Geilt's Blog

Why Bing Why?

I have been tracking backlinks to my site daily / weekly. All the sudden you decide to redesign your webmaster tools interface and leave out one of the most important aspects…the backlinks. Now I have nothing but Google, Yahoo and SEOmoz Backlinks to compare too…

Ah well, I guess it’s not major loss just annoying that it breaks the flow of my analysis. The new Bing Webmaster Tools is based off of Microsoft Silverlight, of which an update needs to be installed to work. I hate having to restart my browser to get a page to work!

If you are looking for Bing’s Backlinks, you won’t find them anymore. Unless they just “forgot” to put them in, I am guessing the reason they will not show backlinks anymore will be some lame excuse like “we don’t want people trying to game the system, so we are taking the numbers out of the system.” This will suck for SEO’s, but who cares about Bing anyways?

Microsoft has gone through so much re-branding of their search engine its ridiculous. Even though it seems like they spent alot on advertising their new search engine when it first came out, that momentum has lost its traction long ago. Old Spice is doing a better job than they ever did!

One of the things I have been reviewing is pay for e-mail management and marketing tools. I have yet to decide if I want to go forth into this realm because of a few ethical issues I have. Mainly, the freeness of Google.

I can teach people to use Google to manage their entire lives. I manage my entire life with Google. From Android to Google Docs, everything runs through my Google Account. Why? Because:

1. It’s Free
2. Storage Upgrades are Cheap!
3. Reliable, large company, not going anywhere anytime soon.
4. Free E-mail Forwarding.
5. Mobile Sync! (Android)
6. (New!) Full Mutliple E-mail Address Management

Sure, there are a couple things it doesn’t do automatically, like send pretty HTML links with video of yourself . But thats what youtube is for! You can embed or link Youtube videos manually if you REALLY want to.

Everything that a pay for App does, I have found I can do for myself for free…except drip marketing, and a couple of e-mail analytics.

So, are there benefits? Sure…Google services are kind of piecemeal. They are all unified under one account but they are technically the developed remnants of older (bought out) products, and mostly in Beta! But, the fact that everything synchronized with my android phone is amazing.

However, these online tools feature microsoft exchange…or at least work like Microsoft Exchange (supposedly), so I am sure for a blackberry or iPhone user they could come in handy for sure.

What are your thoughts? Would you pay 10 – 40 $ a month for E-mail / Marketing service packages and storage? (Doesn’t that sound like alot?!!?) when extra space on Gmail is 5$ / year / 20 GB or so!

I may try this online e-mail service I have found, and will write about it at a later time if it has any benefits over Google Apps. I could continue to do what I am doing: helping people better there lives with Google and all the apps that they don’t know exist (Docs, Picasa, Voice), or I could start offering simple 1 cost all in one solutions from newer/less known companies.

I guess people trust their e-mails to worse companies (Godaddy! OMG!) and Outlook POP3 Accounts accidentally configured to pull all e-mail from the web and delete it (Ouch! No Cloud Backup!) So there should be a market for it!

Your thoughts? Twitterverse? Facebookland?

As if they didn’t have enough Data already (They always say they don’t!) Google has acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains Freebase, a open database about over 12 million things in the world of varying topics.

It’s a no brainer really. Google’s main purpose is to Index the web, if not the world. The more Data Google has access to, the better.  Metaweb must be happy to work with such a worldwide conglomrate like Google. I Suppose this acquisition makes Metaweb employees Google employees? (How I wish I was a Google Employee).

The more I think about Google and what it is doing worldwide the more I want to somehow be connected to their projects. I hope one day I’ll be able to contribute to the worldwide phenomenon that Google has become. They are at the forefront of everything. Unlike secret government / private projects that develop new sciences and inventions, Google is a public company doing public projects that everyone can benefit from.

Check out Freebase sometime and take a first hand look at what Google is acquired. Remember what you see here, so you can compare it to what will help turn it into with both funding and promotion in the future.

One of the most sought after features of Gmail has been integrated Multiple E-mail Signatures. Many people use Gmail accounts with muliple domain name accounts and use forwarders and SMTP auth to send out e-mails…consolidating all their e-mails into one place. It’s great…but it just got even better! Now you can actually change yoru signature PER e-mail account name so you no longer will send out your long well written but incorrect signature when writing to people from different e-mail accounts. No more greasemonkey scripts or “canned” response workaround…it just works.

Check your Settings -> General menu in Gmail to find a nifty and easy to use drop down menu that will by default use your current signature in each and every one, but is easily updateable and stores what youve written per e-mail…don’t forget to click save after you are done!!

Not only did gmail introduce this feature but they also added a formatting bar to it so you can actually have a solid HTML signature as well.

I am so excited I had to tweet about it in caps, I have been waiting for this feature for so long. I just hope that my android phone will get an update to do the same too.

I can only assume that this change was made easier with transitions to HTML5, which works the browser better, or its some massively simple script they wrote. Either way it works, fast, and when you reply to as another e-mail (and have it set up properly) it automatically puts in the proper signature. No mess no fuss, exactly what I expect from my Google Overlords *praise*.

Have fun everyone!!

JohnMu of Google said in a Google Webmaster Help thread:

“Yes, we revamped the data behind the backlinks feature in Webmaster Tools — it has started using more data from “Caffeine” for some sites and is planned to continue with a bit more data in the next week or so. The goal is to have more fresher & up-to-date data there.”

All I can say is…it’s about freaking time. But also scary. After months and months of making backlinks for one of my sites and watching them slowly drip away, for some still unknown reason, all the sudden I end up with 1000% more…and it’s still dripping away…at an accelerated rate!

Thinking it was a bug, I didn’t take notice. I didn’t even report it to my superiors, why get their hopes up? It also hasn’t changed anything in the SERPS for us anyways. However, it may have come just in time to save one of my employees jobs (My Link Builder).

Google confirms that this change is permanent, and for sure Caffeine related. The increases in the amount of links is huge. It actually seems very similar to the large numbers Yahoo usually gives, but comparing the two at the moment shows a much larger amount in Google Webmaster Tools than Yahoo Site Explorer (usually vice versa by alot.)

One of the most difficult things about SEO is trying to prove WHAT produces WHAT type of traffic. It is annoying, and difficult to do. It is never ever accurate. Why? Because of numbers from systems like these. I put all these efforts into building links for my sites and Google, Yahoo, Bing all decide by some magic number or formula if and when they want to pick them up, and then decide if and when they want those numbers to influence the SERPS. Crazy I tell ya, but thats the job and that’s the industry. They make it a mystery so we cant influence the SERPS the way we want….unless we have tons of money we want to throw at the project (Like hiring a Lobbyist).

Good luck to all other SEO’s out there. I hope we can harness the metrics from this new technology in order to make our jobs and role more prosperous and efficient. I always knew Caffeine would be good for me.