Traffic Flow SEO

SearchMerge is great for helping you search FriendFeed, Google, Twitter, YouTube and more all at once. Think of it as one big collective search engine. Instead of going to each to get your results, you can now search them all at once. While there are many other engines that do this same thing, SearchMerge does it with a style that is unique, appealing and easy to use.

Check it out today at - SearchMerge

Bing is the name of Microsoft's latest attempt at perfecting its search engine and trying to acquire market share. Here is the press release from Microsoft:

Microsoft’s New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions

Decision Engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload.

REDMOND, Wash. — May 28, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

A New Approach to Internet Search

Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.

* Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.
* Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.
* Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft’s research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn’t optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.

The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:

* Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise.
* Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel.
* Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Microsoft is committed to building better tools to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. Bing is an important first step toward this long-term vision and a strong indicator of Microsoft’s commitment to move search technology forward for customers.

Here is an interesting video about Bing - Bing Video

Here is the future site - Bing Homepage

I am actually pretty excited about this new release and am curious if it will be just a good idea or good for market share increases (or both).

From the creators of my favorite directory submission service - Directory Maximizer - comes Social Maximizer! This incredible service starts at only $5.00 and only actually costs .19 cents per submission. They currently have around 136 social bookmarking/networking sites available (list is always being updated).

Check it out today at - Social Maximizer

And for all your low cost manual directory submissions:


Check it out here - Directory Maximizer

Here are a collection of some of my favorite website value estimators. These are mostly not very accurate, if even remotely close, but they are a lot of fun and provide some valuable insight into metrics that make a website valuable.

According to the site below, if I wished to sell this blog (www.trafficflowseo.com) the valuation is all over the board. See below for estimated website valuation then check out your own.

Sites:

Site Value Check - $4,826.00
- Quick and clean interface with a great reporting metrics outlining an explanation of value.

Stimator - $132,849.00
- Has a very cool dashboard that updates the value in dollars as it analyzes the metrics in real-time - though does not appear to be very accurate.

Website Outlook - $7,285.40
- Great set of stats provided including potential daily ad revenue. Also provides a nice widget for you site.

Your Website Value - $6,658.00
- Show trends and provides a nice widget for your site.

My Website Worth - $5,612.00
- Quick and basic estimator. Does include some basic metrics including Alexa and Compete charts.

U2/WS - $52,697.10
- Pretty basic and pretty inaccurate.

Worthbot - $1,351.89
- Quick, basic review and a nice widget for your site.

So, in my estimate I believe that Stimator is the most accurate and I will start the bidding on this website at $132,000......:-)

Have fun!

I just love web directories that appear to have a high Google PageRank of say a 5 or 6 for the homepage (which is usually where they advertise this fact), but if you look deeper none of the inner pages have any PageRank at all. This usually can help you separate out the good sites from the all hype sites when looking for web directories to submit to and/or partners to ask for links from.

There never seems to be an easy way to check out a site until I stumbled on theGetPR.com. This is a great site that offers many tools for monitoring and managing your Google PagRank, but the tool I found the most valuable was their 'Check Internal Pagerank of your Website' tool.

Check it out here for FREE - theGetPR.com

While researching a new domain name for a new website that I am working on I found this incredibly useful domain name tooklit website. Here are some of the features highlighted:

- Domain Checker - instant domain checking (AJAX domain checking for domain extensions of .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, and .us).

- Word Search - allows you to search through all domain names which contain a word. This includes domains which are available, deleted, expired, or pre-release.

- Domain Lists - list of all domains left which are 3 or 4 characters long.

- Bulk Lookup - review an unlimited number of domains to be checked for availability.

- Domain Generator - generates domain names using lists of keywords created from two separate lists of keywords.

- Dictionary - list of all domains available which can be found in the dictionary.

- Dashboard - tracking of your favorite domains saved from other tools.

Check it all out for FREE at - PCNames

Just found a really interesting and unique tool for spying on your competition. Here is the definition as described on the site:

SpyOnWeb.com takes the information from public sources, then structures it for your quick and convenient search for the websites that probably belong to the same owner. Our web crawler picks out the following data: ip address, google adsense id, google analytics id, yahoo publisher network id, yandex direct id.

With our research tool you can easily disclose websites with the same ip address, advertising and statistic codes.

Enter domain, ip address or a partner id to detect the network, discover your rivals in internet business and use this data for your further strategy.

We have indexed more than 35 million domains.
And collected more than:

* 6 261 720 sites with Google Analytics code.
* 2 474 430 sites with Google AdSense code.
* 14 601 sites with Yahoo Publisher Network code.
* 12 763 sites with Yandex Direct code.

It is a pretty cool tool that appears to be very accurate (just checked one of my sites).

Check it out for free today at - SpyOnWeb.com

Nifty Stats is a free desktop utility, which automatically at regular intervals, downloads the stats from your affiliate programs. It brings automated statistics right to your desktop for any time frame predefined by you.

Check it out today at - Nifty Stats

It is FINALLY here. Wolfram Alpha is now LIVE! My first impression is not so good. I can barely get the page to load. This seems eerily like the launch of Cuil (you know, that engine that had a big splash and then all but disappeared). What I mean but that is that when Cuil was launched there servers went down over and over again and basically they had a complete flop on the day of their launch - a lot of hype and not enough resources to handle it. Well, I am able to get through, eventually to the Wolfram Alpha site, but it is very slow (measured in minutes, not seconds). I hope they get this figured out quick as this will definitely have a negative impact on their initial impression to many users. Good luck Wolfram!

Review from TechCrunch

Check it out here - Wolfram Alpha

Try out a search within this widget - it is a lot of fun!

My new favorite 'mini' search engine - get it here for yourself (for your site) - Mini SearchMe Widget

Did I say FREE, yep you can have your own search engine for FREE. Below are links for services to help you build your new FREE search engine. Google better lookout!

Resources:




buildasearch link



Search Network link



Google Custom Search link



Citosearch link



Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) link

Here is the information from Google:

Google shows you relevant results based on the words you enter in the search box. But what if you're looking for a specific type of results, like restaurant reviews updated within the last 24 hours? Instead of painstakingly spelling out the conditions you'd like to use, use options on the search results page to slice and dice your results. These options let you do the following:

- Filter results according to their type, such as videos, forums, and reviews
- Filter results according to when they were created or last updated
- Alter how your results are displayed

Here is a link with more information - New Google Search Options Explained

Great cartoon from the guys at - FlashDaWeb

Great name and great site - Bulkdog.com offers FREE bulk domain checking that includes Google PageRank (PR), Alexa and a Web thumbnail if you like for up to 20 domains at a time. What is great about this site in addition to that fact that it is free, is that it is so fast. When I say fast I mean that it can churn through 20 domains in less than 20 seconds! Now that is fast.

Check it out today at - Bulkdog.com

My favorite directory submission service, Directory Maximizer just got a face lift. In addition to a new look they have added a couple of new features. Basically this is one of the best services on the web. They can manage and keep track of all your directory submissions (from their ever updated list) in one great spot all for only .14 cents per submission.

Also, just as a side note Directory Maximizer also has a discounted paid directory section with discounts available for some of the top web directories like Aviva and Family Friendly Sites (both with an incredible Google PageRank of 6). These discounts are always available and they selectively add in new directories every once in awhile. Very cool and very unique.

Check it out today at - Directory Maximizer Submission Services

Wanna have some fun with your Twitter account? Then check out Huitter. It is a great resource with some interesting tools that include:

* Mutuality - is a simple service which allows you to make bulk operations with your account like unfollow all who do not follow you back, unfollow all and follow all who follow you.

* GTalk2Twitter - is a service that watches your Google Talk status and post it to Twitter.

* Twitter2Feed - is a free simple service which represents your Twitter timeline like a RSS feed.

* Love/Hate - see how often people use certain words in Twitter.

* Microsites (very cool) - allows you to build you own site that will represent Twitter status updates of your Twitter users list. (sample #1, sample #2)

Check it all out here for free at - Huitter

Best of the Web (BOTW), one of my favorite and most respected web directories on the Internet is offering a 15% off coupon code for all submissions in May including:
- Best of the Web Directory
- Best of the Web Blog Directory
- Best of the Web Directory (UK and Ireland)
- Best of the Web Local

The code is - MAYDAY

Link for coupon code usage

Happy Submitting!

In case you are interested, digiWebTools recently launched and is offering a great consolidation of FREE webmaster (and SEO/SEM) tools in a central location.

digiWebTools claims to be different in this explanation from their site:

Our unique features include:

* Most comprehensive collections of online web tools.
* Customized tool's collections: Users can set up their own collections.
* Posibility of integration of external web tools to user account - All webmaster tools in one place.
* Posibility of sharing tools and collections with other users.
* Easy tool and collection management system.
* Smart tool searching by keywords.
* And many more webmaster tools and unique features are under development ...

Check it all out today for FREE at - digiWebTools

Just saw a post on the DMOZ (Open Directory) Blog that is titled, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T for DMOZ". Well, well, well, the DMOZ wants us to respect them, huh? From the most non-transparent and corrupt directory organization on the web this seems a bit of a surprise.

Let me walk you through what the DMOZ wants you to believe as to where your submission(s) go:

Here is their explanation:
http://blog.dmoz.org/2008/10/10/what-happens-after-i-submit-my-site-to-dmoz/

Here is mine:


Unless you offer this:


Here are some fun resources for your viewing pleasure:

- DMOZ Extortion (Shoemoney)
- The DMOZ Mob Strikes Again (Yoast)
- Trouble at the DMOZ (Turner Dow Search Engine Optimisation)
- Corrupt DMOZ Editor Blog (a confession)

There are very open buying and sales of DMOZ links on the forums - see below:

- Guaranteed DMOZ Listing (check out the amount of responses)
- Guaranteed DMOZ Listing 2 (still lots of people ready to bid on the project)

The list goes on and on, the above only represents two samples of an endless ocean of requests and fulfilled orders for guaranteed listings in the DMOZ.

Hell, they even have a way to report the abuse on their own website - Open Directory Public Abuse Report System

What should happen is simple. Make the DMOZ a paid directory. It will weed out the crap and allow it to generate some much needed income for AOL (the current owner) as does the Yahoo Directory for Yahoo. It will end the corruption as you can now 'officially' buy your way in and Google will still probably give it the credibility they do as they need to keep their search agreement with AOL in place as it is up for review soon.

While I love and respect web directories (and own some myself), respect for the DMOZ is something they are going to have to earn not request and it will probably not happen anytime soon.