I have not really posted on Bing, etc. There have been so many false dawns with Microsoft on the search front that I thought I would wait to see if this was just another re-brand with no substance.

More to come on this, but my three thoughts are:

1. Bing is actually quite a decent search engine (shock!) and if they build on this solid base Microsoft will eventually have something (in some way) to rival Google. Apart from the fact that (more shock!) Bing is more than just a re-brand and Microsoft have actually got some thing right, this thought is based upon the law of diminishing returns (Google can’t make as many leaps and bounds in the search side of the business as Microsoft can at this point in time). Therefore if MS continue on this track they will eventually make enough ground to be a serious contender. Whether anyone (or enough to make it interesting) will use their engine is another matter (see item 2… they just have).

2. Today’s Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they will pair up on the natural search front gives them enough joint searchers to make this a distant but worthwhile contender to Google’s strength. UK wise they still have to make a lot of ground even jointly, but worldwide their combined power is now significant. Like item 1 they now need to build on this to make the alliance a good and seamless one, that way they can develop the offering and seriously market to entice users to switch them from Google.

3. A really little point this, but try http://pagehunt.msrlivelabs.com/PlayPageHunt.aspx. This is the first time I have found something from Microsoft on the search front that overtly tries to go the extra mile. As said it is a small thing (and the current version of this test, isn’t wonderful), but it does show a sign that they have got some people who will try to push things along. If they engender this spirit then the momentum may just mean that they get a group of people who want and believe they can upset the big guys (I know it sounds strange saying that about Microsoft, but in this instance it is very true). Mind set wise this is absolutely crucial and a really difficult one for Microsoft (bearing in mind how arrogant they can be).

So there you go. I will now start to take a bit more interest in Microsoft/Yahoo from a natural search side (PPC wise I always did). Who knows maybe this time next year we will have a slightly different story on our hands. A long way to go though but a least this time they have made a real start.

P.S. to celebrate this I have now added a ‘Bing’ category, who would have thought it!

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. What with one thing or another, I just haven’t had the time to get some done. Maybe it is the temptation to just micro blog things now. Still, no excuses.

As you will have noticed I put up a box on the top right a while ago offering a free SEO assessment (from a top UK SEO no less… self proclamation is it really needed or worthwhile?). Well, we have got to the stage now where I am getting about two or three enquiries per day for this; thank you! Every person who submits a request gets a personalised assessment back. Some are brief and some are somewhat longer (depending on my current time pressures), but all of them should add some insight and value to the SEO situation for the site concerned.

There were two reasons I started this service. The first was to keep myself fresh (you know what I mean) and ‘with it’ with new sites and situations to look at and analyse. The second was to, maybe, get some paid assignments out of it too. This is when the initial assessment is greeted with a ‘let’s talk further’. I am pleased to say that I have hit the mark with both of these goals so far.

So what has changed? Well, I would like to open these out a bit and maybe once a month use a particularly good (or bad) situation and write about it publicly. The good news here is that the public ones will be quite in depth (the ones that usually have a fee attached if the person/company wants me to go a lot further) and this (public) assessment will now be free. This will only be by agreement (if you ask for an assessment you won’t now suddenly find me dissecting your site in a live post) and also I will make sure the version that appears here is a little bit more truncated that the one you will get. Hey, we might even do some live video or screen cam ones.

Now, here comes my get out. If this takes off too much I may have to rein back on the amount that I can do and be more selective. But let’s see how it goes.

If you would like me to give you an SEO assessment overview of your site, just send your detail via the contact form. You never know you might be the first one to get an extended assessment for free and make it on to the site too.

P.S. as the name of the site suggests this site is (meant to) concentrate on the UK SEO scene. So, please don’t be offended, but I do ask for the sites submitted to be UK based (doesn’t need to be  hosted in the UK, but needs to be administered in the UK). However, if you have a site outside of this region and you think (or know) I couldn’t resist to delve further on the SEO side you are welcome to submit it and give it a try!

My goodness, I knew that Matt was making some videos about questions he has had regarding SEO, etc., but I didn’t realise how many he had made. Well done Matt, it must have been a hell of a session(s).

I found this video regarding checking for back links, etc. Matt also mentions the ‘link:’ search command. I did an article on the Google ‘link:’ command a few days ago and talked about its flakiness. Matt mentioned the Google stance that they only show a few links to give a small overview of the back link profile to protect the link data from prying eyes, etc. I am not saying that this is not on the money, it is just that the ‘weirdness’ of some of the results is puzzling. Also, how exactly do Google get a real randomness to this subsection of results?

Anyway, here is Matt’s video.

Let’s not put too much weight on this analysis. I am sure it is not going to lead us to the Google search holy grail or anything. I have just always thought that it was very strange for the best search company in the world to put its name to flaky results, no matter how they down play it.

There is a great tool for creating tag or word clouds for any given web page or site. It is called Wordle. Check it out.

For fun I though I would see what the word cloud looked like for this site. Here it is.

Guess what the most used word is? I will give you a clue it is not Yahoo or Bing!

Have you ever received one of those emails that says,

“As you may know Google puts a great deal of store in incoming links. We have noticed that your site has very few incoming links according to Google. You can try this for yourself by typing ‘link:www.yourwebite.co.uk’ into Google. This will show you how many incoming links Google can see for your website. As you can see you only have 23!”

The email usually goes on to say what a wonderful job they could do for you and how 23 links is a pretty rubbish effort.

As you probably know Google has always treated the ‘link:’ command in a very lacklustre way. This is the direct opposite to the way it treats literally any other search term. I have always been quite puzzeled by this and thought that Google may as well just pull the facility rather than leave something out there that was, at best, poor and at worst damaging.

So based upon my last post ‘Google Search Operators‘ I thought I would have a small play with the ‘link:’ command mixed in with some other operators. The theory is that any insight you can get into how Google views links must be worth something.

To start with this is what usually happens with the ‘link:’ command in Google. Listed below are the results for this site and some others.

Search Kingdom ‘link:’ results in Google

Search Engine Land ‘link:’ results in Google

Matt Cutts ‘link:’ results in Google

Apart from the fact that both Danny’s and Matt’s sites have infinitely more links than me (boo hoo), you can see the way that Google treats sites with more importance (and links) with the ‘link:’ command.

The results you get usually mimic the ratio of internal links/pages and external links. Both Danny’s and Matt’s sites have thousands of incoming links from a wide variety of websites. So the results the ‘link:’ command returns for their sites are varied and depicts the ratio of incoming and internal links on the sites in question. Try this for yourself on your own site or any sites you mat be working on. Are there many results? Can you see more internal links than external links? Are the internal links/pages at the top of the results? Do you see a site wide external link coming up first? If so how many pages are shown and what pages are they? Do they look pretty random?

Answering some or all of the above may be a small insight into the way that Google looks at link weight and importance of your site or in general.

Now, after mixing the ‘link:’ command with other operators and having a little bit of a play with this it seems in most cases the results go crazy! If you are going to play with this yourself pick websites that have small to medium amounts of links and in contrast also ones that have lots of incoming links. The craziness for a site with a smaller to medium number of links is really interesting and seems to go really off the wall. For instance the ‘link:’ command really breaks down if you use this site (www.searchkingdom.co.uk) as an example and then add the ‘-site:www.searchkingdom.co.uk’ operator to the search command. For example:

Weird incoming ‘link:’ search results for www.searchkingdom.co.uk

The results really expand from the palty ’3′ for the ‘link:’ command without any operators. As you can see the thread works for some of the time through the results, but Google also decides to mix in some results for the term ‘search kingdom’ and include pages that do not link to this website and seem to be about Kingdom Hearts. There are lots of references on the web to ‘search Kingdom Hearts’ and for some reason Google decided to mix these results in with my ‘link:’ command. Does this mean that the operator has ‘broken’ the results here or just made them more interesting?

Try this on your own site and also test this out with some more operators. Also, have a look at the ‘related:’ command. Both of these commands mixed with other operators spit out some really interesting results that are worth examining.

Overall, there is a definite possibility that the ‘link:’ command in Google is just a broken and forgotten about thing that no one pays much attention towards. This is certainly the reputation the command has built up. However, it is worth having a closer look at the craziness that some of these results throw up and seeing if these can give us even a small insight into how Google views some of its link structure, the weight it places on some links and how it deals with unique links.

Now we all know that a good link is one that is relevant, not bought, intrinsic and valid. These are the links you need to find to give your site the importance and exposure you would like it to have. The quality of your content and the way you market that content will give you more reward than anything else. However, Google hold the cards in this particular game, so shedding any light on what hand they have  is always useful.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has discovered some more interesting results. This will help to see whether it will be valid and useful to take this analysis further.

Do you use the many Google search operators to slice and dice your search results to best effect for your SEO link building work? This is a great way to hone your searching and bring to the forefront some interesting and valid potential link partners.

Here is a basic helpsheet on Google search operators that will get you started. There are lots of other reference sheets on the web that will go into more detail on all of them.

Here is one tip to be going on with…

We all know that the title tag of any given page is a crucial on-page SEO factor. So a page that can be found for the term you are working on that doesn’t have that term in its title could be an undiscovered authoritative page. The theory is that there is a good possibility that the page might just be a good page on the subject that hasn’t been SEOed to extremes. Worth checking out eh?

By using Google search operators this is easy, just type this in your Google search box:

your term -intitle:your term

Want to get rid of some more of the results that have related words in the page’s title? Try this:

your term -intitle:your term *

Google is not great at listing these type of results in a direct order of popularity so you will have to sift through some dodgy sites/pages (but hey, this is the Internet!). However, you will discover a few gems that may have gone below your radar otherwise.

This is just one of the many ways you can use Google’s search operators to help you in your SEO link building. There are lot more. Which ones do you use?