Organic SEO Blog

Today, Google officially celebrates its 10th Birthday… Lets wish Google many many happy returns of the day BTW, How old is Google?

Following are the rules of the Nukoo SEO Contest

1. REGISTRATION: Registration for this skill-based competition requires payment of a entry fee.  Void where prohibited or restricted. By entering, each participant agrees to be bound by these Official Rules and the decisions of Sponsor, which shall be final. Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify any person that Sponsor determines to be in violation of any term contained in these rules.

2. SPONSOR: Wes Upchurch (”Sponsor”), 5451 S Bethel Road, Columbia, MO, is offering The Nukoo SEO Contest described in these Official Rules (the “contest”).

3. ELIGIBILITY: The contest is open only to individuals who (i) register at Nukoo.com prior to the close of the Entry Period (as described below); and (ii) are 13 years of age or older at the beginning of the applicable Entry Period.  Employees of Nukoo, its affiliated companies, parent company, or any third party contest co-sponsor, or any household and/or immediate family members of such employees are ineligible.  Employees of Google, its affiliated companies, parent company, or any third party contest co-sponsor, or any household and/or immediate family members of such employees are also ineligible.

4. TIMING: The contest entry period runs from September 1, 2008 to October 31, 2008 at 11:59 p.m. CT.  The contest begins at 12:01 a.m. Central Time (”CT”) on November 1, 2008 and will terminate at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2008.

5. HOW TO ENTER: To enter you must register on Nukoo.com by completing the required information and pay to the sponsor your non-refundable registration fee of $100.00 USD. There is a limit of one entry per person.

6. PRIZE: A maximum prize (“Prize”) of $100,000 USD will be awarded to the winner of the contest, assuming at least 1,200 entries. If less than 1,200 entries are received the actual prize is dependent upon the number of entries as follows:  The prize will be equal to 80% of the total amount of entry fees received.  The odds of winning depend upon the skill of the entrant and the number of entries received.  No substitution of prizes may be made, except by Sponsor in the event that a Prize or part thereof cannot be awarded for any reason; in such event, Sponsor will in its sole discretion award a substitute Prize or part thereof of equal or greater value. A Prize winner is solely responsible for any and all applicable federal, state, and local taxes (including where applicable, sales tax) due with respect to a Prize awarded to him/her, as well as all applicable fees and expenses related to the acceptance, award, and use of a Prize.

7. PARTICIPATION: After the close of the contest period a Keyword (“Keyword”) will be announced on Nukoo.com. Eligible participants will compete with each other to be the highest ranked website within the organic search engine results pages on Google.com for the query of that particular Keyword. Upon the termination of the contest period, the eligible individual website which has the highest ranking for the Keyword in the search engine results pages of Google.com will be declared the winner.

8: GUIDELINES: To be eligible to win participants and their entries must abide by the following guidelines.

* Participants must not use any SEO methods in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
* Only domains first registered during the contest period are eligible to win.  No previously registered domains may be used.

7. JUDGING: The winner of the Prize for the Nukoo SEO Contest will be determined by querying Google.com for the Keyword at the end of the contest period. The eligible contest participant ranked highest within the organic search results will be determined the winner.  In the event that Google is unavailable, Nukoo will retry the search query every 12 hours until it is available, at which time a winner will be determined.  In the event that Google’s datacenters are displaying different results, the Sponsor will determine the winner (by querying from it’s location and ISP in Columbia, MO) at its sole discretion.

8. WINNER NOTIFICATION; CLAIMING OF PRIZE: The winner of the Prize will be notified via e-mail sent to the address specified in the registration. The winner will be required to respond to the e-mail to claim the Prize, and may additionally be required to sign and return a release of liability, declaration of eligibility, and where lawful, a publicity consent agreement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, except where prohibited, participation in the contest constitutes winner’s consent to Sponsor to use winner’s name, likeness, opinions, biographical information, hometown and state for promotional purposes in any media, worldwide, without further payment or consideration. All taxes become the responsibility of the winner. If the winner does not respond within 10 days of Sponsor’s attempted e-mail notification, or if the winner fails to sign and return any required documents according to Sponsor’s reasonable instructions, an additional notification will be sent to the winner by e-mail. If the required response is not obtained from the selected winner by the date specified in the second e-mail notification, or if the selected winner is ineligible or otherwise fails to properly claim the Prize, a replacement winner will be chosen from eligible entries. The process will be repeated until the Prize is awarded.

9. DISCLAIMERS: By entering this contest, participants agree to waive any right to claim any ambiguity or error in these Official Rules, or the contest itself, and agree to be bound by these Official Rules and by all decisions of the Sponsor, whose decisions are final. Participants agree that Wes Upchurch and/or Nukoo, its affiliated companies, parent company, and any co-Sponsors of the Winning Predictions Contest shall not be liable for losses or injuries of any kind resulting from acceptance or use of Prize, participation in the contest, or any technical malfunctions of any kind, including but not limited to: the telephone network, computer on-line system, computer equipment,  availability of Google services, any action by Google, software, or any combination thereof, or any misdirected entries, or delayed data transmissions. NOTWITHSTANDING THE FOREGOING, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL THE ABOVE REFERENCED ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR AN AMOUNT OF DAMAGES IN EXCESS OF THE VALUE OF THE PRIZE(S) AWARDED HEREUNDER, NOR FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. The Prize shall be provided on an “AS-IS” basis without warranty, guaranty or representation of any kind express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or usability by a winner. IT IS PARTICIPANT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND ALL INFORMATION THAT MAY ACCOMPANY THE PRIZE.

10. MODIFICATION OF THE OFFICIAL RULES; CANCELLATION OF CONTEST: Sponsor reserves the right to modify the Official Rules in any way, or at any time. Sponsor reserves the right to cancel, suspend and/or modify the contest at any time. If any fraud, technical failures or any other factor beyond the Sponsor’s reasonable control impairs the integrity or proper functioning of the contest, Sponsor also reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to award the Prize(s) from among eligible entries prior to such action.

11. GOVERNING LAW; ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION: Participant agrees that any dispute arising out of this contest shall be resolved individually without class action and exclusively governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Missouri without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any disputes (excluding disputes where a party is seeking preliminary or permanent injunctive relief or a temporary restraining order) that may arise out of this contest shall first be submitted to mediation before a mediator appointed by the United States Arbitration & Mediation Midwest, Inc. pursuant to its rules of mediation. If a good faith attempt by both parties and the United States Arbitration & Mediation Midwest, Inc. fails to accomplish a resolution, then after fully exhausting the mediation remedy, the matter shall be submitted to the United States Arbitration & Mediation Midwest, Inc. for binding arbitration.

12. GENERAL TERMS: To obtain a copy of the winner’s list, send your request, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to:  Nukoo Web Hosting, 5451 S Bethel Road, Columbia, MO 65203 Attention: Wes Upchurch. Winner’s list requests must reference the contest date.

For most people on the Web, if Google or Yahoo cannot find something, it doesn’t exist. That has been one of the biggest drawbacks to creating a Website in Flash. Search engines could see the file, but they could not see what was in it. Until now.

Adobe today announced an optimized Adobe Flash Player that will be added to the search engines of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. under agreements with the two Internet firms. The tool will help the search engines better index dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIA) that include the Flash file format, or Shockwave Flash (SWF).

Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another. Google currently can find about 73 million Flash files on the Web. But until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results.

Google wants to make it easier for marketers to pick appropriate Web sites for their online ads with a new tool it announced Tuesday called Ad Planner. It seems that Google is moving into the Web measurement market to compete against companies like Nielsen Online, comScore, Quantcast and Hitwise.

Using Google Ad Planner, you can quickly create media plans and export to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Or, you can export to DoubleClick’s MediaVisor, which helps you manage all your other media planning, buying and campaign management activities.

For now, those interested in using Ad Planner need to submit a request to Google.

Google announced that the page load time metric is now a live factor that will influence your quality score and your minimum bids for your AdWords ads. Read more about it in their official blog…

I’m a Google Adwords Professional, and I often get emails from google requesting qualified professionals like me to take part in some kind of google adwords related surveys. I got a similar mail from Lewis Lin of Google, who by mistake copied the email address of 312 adwords professionals in the “To” column and sent it across It is indeed a privacy policy breach on part of Google…

Later on he mailed once again;

Dear Google Advertising Professionals,

I apologize for sending out the below survey with everyone’s e-mail address in the To: line.  It was a complete oversight on my part.  Given this, I do ask that everyone be respectful of one another’s privacy and do not use each other’s e-mails for unintended purposes.

My mistake aside, Google wants to make the Google Advertising Professionals program better for you, and we’d like to hear your feedback.  If you can take a moment to fill out the survey, we’d really appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Lewis

But, some of the folks who got those email id’s started sending emails to everyone, and there were a few interesting emails, which I would like to share with you…

Email1: $100 Commission for Your Referrals

t appears as if we were all part of an e-mail for a Google AdWords Professional survey but were not blind carbon-copied.

Nonetheless, please forgive me for sending you this one-time e-mail.  We may never have this type of transparency to each other again in the future.

My name is Dave Nathan, and I’m the owner of a Chicago-based search marketing agency called SearchGain.

I imagine that many of you get inquiries from prospective clients who simply aren’t suitable for your firm.

* Some of you may charge a percentage of monthly ad spend but require clients to have a certain minimum monthly spend.
* Some of you may be over-burdened and unable to handle additional clients.
* And, finally, some of you may not take on clients from certain verticals.

If any of these apply to you, I may have an opportunity for you to generate some additional revenue for yourselves (or your firms) once you determine that a prospect is no longer a good fit for your agency.

SearchGain’s “Expert on Demand” package is priced at $999 and includes 5 hours of one-on-one consulting.  As my services are completely “on demand,” I consider this offering to be affordable for any advertiser who is serious about AdWords but can’t afford to pay a firm a monthly management fee.

So, please allow me to extend this business development opportunity to you.  For any client that you send to me who enrolls in the Expert on Demand package, I will provide you with a $100 commission for your referral.  If you think you might be interested in sending some referrals to SearchGain, please contact me if you have any questions about how this would work.

Here are two links about the Expert on Demand package.

For New PPC Advertisers: http://www.searchgain.com/expert-on-demand-promo.html

For Existing PPC Advertisers: http://www.searchgain.com/expert-on-demand-promo2.html

Email2: SEO & PPC Partnerships

Dear All,

Let me introduce myself and take advantage of the great contact mailing list that we were provided with. Please excuse the form of this e-mail, but wasn’t it the purpose of the survey to help us get new Clients?

My name is Wojciech Jakoniuk and I represent Performance Media - Search Engine Marketing Company located in Warsaw, Poland. Our Company is currently the biggest SEM agency in the Central European Region.

::: SEO :::
We are currently looking for more projects in the US & Western European Markets and are seeking new partnerships especially in the SEO area. On request we can provide you with more information on who we are and examples of how we work and what we achieved. Our ideal model of cooperation is to become an outsourcing company for Agencies having the sales force in the foreign market. We can offer competitive rates thanks to cheaper labor force keeping high quality of work at the same time. Currently we have 45 people working for us.

Our preferred partner is on of the below:
An Agency / Media house which does not have an in house team of people doing SEO
An Agency which does only big projects (we do projects from
400$-10000$+ a month) Company which hasn’t achieved expected results and wants to try a new partner Agency that wants to outsource SEO work and white label it as it’s own service

We are working on monthly fee but also on a Performance basis. We can be paid once we achieve agreed results (We are prepared to work for up to 12 months without payment, taking the risks as we believe in the quality of our work).

::: Pay Per Click :::
Our Company has signed partnerships with European & US agencies offering their Clients all kind of PPC services (setting up, running, optimising, daily management for CPC / CPA campaigns) in all Europan languages & in Russian. We are a professional company managing
campaigns (from 100$ to 100000$+) for you or your Clients and are looking for more opportunities as above.

If you find our offer interesting & you feel there is a chance to start a new partnership we could provide you with more information that you may need.

Please do not hesitate to contact me - phone contact available on request.

Regards,

Wojciech Jakoniuk
CEO - Performance Media

Email3: Fellow Adworders

Good Afternoon.

How are you doing? Like Dave Nathan said, we are unlikely to have this happen again so I wanted to introduce you guys to TRON Media. We are a fast growing PPC management company working with clients spending between £50.00-£40,000.00 a month on Google, Yahoo and MSN. We have been going for 7 months.

The first thing I wanted to put out there is that I am looking for a SEO company to be able to send some leads to, and work on a white label basis or not, depending on what you want. If you don’t do SEO at all, but know a company that has a proven track record, again, I would really appreciate a name, number, website, to help my clients out. I have seen so many companies offering a service with Black Hat Optimisation, and am looking for a good company, with good morals, who can really provide a sound service.

Secondly, and lastly, I am aware that there are various reasons why certain companies can’t take on clients. We work on rolling 30 day contracts, work with clients that spend as much or as little on the search engines as possible but have a minimum fee of £75.00 per month.

Any referral sent through to TRON Media that signs up will get you the first month’s fee (worked out at 10-15% of expenditure) or minimum fee of £75. This will be paid by cheque or BACS at the end of the clients’ first month with TRON Media.

I hope this makes sense and sorry if this cause’s offence in any way. It is not meant to.

Good luck over this last year with the BPF!

Kind regards,
Simon Kelly

It is quiet interesting to read these offers, and I’m sure, I can expect a lot more… BTW, I’m also thinking about a way to monetize with these email id’s… May be, I should auction it in ebay… “Email id’s of 312 Adwords Professionals” It should be quiet interesting to see how much money I could make with that

Google announced the international availability of its Custom Search platform allowing companies to add Google’s search technology to their websites. It primarily aims at small businesses and takes only a few minutes or just three steps to sign up and deploy this service.

The platform allows users to integrate search into personal and community sites and blogs, and developers can use the Google Custom Search APIs to allow searching from within their applications.The Google Custom Search platform is now available in 40 languages in close to 80 countries worldwide.

The last Toolbar PageRank Export happened on Apr 30 2006, and the link buying/selling world has been waiting too long for the next update, and it seems that there is no full PageRank update for at least a few more weeks, and possibly longer.

Rumor has it that Google may be getting rid of the elusive, but very important PageRank — that friendly green status bar on the Google Toolbar that website owners try to build up. PageRank is what made Google’s search results as good as they are and it is one of the many factors that help the search engine determine how to rank results.

I’d been quiet busy, and didn’t realize that today’s Google’s Birthday until I came across it in Kishor’s blog. A nice looking special logo on Google’s home looks awesome.

Interestingly, Danny claims that it is the 10th B’day of Google in Search Engine Land. Anyways, OrganicSEO wishes Google many many happy returns of the day…

My client got this mail while we’ve been struggling to optimize our clients Google Base feeds for top 3 positions in Google Product search results. Its really good to see Google coming out to help a few of its valued content partners

Below is the actual mail from product-search-direct at google.com

Hello,

Thank you for listing your items for XXXXXXX.com on Google Product Search. As a valued content partner, we would like to help you take full advantage of Google Product Search this holiday season by possibly offering you custom optimization suggestions on your existing data feeds to maximize your exposure and sales. We are currently offering this opportunity to a select number of merchants for a limited time only, so we ask that you let us know by September 7th if you are interested by replying to this email.

Benefits of implementing our free custom optimization suggestions MAY include*:

- Increased traffic to your website
- More qualified leads through increased relevance
- Improvement in your rankings

If you are interested in having a specialist review your feed, please reply by September 7th to this email. We will then review your feed and send you any recommendations we may have.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

Lets wait and watch to see how google can help us in this.