Free Traffic Tips

Clip ==> “Google has released a new version of Google Personalized Search, this time in a format intended to constantly monitor what people select from search results and shape future queries based on their choices.

The new service is linked to the My Search History feature that Google unveiled last April (see our Google My Search History Personalizes the Web for more on the feature). Google Personalized Search uses My Search History data to refine your results based on your searching habits.”

Link ==> Google Relaunches Personal Search – This Time, It Really Is Personal.

Thoughts ==> Maybe it’s the timing of this roll out (the 27th according to Google Labs), maybe I’m just having too much fun with the other neat search engine thing I’ve been playing with (as discussed in the other post), but I don’t have much to say. I won’t say i’m unimpressed… but so far it’s not blowing my skirt up either…

Steve over at MicroPersuasion posted a link to Yahoo!’s My Web 2.0 Beta this morning. I didn’t get to read it because I had a teleconference I had to attend this morning.

But ever since I got back I’ve been toying with it. On and off. All day. I just can’t stop.

What is it? Steve puts it best “Tagged Social Search”.

Ya got tags.
Ya got friends.
Jam them together. Then access the results on three levels:

1. What You’ve Personally Tagged
2. What You and Your Pals Have Tagged
3. What The World My Web Users are Tagging.

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If I said it once, I’ve said it a billion, trillion times. And I’m not gonna shut up about it, so you might as well get used to it.

You

must

pick the right keywords for your site. Or you’re just spinning your wheels.

But as happens from time to time, I found someone else to tell it to you in a way that might give you that “aha!” moment.

This article by Kalena Jordan at Search Engine Guide, Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords? tells you the truth:

“Even sites that have excellent rankings will not benefit if those rankings are for unsuitable keywords. ”

Go check out the rest of the article – and while you’re at Search Engine Guide, take a look at an article of mine recently published there that reminds you what the most lucrative keywords are and why. (It’s an excerpt from my book about increasing your blog traffic.)

I had heard about Grokker before but hadn’t played with it until a colleague I greatly admire sent me the link to the Grokker search for my name.

I later played with it for hours like a little kid doing every kind of search I could think of – the way Grokker displays search results and their relationships in a visual format works more intuitively then getting a list of links back, and as such can find information in places you never knew existed.

In an article posted at Search Engine Watch Chris Sherman talks more about
Visualizing Yahoo Search Results, saying “Grokker, a visual search tool that clusters related search results together in conceptually related categories, is now available in an online version, free of charge….

I Grok displays up to 160 results from the Yahoo index, more than the 100 maximum you can get from Yahoo itself on a single page. Since these results are grouped in topics, rather than presented in a linear list, you often see results that you might otherwise miss.”

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As predicted in Addict3d.org, Google began to add video playback via a Google branded player yesterday.

Clip: “Search goliath Google added moving pictures to its video search beta service on Monday. Users can now watch video from within the browser via a special downloaded player — one that likely will enable pay-per-view in the future…. But to watch video, users first have to download the Google Video Viewer, a free plug-in for Google video content only. (The plug-in works with the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.)”

Link: Google – Play it – addict3d.org:

Yahoo has hit the ground jogging with the Yahoo Search Subscriptions Project, according to infotoday.com’s article yesterday.

Clip: “Searchers who go to Yahoo! Search Subscriptions (http://search.yahoo.com/subscriptions) now can designate any or all of the following seven sources for inclusion in their search results:

* ConsumerReports.org
* FT.com (Financial Times, 60 days)
* Forrester Research
* IEEE publications (all technical articles since 1988 and selected older content)
* New England Journal of Medicine from the Massachusetts Medical Society
* TheStreet.com (current year)
* The Wall Street Journal (30 days of only articles referencing companies publicly traded in the U.S.).”

Link: Varying Content Commitments from Vendors for Yahoo! Search Subscriptions. (See what else is on the horizon.)

In This Issue of The Zero Cost Traffic Ezine:

• Two More List Building Tools
• A Free Copy of a 51 Page eBook
• Recent Blog Post Updates
• Link to one of my newer articles on getting your site into search engines

See you there!

Tags: free traffic :: website promotion

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I know, I know, I haven’t posted much lately. (And yet I’m maintaining my rankings and traffic – neat trick huh? LOL!)

Seriously though, your patience with me is absolutely appreciated. The Zero Cost Ezine will broadcast today, and if I’m not too tired after that, I’ll also have a few tidbits for Non-Profit Sundays (But don’t hold me to it. For some crazy reason I’ve been working every day for three weeks. Guess I’m just having too much fun…)

You’ll also notice, I’m sure, the newfangled template. It may not be a permanent change – I usually use a modified version of a different Blogger template, but yet again, the thing suddenly started displaying weirdly with no apparent cause – I hadn’t changed a thing. Even reloaded it from scratch and every other one works here but that one. Gr! *shakes fist at Blogger*

Which is why I will likely be locking down the archives before summer is out and switching completely over to another blog software system. You’ll still be able to access old posts for free if you’re a subscriber, but after a week if you’re not a subscriber you’ll have to view an excerpt and then decide if it’s worth subscribing to see.

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