting their rankings, Google has a bit of a feedback loop.  While the raw number of links matters, links from other important or authoritative sites carry more weight than those from less important sites.

Unfortunately, this loop of authority apparently wasn’t strong enough to stop those who were willing to collect huge numbers of raw links regardless of value from rising in Google’s search rankings.  After all, you can’t assign too much weight to any one authority or else that site becomes the one who determines the rankings.  But, if  you can’t give good sites enough weight to outweigh the efforts of bad sites, then the ranking suffer.

Blogs are Google’s Achilles Heel

While the number of incoming links to a webpage or site is a large factor in determining its authority, there are many other factors as well.  Things like how often a site is updated, or how certain words are used on that site, or which and how many pages of a site are heavily linked all play a major role as well.

This leads to blogs being overly weighted in the Google math that determines search engines.  While blogs tend to be updated frequently, and each post is given its own page which can be directly linked to, such tactics are actually harmful to potentially more authoritative sites.

For example, consider a business or entity in a regulated industry like securities trading.  A mutual fund company, for example, has strict regulations on what it can and cannot say in a forum like its website.  Thus, content must be reviewed by its legal department and perhaps even be approved by a governing body like the SEC.  And, for those that do visit the website the home page is the best place for them to first visit.  After all, topics like investing can be complicated enough without being thrown in on a webpage that isn’t designed to be a first read.

And so, a blog about mutual funds has many more of the qualities that Google likes to see than an actual mutual fund company does.  While this may or may not be a good thing, the truth is that blogs have a heavy influence in any non-obvious search.

The problem for Google is that most blogs allow readers to make comments on individual posts or the site in general.  These comments are usually displayed at the bottom of a page of content and often ask the commenter to leave their name and their internet address, which in the original spirit of the Internet is liked automatically by the blogging software.  And therein, lay the foundation for Google’s destruction.

By commenting on an enormous number of blogs, a web spammer could get a huge number of links to any site they wanted.  And, unlike any phony site the sites the links were coming from were legitimate websites, often with great authority on their topic.

Of course, no one who cares about their website wants to see it spammed and so various tools were put in place to stop or slow such spam links.  But, not everyone keeps going on their blogs even if they don’t take them down and the systems in place weren’t enough to overcome the spammer’s aggressiveness.  So while good and legitimate sites kept comment spammers at bay, those that didn’t were causing too much ranking power to flow to spammer sites risking Google’s rankings.

The sledgehammer Google pushed through to kill the fly was not to fix its algorithm to somehow better account for “comments” but rather to implement the nofollow tag.  Basically, and link that was tagged by the website as nofollow would work as a regular link for human beings, but would not “count” for search engine ranking purposes.  Shortly thereafter, Google’s will was done when the major blogging platforms made comments to be nofollow by default, thus ensuring that even the least maintained of blogs would not pass their ranking power onto the comment spammer’s sites.

To mix some metaphors, the fly in the ointment is coming home to roost.  While the nofollow tag was supposed to keep bad sites from receiving the endorsement of other websites, it has given so called SEO experts a new tool to use to manipulate Google’s rankings from within.

Now, a website can write an authoritative and highly informative article about credit card rewards programs, for example.  In doing so, the author of the webpage can provide links to all the right places like, Citibank, CapitalOne, and even competing resources like creditcards.com .  But then, just one little link on that page could point to another site, perhaps the author’s own credit card rewards program ranking site, or perhaps to a site that pays well for referrals. 

Under the pre-nofollow system the power of that site to influence the authority of those to whom it linked would have been split between all of those links.  This significantly lessens the power to manipulate where the so-called Google juice goes, because the author must link important sources or risk looking uninformed or devious.  So, while the slipped in link still benefits from the page, so to do the real resources and since they will also get numerous similar links from other places, they will continue to earn their rightful place in the rankings.

But, now, thanks to the nofollow tag, the author can provide the links that readers expect, while funneling all of the ranking power to his desired link, all without the reader knowing unless they specifically install a special tool or look at the underlying code.

Already, SEO consultants, websites, and others are recommending that all links be nofollowed by default and only the links the author wants be manually set to be followed.   So, Google has taken the ranking power out of its hands and put it where it doesn’t belong.

Another fix is, no doubt already in the making.  But, will it be any better than the last fix, or is it time to admit the core algorithm has seen its best days?

Oh, and by the way, the comment spammers?  Do a Google search for “blogs that do follow” and guess where they post their comments now?