Didn't Google Release A Scraper Algorithm? Google Wants Scraper Sites To Be Reported

n Friday, Matt Cutts of Google tweeted that he wants users, searchers, webmasters and SEOs to report scraper sites via a special Google Doc Form.

Matt said:

Scrapers getting you down? Tell us about blog scrapers you see: http://goo.gl/S2hIh We need datapoints for testing.

As you may remember, before the Panda update, Google released an algorithm or filter that went after scraper sites. That has been out since late January, so I guess Google is seeking feedback on the quality of that algorithm and looking to improve on it.

It also shows that Google is not happy with the current state of scraper sites found in the index and they are likely going to do something about it in the next six months. So be prepared.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help.

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SES Live: Google + Facebook = Success: Getting More Lift With Social Media

Below is live coverage of the Google + Facebook = Success: Getting More Lift With Social Media panel from the SES San Francisco 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Shanon Woodruff at RankSmart.

Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.

Finished  Auto-Refresh: Off

• 8:31:45 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Google + Facebook = Success: Getting More Lift With Social Media : Live Coverage From SES San Francisco 2011
  
  Speakers:
  Russ Mann, Founder & CEO, Covario
  Alex Funk, Senior Manager, Paid Media, Covario
• 8:36:42 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Starting off with a brief introduction of the speakers.
• 8:41:12 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Search and Social - 42% of budgets are now coming from search. A couple of years ago, social's budgets was either non-existent or came from PR.
  
• 8:47:27 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Russ Mann, Founder & CEO, Covario - Discussion will start about social media, specifically Facebook, at larger companies.
  
  Social Networks Has Grown & Matured
  
  Most social networks have leveled off in population and growth
  
  65 million people "Like" things on FB everyday.
  
  Twitter: 200 million tweets each day on Twitter - Enough content to fill a 10 million page book.
  
  
• 8:48:13 AMShanon Woodruff:
  eMarketer - Facebook leading the charge, but all social players are still growing.
• 8:53:34 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Benefits of Social Media:
  
  -Customer Engagement - 85.4%
  -Direct Customer Comm - 65%
  -Speed f Feedback - 59.9%
  -Learning Customer Preferences - 59.1%
  -Low Cost - 59.1%
  -Brand Building - 48.2%
  -Market Research - 42.3%
  -Credibility of the "crowd" - 40.1%
  -Research - 37.2%
  -Great Lead Generation - 21.2%
  -Customer Services - 17.5%
  
  Social is both a panel and a channel
  Social is the vocal minority, and search is the silent majority
  Search is behavioral - search is emotional
• 8:55:17 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Why should search marketers care about social media? Because they have merged.
  
  Google is including your social network in it's results, and so is Bing.
  
• 8:56:17 AMShanon Woodruff:
  
• 8:57:51 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Ability to hyper-Target - UGC Driven
  
  Search is about targeting terms, social is about hyper-targeting from the additional information generated from UGC. This allows you to better understand the user.
• 8:59:51 AMShanon Woodruff:
  In your work with customers, how are you approaching creating a comprehensive search and social media programs - including both paid and earned?
  
  Building a search and social campaign must be holistic.
• 9:03:15 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Define Goals, Then KPIs:
  
  -Increase reach
  -Be Top Mind
  -Grow audience
  -Communicate with your customers
  -Learn from your market and gain feedback drive engagement
  -Drive engagement and Online/Offline conversions
• 9:05:12 AMShanon Woodruff:
  In any campaign you should optimize between 3-6 KPIs( Key Performance Indicator) at a time.
• 9:07:31 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Social Media - Measuring Success
  
  -Awareness: A person views a paid ad, sponsored account or fan page
  -Consideration: A person takes action to learn about product within any one area
  -Conversion: Completion of a final action
  
  
  
• 9:10:45 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Search and Social Data:
  
  SEM Keywords > Interestes plus Categories > User Data > Keywords Better Message > Refine Search
  
  When you put all this together you get a better picture of who your audience is.
• 9:14:07 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Use your social media campaign data to support any of the paid campaigns that you are using. Example: If your Twitter data is showing that a specific topic is doing well in three specific states, you can use that information to better aim your paid campaigns.
  
  What Was: People, Process, and Technology
  
  Now: Strategy, Structure, and System
• 9:17:34 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Inquire, Engage, and Maximize are the keys to a successful social media campaign
  
  
  
• 9:23:24 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Using you social media data can help you reduce the cost of acquisition.
  
  How's it Working?
  
  Promoted Trends on Twitter now cost only $120k per day (Up from $25k per day 1 year Piror)
  
• 9:23:56 AMShanon Woodruff:
  7 Tips to Drive Search and Social Media Engagement:
  
  
  -Be Honest - Don't ride unrelated trends
  -Ask relevant questions
  -Offer Perk/rewards
  -Recycling is bad - keep content fresh
  -Timely communication
  -Monitor your spikes, like and dislikes
  -Don't use as a pure "sales channel" unless that's understood (@DellOutlet)
• 9:30:37 AMShanon Woodruff:
  Q&A
  
  Q: What was the critical success factor in your FB example
  
  A: Lots of testing, stories, ad units - set up a wide net to begin with - at start is was over a dollar a fan, but with the data collected, it decreased the cost to less that 50 cents a fan - The same things that help you rank higher will help you with social, good quality content, testing, and data will help you to grow your social media campaign.
  
  Q: Did Google end their contract with Twitter, and are tweets showing up slower in results?
  
  A: Yes. It is not moving to Google Plus to feed the instant results on your Google searches. Also, its is not Google vs Bing or Google vs FB, for marketers it is both.
• 9:31:19 AMShanon Woodruff:
  The End - Google + Facebook = Success: Getting More Lift With Social Media : SES San Fran 2011 Live Coverage

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SES Live: Advanced Link Building, Panda Solutions, SEO Tools, and More!

Below is live coverage of the Advanced Link Building, Panda Solutions, SEO Tools, and More! panel from the SES San Francisco 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Ben Pfeiffer at RankSmart.

Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.

Finished  Auto-Refresh: Off

• 1:12:45 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim Boykin Gives Advice on Advanced Link Building, Panda Solutions, SEO Tools, and More!
  Jim has been a leader in the field of Internet Marketing and SEO for over 10 years. Jim will show you some of his most "killer tactics" for obtaining some of the most trusted backlinks in the world. Jim will also talk about the Panda Update and will give many tips on how can you recover. If you haven't been hit by Panda, Jim will tell you what you still need to know to prevent your site from being hit by Panda in the future. Jim will also talk about some of the best Internet marketing tools on the market, and how can you utilize them to be an Internet Marketing Hero.
  
  Speaker:
  Jim Boykin, CEO and Link Building Ninja, We Build Pages Internet Marketing Services
• 1:18:31 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim starts by asking some questions from the audience.
• 1:19:18 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He asks how many people where affected by Panda?
• 1:19:38 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He says the first Panda update was Feb 24th.
• 1:20:09 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  There have been several updates since then, mini update. He says Panda will continue to roll out. There are a lot of important lessons to learn from these updates.
• 1:20:15 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  What is Panda?
• 1:20:43 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Google said they don't like content farms. But many of the sites that got hit where not content farms, ecommerce got hit, his own personal sites got hit.
• 1:20:54 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Brands seemed to benefit from Panda
• 1:21:22 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Panda is all about content and usability. It's on the page level, its like cancer. Dragging you down. It affects your whole website.
• 1:21:44 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  A page that links to lots of low quality pages can have its page score lowered.
• 1:22:41 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  It kinda works like a backwards PageRank. If Page A links to Page B, and Page B has a low quality score then the score for page A can be lowered because it links to back B.
• 1:23:06 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Things have changed. Pages that are in the supplemental index, can not drag down your website.
• 1:23:15 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  One of the biggest issue is duplicate content.
• 1:23:23 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  It's a huge issue.
• 1:24:00 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Use: site:mywebsite.com "snippet of content from your website" If you are not #1, then Google doesn't think you are the original content.
• 1:24:27 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  If you are do that same search and it shows multiple pages on your website that have the same snippet. That is not also good.
• 1:25:25 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Google's advice: "we often measure whether users click the "back" button quickly after visiting a search result, which might indicate a lack of satisfaction with your site."
• 1:26:06 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  The quote was from Amit on Feb 24, the day after Panda was released
• 1:26:16 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Some factors to look at on your website.
• 1:26:38 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Time on Page? Less than 15 seconds, you may have a problem. If they return to Google
• 1:27:18 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Pages Visited? You may have a problem if no one explores your deep content, except those from a search result.
• 1:27:49 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Brand Loyalty? Are 90% of your visitors first time visitors (and from Search) who never return.
• 1:28:22 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Exit Rates and Bounce Rates? What are people doing on your high exit rate pages? Finding answers, or returning to Google?
• 1:28:53 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Pogo sticking? Not in your Analytics. Pogo sticking is short clicks and long clicks.
• 1:30:02 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  To paraphrase Tolstoy (a google engineer) happy users were all the same. The best sign of their happiness was the long click. This occurred when someone when to a search result, ideally the top one and did not return.
• 1:30:35 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim is going to go through Amit's 23 questions about your website.
• 1:31:37 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  For example: Would you trust this information? Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast? Duplicate content or just slightly different content? Would you give your credit card to this site?
• 1:32:20 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Spelling and style errors? Content written for interest or for search engines? Original content? Value your page offers compared to other pages in the top 10? How much quality control do you have?
• 1:33:28 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Spelling errors? Content written by an expert? Original content? Value your pages offers companies to other pages int he top 10? How much quality control do you have?
• 1:34:19 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Testing.. having some connection issues..
• 1:34:59 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Testing again...
• 1:35:23 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Okay it seems to be fixed.
• 1:35:47 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim recommends going through your website and making a list of pages you want to remove.
• 1:36:33 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim says there is a lot of things you can do to fix pages, one of them is removing pages. He says he strongly recommends it.
• 1:36:50 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He has clients that have recovered from Panda. Most of all their traffic has come back.
• 1:37:04 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Some of the solutions to Panda.
• 1:37:15 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  1. Study Your Google Analytics.
• 1:37:32 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  2. Perform a usability analysis.
• 1:37:54 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  3. Performa a Clicktale analysis
• 1:38:11 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  4. Perform a content analysis.
• 1:38:24 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  5. Kill Pages - merge, no index.
• 1:38:33 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  6. Create new designs.
• 1:39:28 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He says you need to write longer content. Informative content. 300 words just won't cut it anymore.
• 1:39:52 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  What happens when you can get rid of those 10,000 pages. The solution is to keep them but prevent Google from spidering them.
• 1:40:13 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim next talks about Author Rank. Not so much about Panda, maybe a little bit.
• 1:42:00 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Google is making a big effort to identify original authors on the site.
• 1:43:27 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Author Rank is similar to Page Rank
• 1:43:43 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  How can your utilize Author Rank
• 1:43:50 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  1. Create an author for your site.
• 1:44:09 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  2. Facebook, twitter... be active
• 1:44:34 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  3. Write content, get links to that content... the better the links, the more trusted the author will be.
• 1:44:55 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Use the author for even product description pages.. Cite that and it might help these pages.
• 1:45:10 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Now some advanced link building tips.
• 1:45:36 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Your must promote that great content!
• 1:45:48 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Presell pages... so 2007ish
• 1:46:14 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  A published Author.. now that's 2012!
• 1:48:29 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Link Wheels so 2010 or even 2011ish.
• 1:49:05 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Backlinks to Backlinks... Now that's 2012.
• 1:50:16 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  If you get a link from Nasa.gov. Build links to that page. It increases the value.
• 1:50:43 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  blah blah stuff I can't repeat as requested from Jim. :)
• 1:54:22 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Linkbait is so 2007.. Getting followers, likes, and mentions is so 2012.
• 1:55:20 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Begging for links.. thats so 2007ish. Fixing existing pages is better. Hey Stanford professor, you have some broken links, he is a great fix.
• 1:55:48 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Short tail or long tail? Measure your risk.
• 1:55:57 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim asks if there is anyone here from Google?
• 1:56:26 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Link building helps you to rank in the short tail results.
• 1:56:57 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  If you want to rank for the short tail, such as car insurance. You need to have people linking to your site with the term "car insurance"
• 1:57:11 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  How do you get links like that... you can give people money. Google doesn't like that.
• 1:57:23 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim said do not buy links... disclaimer.
• 1:57:40 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  But if you don't buy links you are probably not going to rank for short tail phrases.
• 1:58:01 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He says if you not going to buy links, you might as well give up on the short tail.
• 1:58:19 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  You can make up the traffic with the long tail.
• 1:58:48 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  If you get caught buying links... You remove the links, say you never knew you were supposed to do that.
• 1:59:19 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim says don't do: blog reviews (bad). They are so easy to spot.
• 2:00:41 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim says... Directories. Only a good handful. Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW.
• 2:01:09 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim says: Bulk Links... if its obvious you have a ton of paid links its harder to tell Google you didn't know any better.
• 2:02:00 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Links in sidebars and footers are more obviously and don't have as much impact as those links in middle content.
• 2:02:17 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim recommends subpages links, homepages are too easy to spot.
• 2:03:48 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim says content syndication.. Not a lot of value. Is it the same article published on the many websites.
• 2:04:06 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Same with press releases. Those don't hold much value.
• 2:04:22 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Link bait is still good, but its evolved.
• 2:04:48 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Trustbait is writing content for educators, long articles, few pictures.
• 2:05:27 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Paid links still work.. but its a risk vs. reward
• 2:05:37 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Another method is going for the long tail.
• 2:06:08 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Jim is going to breeze through tools. Not much time left.
• 2:06:41 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Good tip: linkdomain:yoursite.com -site:yoursite.com in Yahoo Singapore
• 2:07:24 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He highly recommends SEMRush.com
• 2:10:09 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  He also recommends TweetReach.com. Shows how many that tweet reached.
• 2:12:13 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  One solution (maybe) to Panda is putting that content on a subdomain.
• 2:12:47 PMBen Pfeiffer:
  Session is over.
  
  

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