Back in May this year (back then I palyed with the data and had great fun), Majestic created a new index called “Majestic Million” – a list of the top 1 million websites, ordered based on the number of referring IPs – or more precisely the number of referring class c subdomains.

The data is available for analysis for anyone, but the whole list remained proporieto. Today (Christmas eve), however, majestic plans to release the ENTIRE INDEX in Excel and TXT formats. So that will be an Excel file with 1 million records available for anyone to use in any way they wish! And for data nerds like me this is truly a Christmas gift.

The company, which has the largest commercially searchable index of backlinks available anywhere, has been running a series of “Advent Calendar” Videos evetry day during December. Some have had free voucher codes on them, giving some lucky users free upgrades to their system – but the video on Christmas eve reveals a different plan for Christmas day. (Video).

I understand that the files will be available for anyone without the need to register their interest. Indeed – if the data is available under a creative commons license, there would be little point in trying to track who uses the data anyway as everyone is free to do with it what they will.

The data should be released via their blog.

Looks like we are getting there, finally – The book I am co-authoring with Anne Kennedy is on Amazon and the date is set. The book is published by Que Biz-Tech and is called “Global Search Engine Marketing: Getting Better International Search Engine Results“. The description is as follows:

“For companies that operate internationally, English-only, U.S.-centric search programs leave far too many customers behind. Marketing through search engines to non-English-speaking customers outside North America has become essential, but it presents complex and unfamiliar challenges.

Now, for the first time, there’s a complete and practical guide to succeeding with global search marketing. In Global Search Engine Marketing, two leading experts bring together proven solutions to all the issues marketers will encounter – from culture and communication to technology and law. The authors cover all this, and much more:

” Understanding key cultural and behavioral differences, including the surprising local differences in how people search ” Crafting online marketing campaigns that reflect local cultures ” Selecting the right search media in each market – including markets where Google doesn’t dominate ” Achieving higher rankings in search engines around the world ” Organizing effective global pay-per-click search marketing campaigns ” Optimizing online press releases and other content for global search media ” Leveraging non-U.S. social media tools and platforms ” Optimizing mobile sites and apps for worldwide audiences ” Using web analytics to track key performance indicators (KPIs) in multilingual/multicultural campaigns – even if you don’t speak the language”

For those thinking about joining SEMPO, they are giving those that do access to tools and services worth $2000. SEMPO yearly memberships are as low as $125 but you get some of the best tools of the trade as a bonus.

SEMPO announced today its “Tools of the Trade” Toolkit, an exclusive collection of no-obligation trials and credits from 10 companies designed to boost the efforts of search and digital marketing professionals. Members who join or renew their membership by December 31, 2011, will receive the Toolkit as a benefit of their SEMPO membership.

“The participating companies really stepped up to make this an incredible benefit available for new and existing members,” noted Rob Garner, SEMPO vice president, North American Groups, and vice president of strategy at iCrossing. “The SEMPO Toolkit provides members with hands-on access to a wide variety of useful tools and services at no extra fee or obligation.”

Companies offering unique discounts or products in the Toolkit include:

Bing
Bruce Clay, Inc.
Cannedbanners
Exclusive Concepts
iCrossing
MajesticSEO
Raven
SEOmoz PRO
SpyFu
Wordbank

SEMPO yearly memberships are as low as $125. For complete details on Toolkit items or to join SEMPO, please visit http://sempo.site-ym.com/?page=join.

About Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing. SEMPO includes thousands of professionals across 50 countries. The organization’s mission is to represent the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and provide them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach initiatives are funded in part by Google, American Express Open SearchManager, and Baidu, and supported through partnerships with SMX, SES, OMS, MediaPost and GroupM Search. For more information or to join the organization, visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

Companies in most cases have from many digital assets that they can play with when communication their message online, simple things as annual reports in PDF’s and Power Point presentations can be optimized and made visible through either own sites and/or such services as Slide Share.

Images from the last product launch can play an essential role on Google Image search and manuals in word can lower the load on support. Not forgetting social media such as Facebook, Twitter, the Company blog, Digg and Sphinn to mention few.

Implementing Digital Asset Optimization helps the search engines notice all your online content and everything from file names to meta-tags and HTML files to PDF files and Image labelling through Google Webmaster tools plays a role when it comes to holistic usage of the Internet as a marketing and communication channel.

I will be talking about this topic a the upcoming SES San Francisco.

Found this really good article called “SEO as a Marketing Discipline” written by Rishi Lakhani. It illustrates in a very good way the problems the search marketing industry is going through and what it is that is holding back the upper management. It’s a reccomended read for those wanting to understand how we can make this industry more professional.

“I don’t mean ignorance in a negative way – I mean people genuinely don’t understand the work involved behind SEO – especially at the top level of any organisation. Most people use search engines – but most assume their existence and the results pages as part of life.”

Just came from a session at the SES called Black hat/White hat “Unconferenced” hosted by Matt McGowan, Publisher & head of U.S. Incisive Media and Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch and ClickZ (believe they are merging). Everyone that came to this session was offered a white hat or a black hat to wear, in my case I got the black.

Not that I am a black hat in the sense that I use under the radar none ethical tactics when marketing online, nobe more because that the size of the black hat fitted my head better. Great session that taught me black hats have bigger heads than white hats or that Matt and Mike did not order enough hats for people with big heads, either way fantastic session and great fun!

I was recently traveling on the US, speaking at the SES in NY. My eight year old daughter asked me to buy her a pair of shoes, to be exact Apple Bottoms. As I went to Footlocker to buy them I realized that they did not carry them anymore so I decided to Google and see what came up.

First when I searched Footlockers internal search nothing came up and as I have learned through the years Internal search on big sites can by quite faulty so I tested if Google found something but no results. But what happened was that JD Sports came up as a PPC result. JD was most likely not targeting me as I was in the US at the time with my Icelandic keyboard. But as I was searching on Google UK JD came up, with a nice ad saying

Apple Bottom at JD
Get the new line of Apple Bottoms
Women’s ware quick and easy at JD!

When I saw the add I tough to myself well if I cannot buy it in the US I might as well when I am next over to London. But when I clicked on the ad I got nothing, that is I got a page saying “Sorry, we have not been able match anything to your search” it was not a 404 page it was a search result page with no results. Still not sure where to buy the Apple Bottoms for my daughter.

Firstly what is a big site? Is it 10.000 pages or 100.000 or even 100.000? My experience is that sites that more than 10 .000 to 15.000 pages start to show the same symptoms, the main problem in most cases is the WCMS (web content management system), how it is used to manage the sites content.

This can be how templates are designed to show and possibly reuse content. Little problems within sites that contain millions of pages can occur again and again and grow from being a minor glitch in being a huge disaster that prevents search visibility.So planning ahead can be really helpful when managing a large site. In most cases Google problem is either too much of the same content or to little access to it.  Google as the other crawlers should only be allowed to index valuable pages with legitimate none duplicate content.

So what does that mean? Well if we look at the “too much” of the content problem, better known as duplicate content, this is in most cases because it is being reused again and again and again and …. This leads to Google either demoting the site, parts of it or even taking it out completely.

To find if there is a problem it´s in all cases good to put Google Webmaster tools on the site and Yahoo Site Explorer. When the site has been verified you will start to see all kinds of data such as crawler errors, what keywords the site us found under but not getting clicks through and more.

Although very basic this should get you going in identifying crawler issues that will eventually lead to visibility issues on the search engines.

Reykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.

You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is

A few weeks ago, Google announced its new focus on fast loading pages as part of quality involved in the searching experience. This means that Google´s ranking algorithm may take into consideration the speed of a web page.

Since Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t 100% clear, the points below are rather a theory that may improve your website ranking in Google.  Experiment if you can and share your results, here are some easy to make changes:

1. Make sure your web host is fast and you have a good connection to the Internet. Your web server should be easy to reach without any down time.
2. Join together external JavaScript code files into one file. The fewer files the server has to request, the better the web page’s speed. Then make these files smaller by compressing them.
3. Put external CSS files into one and compress them also.
4. Enable gZip compression if possible. Your webhost may do it for you.
5. If you use images, compress them and try to use as few as possible.
6. Tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets should be placed at the end of your web page.

However, keep in mind that page loading time in the ranking algorithm can be problematic. This is in respect to the cost of using a high quality web host and also competing against bigger corporations and other websites across the World Wide Web.